Repairing The Breach

It is encounters such as these that have caused me to ponder the multi- layered ways in which the Gospel is Good News to the poor. Yes, the Gospel is Good News to the poor because it tells the poor of God’s love. And yes, the Gospel is Good News as it may encourage poor and troubled communities to collectively address the challenges they face in a spirit of Christ-inspired love, forgiveness and unity (and I have seen that happen!). But surely one very significant way in which the Gospel is Good News to the poor is that it calls those of us who are wealthy and influential by world standards to change our hearts and to change our behaviour. This seems to me to be the take home message of Luke 13:1-9. Poverty exists and suffering occurs for many reasons – the world is a complex place - but one major reason that millions of people remain trapped in poverty is that those of us with resources and power continue to gain and maintain what we have at the expense of the poor. Even worse, we are often either unable, or unwilling, to empathise with those who lose out in the world’s interconnected but unequal economy, and we do very little to change this systemic inequality. We fail to properly understand the circumstances that conspire to keep people in poverty and disadvantage, and how poverty, disadvantage and discrimination prevent so many people from living the full and abundant lives that God desires for us all. Everyone Welcome - Carol Aust 48