Friday, September 23, 2016

Mercy – Caring for the Poor as Redemptive Liturgy


But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. – Jesus (Luke 6:35-36)

Jesus challenges his followers to be as merciful as God. That means mercy toward everyone. But, Jesus, following the Old Testament, showed particular mercy toward the poor. He said that when we care for those in need, we care for him. (Matthew 25:31-46)

 The early Church took seriously this responsibility to take care of the poor. In fact, many understood care for the poor as an extension of its worship, or liturgy.

 Liturgy (leitourgia) originally referred to work on behalf of the public, e.g., the wealthy would pay for public works and public religious festivals. In the New Testament, Christ is referred to as performing a leitourgia: “Christ has obtained a ministry [the Greek word is leitourgia – liturgy] which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant it mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). Christ’s life of obedience, death on the cross, and resurrection is the Christian liturgy. It is public work done for the benefit of the people. The early church adopted the word to refer to its worship understood as participating in the one liturgy of Jesus.

 But that worship was not understood as only what happened at church on Sunday morning. The public works funded by the wealthy in the pagan Helenistic context was not about caring for the poor. Nor was care for the poor connected to pagan worship. But for Christians, the liturgy of worship, which participated in the liturgy of Jesus Christ, led to "liturgy" on behalf of the poor. In her book, The Hungry are Dying, Bishops and Beggars in Roman Cappadocia, Susan R. Holman shows that in the early church, "Almsgiving is regarded early as a redemptive leitourgia." p. 54. 

Holman refers to Basil the Great who assures his audience that almsgiving is

the one action that would open to you the doors of heaven . . . . Do you realize that in giving your gold, your money, your fields, that is to say rocks and earth, you acquire life eternal? . . . . I know many who fast, pray, mourn and practice admirably the gratuitous forms of piety, but they do not give an obol to the outcasts. What good do the other virtues do them? They will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. p.108

Basil also asserted that, "as Adam brought in sin by eating evilly, so we ourselves if we remember the necessity and hunger of a brother, blot out his treacherous eating." p. 83

Here are two quotes from a sermon ‘On Famine and Drought, in which Basil pressed the point:

When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.

Whoever has the ability to remedy the suffering of others, but chooses rather to withhold aid for selfish motives, may properly be judged the equivalent of a murderer.

He elaborated on the theme in another sermon that can be found in a collection of sermons, ‘On Social Justice’:

If a physician promised to cure some bodily defect, arising either from birth or as a result of illness, you would not lose heart. But when the Great Physician of souls and bodies, seeing your deficiency in this vital area, wishes to make you whole, you do not accept the joyful news, but rather turn sad and gloomy. . . 

If you had truly loved your neighbor, it would have occurred to you long ago to divest yourself of this wealth. But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation of one of your limbs. Had you clothed the naked, had you given your bread to the hungry, had your door been open to every stranger, had you been a parent to the orphan, had you made the suffering of every helpless person your own, what money would you have left, the loss of which to grieve? Had you determined long ago to give to those in need, how would it be unbearable now to distribute whatever was left? At festival time, people do not regret parting with what they have at hand in order to gain whatever is necessary for the feast; rather, the cheaper they are able to purchase valuable commodities, the more they rejoice at receiving such a bargain. But you lament at relinquishing gold and silver and property – that is, stones and dust – in order to obtain the blessed life.”

And in a sermon ‘To the Rich’, Basil observed:

I know many who fast, pray, sigh, and demonstrate every manner of piety, so long as it costs them nothing.

For Basil, as with many of the early Christian theologians and saints through the ages, the liturgy of worship cannot be separated from the liturgy of caring for those in need. Both are necessary aspects of the redemptive ministry of Christ.  



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