We know most of our sisters and brothers in the world live on less than $2 a day. We know people everywhere are intimidated, arrested, tortured, and murdered by powerful people who fear them. In Guatemala in the 1980s, 200,000 poor people were killed on orders of their president. Who received military support from the United States government. And who happened to be a born-again Christian. So Christians have somehow found it possible to worship the Prince of Peace on Sundays and crucify him over and over again the rest of the week as the poor are brutalized. Or at least we do not oppose policies that crucify Jesus over and over again as the poor are brutalized.

It was out of the Latin American world of poverty, injustice, and oppression in the 1960s that liberation theology was born. The question liberation theology asks is, "[H]ow [do we] proclaim God as Father in a world that is inhumane? What can it mean to tell [someone treated like] a non-person that he or she is God's child" (Gustavo Guttiérez in Christopher Rowland, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 2-3)? Liberation theology refuses to sugar-coat the poverty and violence of the world out of which it comes. It doesn't try to encourage people to put up with suffering because everything is going to be fine in heaven. It says God came into the world as the human being Jesus. Not as a middle-class or upper-middle class human being. Not as a merchant or high-ranking official or monarch. God came into the world in poverty. And, Jesus, God-as-human-being, spent his life with the poor. Not telling them to suffer quietly. But healing them. Challenging the rich to befriend the poor. Telling stories in which he warned the rich that our wealth separates from the poor. Which means our wealth separates us from the God who has a special love for the poor.

In the language of liberation theology and Latin American Roman Catholic Bishops, God has a preferential option for the poor (Gustavo Guttierez, "The Task and Content of Liberation Theology," in Christopher Rowland, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology. Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 26). Which means the God who loves all creation has an especially deep love for the poor. As in the person of the poor man Jesus God was intimidated, tortured, and murdered, so God identifies most deeply with the poor, intimidated, tortured, and murdered of the world. And liberation theology says that the Kingdom of God Jesus talked more about than anything else is a place in this world where all God's creatures have abundant life. So the Church of Jesus Christ has no option but to commit itself to make this world a place where abundant life happens, especially for the poor. We have no choice. As followers of Jesus, we commit ourselves to create in this world the Kingdom of God Jesus lived for and was murdered for. The Kingdom of God Jesus Christ rose for, and gives us power and hope to help create.

Liberation theology is all about thanksgiving. And all about demand. Liberation theology begins with thanksgiving. The thanksgiving that comes from hearing God name us, 'My beloved.' It begins with worship. With us coming together and being surrounded by, filled with, washed in the love of God. This love of God that is God's freely-given gift to us. We enter this place having seen the love of God made real in the beauty of the world around us. We give the love of God to each other. And we receive that love of God from each other. We sing and we pray our thanksgivings to the God who gives us life.

Alive in that love of God, we bring the realities of our lives here. We open ourselves to each other in deep and honest ways, sharing our hurts and hopes. And we bring the realities of our lives to the Bible story for the day. Our lives speak to the Bible story and the Bible story speaks to our lives. We listen for how God wants to make Her love real to us through this story, and in our lives. In liberation theology, the stories of the Bible become food for us. These stories of God and Jesus active in history fill us with God's love. They plant in us the dream of abundant life for all God's creatures. They call us to act to make real that abundant life in the world. Liberation theology says the poor everywhere are suffering and dying. So there's no room and no time for anything abstract or theoretical. Following Jesus is all about restoring life to the poor of the earth. Restoring life to those who suffer from poverty, fear, violence, and oppression. Restoring life to a dying planet. Restoring life to those who die before they have a chance fully to live.

That is the demand. In thanksgiving for the gift of God's freely-given love, we must respond. This gift requires behavior which translates into acts of love towards our neighbor, and especially the weakest among them. "This is the [demand] of Christian life, which seeks (beyond any [spiritual or political excuses]) to be faithful to the God of Jesus Christ. Liberation theology says we don't live our faith by writing about it in an academic office or talking about it from a safe distance in sermons. . .Theology is done in a Church which must provide in human history the testimony to a life victorious over death. . . This testimony of life (material and spiritual life, personal and social life, life present and life future) assumes particular importance in a [world] characterized by premature and unjust death, and also by the struggle for freedom from oppression" (Guttiérez, p. 37)

So let us listen to a story from the Bible that is hard for people who are not poor to hear. It is a story that speaks to the heart of liberation theology. It's in a section of Luke's Gospel where Jesus talks about the dangers of wealth. Let us try to listen for the Word of God.

Jesus said, "There once was a rich man, expensively dressed in the latest fashions, wasting his days in conspicuous consumption. A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived for was to get a meal from scraps off the rich man's table. His best friends were the dogs who came and licked his sores.
"Then he died, this poor man, and was taken up by the angels to the lap of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell and in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham in the distance and Lazarus in his lap. He called out, 'Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I'm in agony in this fire.'
"But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that in your lifetime you got the good things and Lazarus the bad things. It's not like that here. Here he's consoled and you're tormented. Besides, in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to, nor can anyone cross over from you to us.' "The rich man said, 'Then let me ask you, Father: Send him to the house of my father where I have five brothers, so he can tell them the score and warn them so they won't end up here in this place of torment.'
"Abraham answered, 'They have Moses and the Prophets to tell them the score. Let them listen to them.' "'I know, Father Abraham,' he said, 'but they're not listening. If someone came back to them from the dead, they would change their ways.' "Abraham replied, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the Prophets, they're not going to be convinced by someone who rises from the dead'" (Luke 16.19-31, from The Message © Eugene Peterson).

The Kingdom of God is what Jesus talked more about than any other topic. The second issue Jesus talked about most is wealth. Usually he talked about wealth by saying how dangerous it is to those who have it. Because we start to love what wealth offers us. We get seduced by the power, the choices, the status wealth brings. We come to love our stuff. And we become willing to do what we need to do in order to keep our wealth and even to get more. There was a story this week of a grand jury in Texas who ruled that it was perfectly legal for this man shot and killed two robbers who were running away from his house with $2000 in cash and some of the man's stuff. This is what Jesus is talking about. Losing some stuff means it's okay to kill. That is where love of stuff can take us. Away from the call to build that Kingdom of God in which all God's creatures are guaranteed abundant life.

So it is very hard to talk God having a preferential option for the poor when you're not poor. I typed this sermon on a nice new laptop, at my beautiful cherry wood desk, on top of a Kashmir rug I bought in India. Which is on top of a new bamboo floor. Next to my desk is a nice, new Crate & Barrel sleeper sofa . . . Yes, we need some stuff in our homes. But what liberation theology always, always calls me back to is the question: how am I living my life for the poor of this earth? [hold the Bible] As one who calls himself Christian, how am I living the deep, powerful, angry, hopeful love for the poor that fills most pages of this book? How am I doing that? And how am I letting my relationships with the poor transform me into someone who is more human? How am I letting my relationships with the poor change my relationship with my stuff - and lead me away from my love for stuff? And open me to being loved by this God, this Jesus, into letting go of large parts of my wealth . . . and committing myself to changing the systems in this country that keep people in poverty by keeping people like me wealthy?

These are the very painful questions liberation theology raises. I don't know about you, but I can start getting pretty defensive when I hear about God's special love for the poor. How do you hear this morning's Bible reading? The rich person ends up in hell. The story doesn't say what he could have done to avoid hell. If he'd invited Lazarus to one of his parties, would that have saved him? Or if he'd talked to the mayor about offering to build a home for Lazarus and poor people like him? If he'd invited Lazarus to live with him? We don't know. All we know is that this is one of many, many stories in the Bible which says wealth is really dangerous because it tries to convince us we need to keep what we have and make more of it. As a peasant talking with other peasants about this story of Lazarus and the rich man said, "I think the word of God has been very badly preached, and the church is much to blame in this. It's because the Gospel hasn't been well preached that we have a society still divided between rich and poor. There are few places . . .where the Gospel is preached and we understand it. Also, it's us poor people who understand it. Unfortunately, the rich don't come to hear it. Where the rich are, there's no preaching like that" (Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, Vol. 3, Orbis Press, 1976, pp. 251-58).

Liberation theology invites us to talk together about our wealth. Which is the hardest thing for North Americans to do. To talk with honesty and love about our wealth. And about how we as followers of Jesus Christ live with that wealth, as we also live with the story of the rich man and Lazarus . . . which suggests that wealth by itself often keeps us from seeing the poor as those in whom Jesus is most powerfully present. But instead to see them as people we would rather step over, look past, find character defects in, and make invisible by keeping far away from us.

I am not saying that as individuals and as a congregation we do not feel the pain of the poor. I have been moved by the stories you have shared about your commitment to the poor in this country and around the world. Some of us will serve dinner at Tent City a week from tomorrow night. This isn't something we 'have' to do. We do it because that is where Jesus is and where he calls us to go. I hope we are able to listen to some of the stories that the residents of Tent City have to share. I hope we listen to these stories, and connect them with some story in the Bible. And I hope the stories move us, sadden us, anger us and stir us up and call us out. I hope these stories change us. And change this congregation. So we might become the church on this Plateau which is known as the church that believes God and Jesus do indeed have an especially powerful love for the poor. And so we build relationships with those poor – and help build that Kingdom of God by working with God to change history by working to get rid of poverty, fear, violence, and oppression. Because the God we worship, the Jesus Christ we follow and walk beside, has a different vision for life. I have come, Jesus said, that you may have life. And have it abundantly. Abundant, full, joyful life, where all have enough.

That is what this meal is about. As the founder of liberation theology, Gustavo Guttiérez says, "[Abundant life] is what we celebrate in the Eucharist . . . In sharing bread, we remember the love and trust of Jesus who was taken to His death, and the confirmation of His mission towards the poor through the resurrection. . . This act represents the profound communion with human suffering caused in many cases by the lack of bread, and it is the recognition, in joy, of the Resurrected Jesus who gives life and lifts the hope of the people brought together by his acts and his word.

"The theology of liberation tries . . . to be a language about God. It is an attempt to make present in this world of oppression, injustice, and death, the Word of life" (Guttiérez, p. 37).

As we say in the prayer after we share this meal, "Take us out to live as changed people, because we have shared the Living Bread and cannot remain the same. Ask much of us, expect much of us, enable much by us, encourage many through us. Lead us on. Take us with you. Amen" (Wild Goose Worship Group, A Wee Worship Book, Fourth Incarnation, Glasgow: 1999, p. 89-90).