The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. – Mark 14:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 11, 2014): Mark 14

Our world is filled with persecution, the current situation in the Middle East is just the latest and most publicized portion of the persecuted world. The reality is that every day good men and women and children – die. We want to believe that we can change the nature of the world. We work hard (and should) at eradicating the social ills of this planet. But the unfortunate reality of our lives is that our natural bent is toward evil. And if we need proof of that, really all we have to do is look at the story of the early church.

The early church existed in a culture of persecution. Most of the disciples were executed for no other reason than that they professed a faith in Jesus Christ (the only exception – and we aren’t even really positive that he was an exception – was the apostle John. But even John was exiled and had hot oil poured over him as a result of his profession of faith.) And in the early church there were waves of this kind of persecution – times when just the act of proclaiming that you were a Christian was enough to make yourself vulnerable imprisonment, torture and even death.

But early in the fourth century all of that changed. A man named Constantine came to power in the Roman Empire and he decided that from that point forward the culture of the empire would be Christian. Really, for the first time, to admit that you were a follower of Christ was to put yourself in the cultural elite. For the first time, people actually pretended to be Christian, because Christianity would bring them the power that they wanted. And if you were a student of culture at that time, you might have predicted that the change in the spiritual life of the people would bring a more tolerant age. But that isn’t what happened. In practice, Christians just made the transition from being the persecuted to the persecutors.

I believe that the story of the early church is proof that a focus on the social ills of society just doesn’t work. It is not that we shouldn’t, as followers of Jesus, focus on poverty and social justice issues – it is just that if our focus is just on the social problems of our culture, then we run the risk of losing sight of Jesus and he is really the only solution.

So Jesus goes to a party and says, “The poor will be with you always, but I won’t.” If you focus on the poor, at some point you will become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. It is the nature of this world. And the only solution to our social problems is Jesus. If we focus on the social ills of our culture, we will just become part of the problem. If we focus on Jesus, only then can the social problems be solved. So Jesus just repeated the message – look at me.

The message still hasn’t changed. We are called to make a difference in this world. But that won’t happen because we set out to focus on what is wrong. It only happens if we set out and focus on Jesus.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 22