By Anil Netto
One of the most challenging aspects of our Christian faith, is that having accepted all the central tenets of our faith, are we content to let it rest there?

What do we do about it? Does it make a difference in our world view and our lives?

Related to this is another question: to what extent do we internalise Gospel values, especially in relation to the preferential option for the poor, justice, love, compassion, the dignity of the human being. Do we respect workers’ rights, for instance?

Alas, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the values upheld by people in the materialistic world out there and the values held by people calling themselves Catholics or Christians. In a way, this is a sad reflection of the pervasive influence of corporate, materialistic values, which have crept into the Church.

Christianity does not just involve a relationship between me and God or even just me and the local BEC and the larger Church. It also involves our relationship with society and the world.

Jesus was sent to proclaim the kingdom of God in a world ripped apart by exploitation, violence and war, social injustice, disease and misery.

He reached out to people without waiting for them to come to Him. He was constantly on the move, walking for days along dusty paths, through orchards and hills and lakesides, from one hamlet to another, without a permanent place to rest his head.

This kingdom was more than just the Church; it involved the whole of Creation, and Jesus was totally immersed in this Creation — not at the centres of power, but at the margins where the effects of oppressive policies were largely felt by the peasants, the destitute and the landless casual labourers.

He was thus intuitively sensitive to any assault on the beauty of Creation and any damage inflicted on the dignity of people. In Luke Chapter 4, at the start of his ministry, Jesus proclaimed to the utter incredulity of those present:

18 The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.

We say we are interested in proclaiming the message of Jesus. If that is the case, if we truly believe ourselves to be followers of Jesus, we should be continually asking the hard questions: who are the afflicted in today’s world? who are the captives? who are the blind? who are the oppressed who need to be liberated or set free?

Unfortunately, we do not hear these questions asked. More often than not, we settle into a comfortable routine of fulfilling religious obligations — in the narrowest sense — without looking at the larger mission imperatives of reaching out to the target groups Jesus mentioned in his "mission statement.”

In other words, many of us are more comfortable with an inward-looking, middleclass church — a church which, though it may accommodate the poor and the marginalised, does not often hear their voices, their joys and their sorrows. We rarely hear of their struggles, their exploitation, their bondage. And because we often don’t hear their voices, whether in church or at social events or in the mainstream media — which often focus on the middle class — we find it difficult to empathise with their struggles.

It’s a sobering thought that Jesus was immersed in their midst almost all the time. He was surrounded by the peasants, the outcasts, the hopeless, the diseased.

But look around us, and we find that we have cocooned ourselves away from any contact with the marginalised either through physical barriers (security guards, middleclass housing areas, gated communities) or class barriers (many social events often cater to the middle-class, not the struggling poor).

If Jesus were to physically walk the earth today, where would he spend most of his time? At the seats of power and authority or at the fringes of the materialistic world, amidst the marginalised and the suffering?

That is just a hypothetical question as he has ascended. The real question is, having entrusted us with his mission to proclaim the kingdom, where do we spend most of our time now and with whom? Do we hear the cries of pain and anguish from the oppressed and the exploited, or have we sheltered ourselves in our own middle-class world or comfort zones so that their cries are at best muffled.