By Zdravko Plantak, PhD

When Adventist church pioneers exercised their prophetic voice in the early days, it was not only to chart the timeline and give apocalyptic vision to the world. They dealt with the horrors and injustices of their time and spoke truth to power as they deemed responsible and necessary. It was incredibly courageous for John Loughborough to state plainly that “the United States is the two-horned beast” [1] and to describe its social evils of slavery and injustice to the poor and marginalized as one of the major reasons to portray the country in a beastly and morally apprehensible manner. [2]

Furthermore, Ellen White urged the church community that, “The work of gathering in the needy, the oppressed, the suffering, the destitute, is the very work which every church that believes the truth for this time should long since have been doing. We are to show the tender sympathy of the Samaritan in supplying physical necessities, feeding the hungry, bringing the poor that are cast out to our homes, gathering from God every day grace and strength that will enable us to reach to the very depths of human misery and  help those who cannot possibly help themselves.” [3] And yet again, the church finds itself among the muted crowd and silent observers as the cries of the poor and the immigrants are going heavenward, when millions are losing their basic access to healthcare, when foreigners are discriminated against on the basis of their nationality, culture, and religion, and when gender and racial minorities are being attacked and violated, and the disabled are being made fun of and laughed at. And in this silence, I can almost hear the echo of God’s voice resonating through the ages in the poetry of the prophet Isaiah: “What do you mean . . . by grinding the face of the poor?” (Is. 3:15).

So why are we silent instead of being “prophetic,” as we declare our community to be? When will the “prophetic community” act prophetically, therefore raising our voices for the marginal and being the voice for the voiceless and acting as a power for the powerless? When will the church “speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all the destitute [and] defend the rights of the poor and the needy”? (Prov. 31:8-9).

The soon-to-occur second coming of Jesus is a touch- stone for Seventh-day Adventists. We meticulously study prophetic passages and earnestly urge people to prepare for the Judgment Day. With a touch of smugness, we review the account of God’s judgment in Matthew 24 and 25 and shake our heads about the “goats” that God turns away from the Promised Land. With confidence we conclude, “I won’t be among the rejected.” But will we?

Unfortunately, many will. And it will be those who fail to see Christ in the alien in our land, and the refuge, the hungry and poor. As Edward J. Brady concludes, such Christians are “theologically underdeveloped and ethically insensitive.” [4] They are as ignorant as those who ask, “When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and did not feed you? Lord, when did we see you thirsty and did not offer you a drink?” And their failure to see the needs of the less fortunate affects their relationship with a God who does. “The people of God grow weak as they fail to hear the cry of the poor,” rightly suggests Jim Smith in his book, A Heart for the Poor. “For if we fail to hear that cry, we are failing to understand the nature of God, and consequently we are unable to live in his power.” [5]

“When I touch the body of the poor, I touch the body of Christ,” said Mother Teresa. This was more than a theological statement founded on Christ’s final story in Matthew 24 and 25 as He responded to questions about the timeline for his second coming. These words, suggested Brady, “point to the faith experience of countless Christians across the denominational spectrum who are active in combating hunger. For the Christian, hunger is about the person of Christ, who suffers in the hungry.” [6]

For those of us who truly believe in the cost of Christian discipleship as opposed to the nominalism of faith that is only written on paper, the fear (and accusation) of becoming “underdeveloped theologically and insensitive ethically” is serious and calls for a thorough look at God’s attitudes toward the poor. Many different passages of the Bible address the issue of the responsibility (“response ability” or “ability to respond”) to the poor and the disadvantaged in the world.

Deuteronomy 15 contains important references to the poor. First, in verse 11, we find the passage that Jesus quoted, “There will always be poor in the land.” But in verse 4, we read that because of the resources that God has provided to the world, “there should be no poor among you!”

There is only one way to reconcile these verses: poverty is not God’s will, but there will always be poor people because of human injustice. The continuing existence of poverty is not an excuse for inactivity; rather it is an argument for generosity.

Those of us who desire to be theologically developed and ethically sensitive will notice that the God of Israel emphatically wanted no poor on earth. Jesus addressed this issue in the same breath He described the signs of His second coming and outlined the way His followers would prepare for His return in glory. The true followers of Christ are theologically developed and know that in the smallest of the small and the poorest of the poor they serve Jesus Himself. They are ethically sensitive and humble enough to attempt to share love in practical ways on a one-to-one basis with the prisoner, the stranger, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized.

The challenge of being a true follower of Jesus can be found in St. John Chrysostom’s remark: “What is the use of loading Christ’s table with cups of gold, if He Himself is perishing from hunger?” [7] The bread of life that we par- take of in the Lord’s Supper must have an effect on whether we recognize Christ among those of our worldwide neighbors who are starving to death. In another place, Chrysostom imagines Jesus relating His crucifixion to Matthew 25, “I fasted for you then, and I suffer hunger for you now; I was thirsty when I hung on the cross, and I thirst still in the poor, in both ways to draw you to Myself and make you humane for your own salvation.” [8]

Consider the divine moral outrage described in Deuteronomy 15, and then imagine its magnitude today when 800 million are living in abject poverty and millions of children are dying of starvation, when over 60 million have become refugees as “global forced displacement hits a record high.” [9] God gives us theological provisions to underpin that divine ethical indignation.

God’s desire for the poor and the oppressed to be liberated is the prime concern of the true Sabbatical principle described in Exodus 23:11 and Leviticus 25:10. The extension of weekly Sabbaths to the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee almost exclusively emphasized humanitarian issues. The idea of the land resting (lying “unploughed and unused”) on the seventh year correlated to concern for the poor, the slave, the alien, the marginal, as well as rights which go beyond mere human rights to creation care and sustainable living while the whole earth is in environmental distress.

If one truly observes the Sabbath, one cannot remain satisfied only with one’s own redemption, restoration, and liberation. One must show concern for one’s neighbor and our common earth physically as well as spiritually.

The Sabbath doctrine does not involve only the Sabbath day; it concerns the other six days of the week as well. The atmosphere and the principles of the Sabbath will not only “extend beyond the worship service to the dinner table and the living room” [10] on the seventh day, but they would also become a part of the Sabbath attitude which ought to be practiced throughout the week. The moral Sabbatical concern, which extends from the weekly Sabbaths to Sabbatical years, is to teach us as it was meant to teach the Israelites about the needs of the less fortunate, the poor, the widows and the orphans. [11] In a similar way, Christians should develop a greater “Sabbatical” conscience for the poor, the immigrants, and all those that society marginalizes and shuns, the unfortunate, the unemployed, and the powerless whose basic human rights are denied. As Richard Rice suggests, “The Sabbath speaks against every practice that deprives human beings of their sense of worth and dignity. Oppressive economic and social structures, which make it impossible for people to provide for themselves, contradict the message of the Sabbath. Those who appreciate the meaning of the Sabbath will seek to eliminate such things.” [12]

Sabbath-keeping Christians should be among the first to advance the ideas of justice, equality, and freedom among all people. If they fail to do that, the letter of the law is observed but the spirit of the Sabbath-commandment is totally lost. “The sheep on Jesus’” right in Matthew 25 observed the Sabbatical principle of care and concern and they were rewarded accordingly.

The God of the poor and the Friend of the weak calls us to embody the Sabbatical attitude. While “There will always be poor people in the land” is an anthropological statement of fact due to human injustice and inequality, “There should be no poor among you” is an ethical statement that suggests God’s intent and desire.

God has provided the means to embody this ethical desire of the ages and the theological reasons have been supplied. The question is whether we will choose to be Sabbath-keeping Christians who care as seriously as God does about the world’s poor and marginalized. If we engage fully in this responsibility, we shall be counted as righteous as admonished by Proverbs 29:7: “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.”

–Zdravko Plantak, PhD, is professor of religion and ethics at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University. Email him at: [email protected]

Notes
[1] J. N. Loughborough, “The Two-Horned Beast of Rev. XIII, a Symbol of the United States,” (Review and Herald, 1857): 50. [2] Ibid. See especially Loughborough’s powerful narrative of a slave, Jim, and his master, George, and an analysis of the Protestant Christians holding, acquiring, and justifying slavery through their false “faith-rhetoric” (pages 31–36). [3] Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Volume 6, (1901), 276. [4] Edward J. Brady, “Theological Underdevelopment and Ethical Insensitivity,” in William Byron, The Causes of World Hunger. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), 38. [5] Jim Smith, A Heart for the Poor, (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1988), 31-32. [6] Brady, (1982), 47. [7] Hom. In Matt. 88, 3 (PG 58:778) as cited also in William Byron, ed., The Causes of World Hunger. (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982), 52. [8] Hom. In Matt. 15, 6 (PG 60:547-8) as cited also in Byron, ed., The Causes of World Hunger. (1982), 52. [9] Adrian Edwards, “Global Forced Displacement Hits Record High,” The UN Refugee Agency Report UNHCR Global Trends, (20 June 2016). http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html (accessed on May 14, 2017). [10] Sakae Kubo, God Meets Man: A Theology of the Sabbath and Second Coming, (Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Publishing Association, 1978), 27. [11] Ex 35:12-33. Gerald Winslow’s footnote 1 in his article “Moment of Eternity” states that “the Sabbath symbolism in the Bible extends far beyond weekly Sabbath . . . every seventh year was specified as a sabbatical year (Lev. 25:1–7). After seven sabbatical years, every fiftieth year, a special Year of the Jubilee was celebrated (Lev. 25:8-12)”. Winslow concludes that, “the more extensive symbolism of holy time as represented in these other “sabbaths” should also be kept in mind.” In Festival of the Sabbath, ed., Roy Branson, (Takoma Park, Maryland: Association of Adventist Forums, 1985), 94. [12] Rice, Reign of God, (Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1985), 370.