The Christian community should be seen as a giving community. It is not just the money or donation one gives but the effort one puts in to make the community one which forgives, understands, helps and loves. If it is true to say that time is money, someone who gives their time for the church is of immense value to the church. When we love and give, there will be a limit up to which others can take it. After that it will have to come back. It is not just to say that we have to do good if good has to come back to us but to say, if we water our plants they will grow and bloom but we don’t have to water them too much.
The church and Christian
community is now plagued with the problem of having people who will always make
others think that they will give. The rich are cleverer in this than others.
The leadership will be behind the rich with great expectations but the middle
class and ordinary people will be the ones who actually help the community.
While one group does things or promises to do things with the expectation of
gaining positions, power and authority, the other group does things and helps
out because it is the right thing to do. They are usually not found hobnobbing
with the leadership and do not have dreams of being in power.
There are other ordinary
people who help with their time and labour. People who help in cooking food, doing
arrangements in church, helping to serve food, cleaning up after everything and
not minding to get their clothes dirty in church. They try to work hard and give
their time for the benefit and welfare of the community. There are also people
who help with paper work, accounts, coordination and meetings. Others who pick
and drop children to Sunday school and youth programmes and offer their vehicles,
services and time for the church. They may not always be visible inside the
church but will make sure that church programmes are successful.
St. Luke 6: 38 says, “give,
and it will be given to you; in good measure, pressed down, shaken together,
running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the
measure you get back.” Jesus here is very clear about the reward that is
awaiting people who give their best for the benefit of the community. And yet good
is not just done expecting good in return, but that is a natural consequence of
good actions.
The problem today in all
churches is that the ordinary people are ignored and posts and chairs are given
to the rich and powerful. The poor man’s (sic) church has now become the rich
man’s church. It is natural that the younger generations of several families have
undergone an upward social mobility by way of better education and business
acumen. But that does not mean that the nature of the church has to change to
an exclusive club of people who want the ordinary people only to fill the
church but not for decision making and any kind of recognition.
The churches have to take
care of the proletariat, the working class, the one’s who work very hard to help
their church and community. Without them the numbers of the church will come
down drastically and will affect the very nature and survival of the church. In
Kerala there is the interpretation of two political dispensations. One is a
cadre party where workers do the work and the other is the party where everyone
is a leader and there is no one to do the work finally. This lent, may we
recognise the hard work of our forefathers and foremothers, who kept away rice,
vegetables and fruits for the church and brought it so that it would be
auctioned or exchanged to take care of the needs of the church. Shall we also
remember the people who walked to church, built the church by offering their
labour because they did not have the money to give. May we also remember the
women and men who set aside coins like the poor widow and gave it to the church
so that the church as we see it today would go on uninterrupted. Amen.
