THE P
RTAL
Catholic Social Teaching
May 2018 Page 9
Social Justice in the New Testament
Fr Ashley Beck
In this series of articles I am sharing with you the insights of the part of Christian moral theology which we call Catholic Social Teaching . We ’ re looking not only at what the Church ’ s teaching authorities ( the Pope and the bishops in communion with him ) have done to help us in this area , but also at ways in which all Catholics grow constantly in our awareness of what the Church teaches ; I hope also to draw on the theological traditions of those now in the Catholic Church who were formerly members of the Church of England .
Part of what this last aim can mean should involve reflection on the Scriptures , the Word of God . All Catholics believe that God reveals himself to us through the pages of the Bible , He speaks to us . He not only reveals something about himself to us , he reveals something to us about how we should live in the world . Many of us who have been Anglicans have been spiritually formed in a distinctive way by the Bible , knowing it deeply and through a rich tradition of preaching . Last month we looked at how the Old Testament speaks to us of the God of justice , the God who is on the side of the poor and the oppressed in the world , who constantly in the scriptures of the Jewish people challenges and proclaims judgment on the rich and powerful . In the New Testament we encounter God ’ s action in history through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ , and in the life of the early Church which continued his life ; again we find some of the same themes . Jesus and the earliest Christians were devout Jews , coming together on the Sabbath and on feast days to worship with other Jews in the Temple or in synagogues . You will be familiar with the event at the beginning of Jesus ’ adult ministry when he stands up to speak in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth , reading from this passage from the last part of Isaiah : ‘ The spirit of the Lord has been given to me , for he has anointed me . He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor , to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight , to set the downtrodden free , to proclaim the Lord ’ s year of favour .’ ( Luke 4:18 ) The Lord chooses that passage for a reason , to set a programme for what he is about in his teaching ministry ; and a key part of it is the categories of people to whom God ’ s good news is addressed – the poor , the downtrodden , prisoners , the blind .
This pervades the whole of the New Testament , but to look just at one example , Luke ’ s gospel , this is a key theme in Jesus ’ teachings ; indeed it goes back to the period before he was born . When Our Lady meets her
cousin Elizabeth she takes for her own Hannah ’ s song of joy from 1 Samuel in her great hymn or outburst which we call the Magnificat , saying or singing it every day at Evening Prayer . Mary ’ s song contains these words : ‘ He puts forth his arm in strength and scatters the proudhearted . He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly . He fills the starving with good things , sends the rich away empty .’ Perhaps we all get so used to saying or singing these words every evening that we overlook how hard-hitting they are . It is in Luke ’ s gospel that God ’ s love for those who suffer is expressed through parables of Jesus we do not find elsewhere – for example the story of the Good Samaritan , where it is the despised outcast who offers real help to the victim of a nasty mugging ; or the unsettling parable of Dives and Lazarus . In that story the rich man doesn ’ t suffer for eternity because he ’ s not a very good rich man ( we ’ re not told anything of his moral qualities ); he suffers because he is rich , because of the contrast between him on earth and the poor man outside his house eating food left for dogs . Also it ’ s in Luke that Jesus in the beatitudes is most challenging to people who have lots of money : ‘ Alas for you who are rich , you are having your consolation now ..’ In Luke , Jesus talks about historical categories – the poor and the rich ; and God is on the side of one , not the other .
These are just a few examples . All of us in the Church will be constantly challenged by this New Testament vision of God ’ s love for the poor and the oppressed made real in Our Lord ’ s ministry , and in his death and resurrection . Many in the Anglican tradition have witnessed powerfully to it through work with the poorest , identifying with those who suffer most – men like Robert Dolling , John Groser , Bernard Walke , and Conrad Noel . But for all of us , and we will see this a lot this month , it ’ s too easy to ignore Mary ’ s words in the Magnificat , to identify with the rich , the powerful ,
... continued at the foot of the next page ‣