5th March, 2010

NILS VON KALM

I remember a story told to me once by some old friends. They had brought up their children in Indonesia, and when their children played with children from other nationalities, their parents decided to ask them one day what colour the other children’s skin was. My friends’ children said they didn’t know. They just saw them as playmates. The colour of their skin wasn’t an issue.

A CHRIST-LIKE RESPONSE? How do we see other people, such as those less well off than ourselves? Nils von Kalm  says we need to look beyond labels. PICTURE: Alex Bricov (www.sxc.hu) "In our noble attempts to be Christ-like, we have tried to civilise the poor. Gardiner believes that the Spirit would say to the church today, ‘stop civilising and start discipling’. Or, as a pastor at a church I was at many years ago said, we are just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food."

There have been times in my life when my compartmentalising of people and people-groups has been exposed. At the church I attend, in inner-city Melbourne where the socio-economic status is lower than where I live, we have a food cupboard which is available for anyone to receive food from. I have been told that it’s there for me as well. When I was first told that it was there for me as well, I felt awkward. My middle-class background has given me too much pride to be able to receive free food when I can afford to buy it. And besides, what would people say if they saw me lining up with those poor unfortunates who really need the food? What this exposes in all its ugliness is the fact that I don't want to be associated with being needy, that I do very well being quite self-sufficient thank you very much.

How do we see those who are different to us, particularly those who we call ‘the poor’? If, like me, you are one of the middle-class, does the fact that we even call them ‘the poor’ reveal that we are distancing ourselves from them? Do we see them as ‘other’ and therefore – ‘thankfully’ - not like us?

When I was told that the food cupboard at church is there for me as well, what I didn’t realise was that the real reason it exists doesn't have a lot to do with ‘helping the poor’ at all. The real reason it exists is as a reflection of community. This is, after all, the way the early church operated, as explained in Acts chapters two and four. The fledgling church shared everything in common, no one was in need, and no one considered anything to be their own. Community in the kingdom of God is about everyone being equal and no one being labeled as different to anyone else. As Paul stated it so eloquently, ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. Our food cupboard is there for our community. We are all the same. We have nothing which is our own, and we have nothing which we have not been given.

New Zealand evangelist Daryl Gardiner says that when we put labels on each other, we are really making a statement about our perception of our own status. We are trying to see ‘them’ as inferior. It may not be a conscious attitude within us but it is there nonetheless. In making his point, Gardiner makes reference to Samuel Marsden – the flogging parson – who came out to Australia in the 18th century to ‘civilise the savages’. Marsden’s mindset was to ‘bring Jesus with him’ and to ‘civilise and evangelise’ the locals. For him though, civilising really meant making them more British. What Marsden didn’t realise was that God was in Australia long before he was, and that his British-ness did not make him superior to those he wanted to serve.

Christians like me, though well-meaning, have so often got it wrong. In our noble attempts to be Christ-like, we have tried to civilise the poor. Gardiner believes that the Spirit would say to the church today, ‘stop civilising and start discipling’. Or, as a pastor at a church I was at many years ago said, we are just one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.

When I drive to church in inner-city Melbourne from my comfortable eastern suburban home, I don't bring Jesus with me. He is already there. When I serve cake and hot chocolate to my friend in the wheelchair in church, I serve not just him, I also serve Jesus. Whatever we do for the least of these we also do for Jesus. And in doing so, I, who am also to be counted among the least of these, am likewise served by Jesus.

When the children of my friends in Indonesia didn’t know what colour their playmates’ skin was, they showed the typical response of those we must become like if we are to inherit the kingdom of God. For in this kingdom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, child nor adult, poor nor rich, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

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