It’s an election year, so it’s no surprise that everyone is getting all up into a huff trying to defend their own pet political positions. My personal favorites are the socialist statists who think that having a massive federal institution like Medicare or Medicaid is what Jesus had in mind when he said “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Let me make sure I’ve got this straight: Jesus wants us to cheer for a Caesar who will take care of “the least of these” on our behalf so we don’t have to get involved? If I’m to take Jesus seriously here (which I have no reason not to do), someone who champions Medicaid in Jesus’ name is handing Jesus over to the authorities to be dealt with by the professionals. Now, maybe I’m reading too much into that, but it seems to me that didn’t go very well last time.
I read a verse like that and I am cut to the heart because I know that I haven’t done what I ought, and I know that I can’t take a shortcut by voting for the guy who says the right thing or cheering at a rally or wearing the right colored ribbon. I have to get involved. I have to walk down the street and treat the homeless drunk on the sidewalk like a human being. I have to give my own money to a starving child in Honduras. I have to be ready to be a safety net (as in, a roof and warm meals and love and support and counsel and friendship) for my family or friends when they get sick, lose a job, get shipwrecked. I can’t pretend that I’m “doing it unto Jesus” by sloughing it off on a faceless bureaucracy. I have to give, I have to see, I have to touch, I have to participate.
HT: Douglas Wilson and an unnamed Christian sister at work who prompted me to write this.
