Preaching, Politics & Partiality.

I'm not sure all of what the Lord is trying to drill into my thick skull, but something is stirring. One of several things that I regularly remember from my mentors and friend - Susan Cho Van Riesen - is that "Articulation deepens conviction." I think this comes from Ezra 7:9-10, where God blesses Ezra for studying, observing & teaching. A bunch of new convictions are breaking over me like a big wave.

In the past 5 days, I've taught 3 times. Veronica and I gave a seminar on Saturday, called: "How to have a good fight." This was a follow-up from a message I gave at our Tuesday evening fellowship meeting at CSULA - "Deep" - about forgiving others. Then I spoke twice on Tuesday. First at East Los Angeles College, on the politics of Jesus, looking at Mark 12 and Matthew 25. I'd always read Matthew 25 through the lens of my individual response to individuals - feeding, clothing, visiting. God began to open my eyes to the larger implications of Matthew 25:

--food - nutrition programs for kids before and after school;

--thirst - working condition for migrant farm workers, and sweatshops;

--strangers - immigration and welcoming 'foreigners' to the US (I'm not talking about the Minute Men Patrol), or human trafficking, or the global economic realities that create international migration of workers;

--clothing - the distribution of resources, the materialism of our society, my desire for new shoes, clothes, etc. all of the time;

--the sick - affordable healthcare and the rise of medical costs;

--prisoners - when was the last time I "visited" someone in jail, even more, do I have a Christian worldview about the criminal justice system, or the public prison, I mean school, system that dooms more Latino & Black children to drop-out than to graduate, let alone even go to college.

I'm being challenged to rethink my own approach to politics in light of Jesus' life, his death & his resurrection.

Then I preached Tuesday night at Deep from Ephesians 2 about Jesus and culture. It made me cry - for two reasons. I realize how significant and urgent the good news of the gospel is for my students to know Jesus authority to lead us in this crazy, often divided, multi-ethnic world. And I cried when I got home realizing how - despite Jesus' act of breaking down the dividing wall - how threatening the shadow of that wall of ethnic hostility still is in our world, even or especially in the church.

And now tonight, I preparing the Bible study for my guys from 2 Deep (Man, I love getting together with these guys.) We're going through the book of James. Tonight we're studying from the beginning of chapter 2 about favoritism and partiality. My head is spinning, or more accurately, my heart is wrestling with God about how to really live out this gospel of no-favoritism in our world that is so divided on so many fronts.

In the midst of the whirlwind of conviction that is being stirred in me, I find hope from James that indeed "mercy does triumph over judgment." May God's great mercy triumph over my preaching, my political agenda, and my pre-judgments, prejudices, and partiality.