Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

One clear goal of the Mosaic law was to prevent such injustice ever arising again among God’s people (Deut. 6.20–25), so that there should be no poor among them (Deut. 15.4). However, the institution of the monarchy centralized power and wealth and impoverished large sections of Israelite society (1 Sam. 8.10–22; 1 Kings 12.4; Amos 2.6–8). The king who was meant to protect the poor from exploitation (Prov. 31.1–8) became one of its chief agents (e.g. Ahab, 1 Kings 21). So the prophetic hope grew of a king who would bring justice to the poor (Isa. 11.4). Here Sugden links the relationship of the covenant and its stipulations for justice and righteousness in the community to the hope of anointed King of God’s choosing who would finally fulfill the hope of a protector, a ruler, a king who once and for all would make the shalom (wholeness and security) of God a reality in the world. The people who suffered cruel oppression under Egypt, became oppressors themselves. And the hope of the broken, was that God would send one who would redeem his people from these conditions once and for all, forever. In a real sense, the story of Jesus of Nazareth (fueled by the motifs of the divine romance, the promise and fulfillment motif, along with the marriage and warfare visions) is the one and only one who has been appointed by God to end the curse, destroy death, and usher in a new Kingdom of justice and righteousness for all. As one who was poor himself, he could empathize with those who were both vulnerable and exposed to abuse. Sugden rightly argues that the ministry of Jesus, as founder of the Church and Head of the new covenant community, was himself focused on the poor, and expected his own to minister to them with the same sense of calling, purpose, and zeal: Jesus’ focus was also on the poor. He himself became poor (2 Cor. 8.9). His ministry in Galilee (a place of the dispossessed and the outcast) was a judgment on the powerful of Jerusalem; his ministry was with the sick, the Samaritans, those branded as ‘sinners’ and the socially rejected. It was not confined to such, but he identified its nature by reference to them; his proclamation and demonstration were good news to the poor (Luke 4.18; 7.22). The meaning of Jesus’ ministry among the poor would give the meaning of what he was doing among everybody else. The significance of the good ~ Ibid.