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The Kingdom of God and Social Welfare
Luke 17:20-21; Mark 4:26-29, 30-32
Mari Ikeda
Today, I would like to pause the series on the Book of Romans one time. It’s because I have been thinking recently that I want to share with you all what I’ve been feeling at a welfare institution I work three times a week from 8 years ago. Sorry for this sudden pause, but I’d like to talk about it today. First, let’s read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17.
20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
The institution I’m working for is a shelter that provides a place to live emergently and temporarily for people who lost their homes for various reasons. We receive needy people and victims of domestic violence, all of whom are welfare recipients. As our institution is mainly for women, but also for any impoverished families, we have people of all age groups, from baby to elderly, and of different family compositions, such as single woman, single-mother family, married couple, siblings, and more.
Our job as staffs is to watch everyday life of our users and support them to rebuild their life respectively. They come to our place, take a rest physically and mentally for a while, start necessary legal procedures such as debt consolidation and divorce settlement, start to look for a new place to live at the same time, and most of them can find a new place to live by themselves and leave our place. But some of them need to move to other institutions for various problems that get exposed while they are with us, or even to be hospitalized when their mental condition gets worse. There are some tough cases for staffs, such as when people decide to go back to their abusers, or when we need to separate children from their mothers to Child Consultation Center if mother’s health condition is too bad to keep children healthy and safe.
This is my eighth year since I started this job right after I graduated from seminary and became a pastor of Your Church. While I initially started this job for a financial reason and also because I had wanted to get involved with poverty in Japan since I resigned my old job in the field of international cooperation, it now became my source of energy along with my role as a pastor. It may sound like I find joy in other people’s misfortune when I say it is my source of energy to get involved in people in difficulty, but I don’t mean that. It became my source of energy, because I have been taught from unexpected persons at unexpected times that God’s Kingdom is among them, which makes me happy.
However, I did not feel this way in the beginning. Soon after I started to work as a pastor and at the shelter, I realized that I could be no help for others more than I imagined. The bigger problem a person has, the less or nothing I can do for them. As much as when I poke my nose into someone’s trouble thinking that there is something I can do, the person doesn’t accept my help or even if they accept it, I often come only to realize that the trouble was not so light to be solved so easily. This happens partly because of the lack of my personal ability, but also I think it is caused by various reasons intertwined complexly such as limitations of people helping other people and limitations of the Japanese social security system as well as my personal limitation, which of course does not excuse us to keep seeking whether we can do anything more.
However, I have learnt that even though I may not be any help, God is at work and He sometimes lets me taste a part of His fruits. I learnt this through a person who was a user of our shelter, and now I would like to share her story with you. Here I call her by pseudonym as“Ai-san.” (For protection of personal information, I changed some contents of her story.)
Ai-san was a woman in her twenties. She was abused by her parents, wanted to escape, met a guy on SNS and married with him, but was abused again by the husband, which deteriorated her depression and made her decide to leave home. Initially when she came to our place, she was actively working for her divorce, but gradually became weak, and one day lost her voice and even her sense of who she was. I came to know afterwards that she was in the state of “disassociation” which happens when people experience a great mental stress, but I was really shocked as I did not know what was happening to her at that time. She was skinny from the beginning but became even skinnier, and was sitting on the floor in her dark and closed room with no expression on her face. She was emergently put into a mental hospital.
After a while, she became stable and came back, but I was still worried first because she still had no expression and no voice. But gradually she recovered and restored her voice, and finally I was able to talk with her face to face. Both of us were happy to see each other well, and I still remember her smile she showed at that time.
Although her difficult circumstances had not changed yet with no trouble resolved with both her parents and her husband, the smile she showed in the midst was so beautiful that I was encouraged. I guess I was greatly relieved and moved by seeing that someone who had lost any expression could smile like that again. It was the power that Ai-san had from the beginning and the result of medical support, but I thought it was the work of God at the same time. While I could barely do anything for her, God knew and loved her much more than I did, and it was God Himself who wanted her recovery more than anyone else. God taught this to me through Ai-san’s smile.
Jesus once said in the Gospel of Mark,
26 “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
Here it is said that the kingdom of God is NOT for us to get busy tilling its soil, watering it and fertilizing for its growth. We don’t know how the seed sprouts and grows. The seed grows on its own; the soil produces grain all by itself. Night and day, the sower only sleeps or gets up. He may seem to us irresponsible and lazy, but Jesus says it is alright. The kingdom of God sprouts and grows somewhere we don’t know, and we don’t know why it was able to grow there. We just are amazed and rejoice to see its sprout in an unexpected place and its grain or fruit produced while we are unaware. It is all by the work of God, which we only take a small part of.
Looking back about Ai-san now, I can see while we were upset and afraid that she as a seed might die, God knew the power she had and believed that she would surely sprout. Reflecting it now, I think we may need to understand that she felt safe to collapse finally, as she was finally released from the tension she had always felt under her parents and husband, after she fled to us and was able to have a safe place to sleep and a time for herself. Although having a state of disassociation and being hospitalized was not something both she and we expected to happen, to God’s eyes it might be a necessary rest and treatment for her. That’s how God restored her smile and voice to her who had lost any expression and voice once. I felt that I saw God’s smile in her smile, and that God told me, “It’s alright, she is in my care.” The kingdom of God has indeed come there.
Not only Ai-san, but all people who come to our shelter have some form of experience that they were deeply hurt by others, but I believe that to recover from that state is done by the power each of them has from the beginning and by the work of God, while there is almost nothing or very little that we can do for them. Yet, God teaches us He is there among them at an unexpected time. Such time comes in events that seem too simple at first glance.
At the same time, not just when someone recovers, I think it is also by the work of God when someone opens their heart to confess their grief deep within their heart. It is such time as when people confess that it was too hard, and when they throw their grief to us as if they are just talking to themselves. We literally can only listen to them. However, I believe God pushed their backs softly to open up, because anyone needs a great courage to speak about his or her deepest trouble to others, and once they do, it means they are trying to recover by themselves unconsciously. Although I feel frustrated that I could be no help for concrete resolution of their problems, and sometimes cannot help but wonder why this world is so full of people’s sufferings, I realize again and again that’s why Jesus came to be hanged on the cross.
There is another parable in the Gospel of Mark following to what we read earlier.
30 “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”
We may often hear such saying as faith like a mustard seed, but what is described as a mustard seed in this parable is not our faith, but the kingdom of God itself. It means, Jesus is saying that even the kingdom of God, namely even the work of God, is small like a mustard seed at first.
The event that a sinner was sentenced to crucifixion and died in Jerusalem 2000 years ago is just a minor event in the whole history of mankind, just like a grain of sand in a desert. It means nothing if we think it’s not our concern. However, it is from there that God started to change this world. Through that event, He teaches us that we are so valuable to Him that He sacrificed His own life, and that He wants us to teach each other about it.
When someone who lost their smile smiles again, when someone who forgot their own value allows themselves to take a good care of themselves, when someone gains a courage to let their grief out from their heart, all these are the small seeds of God’s kingdom. I believe there are many seeds like them not only in special circumstances but in our everyday life. Even if they seem too small at first and we don’t know how they would grow, God is able to make them grow big. What we can do is only to keep spreading the seeds patiently and indiscriminately, hoping and looking forward what God would do and show us somewhere someday. Let us keep our hope in what God would do, and keep sowing the seeds in each place where we are. Although the kingdom of God may not appear in a way that anyone can observe, it has surely come in us, among us, and just near us.
(Prayer) Dear Lord Jesus, please forgive us and heal us as we hurt each other in each other’s sin. Transform us so that we can grow as someone who is loved by You. Although we are small, You have desired to change this world through such small ones as us. Please help us not to be disappointed at how small our love is and how little we can do, but help us to keep our hope in what You would do. May we show through our actions to our family members, friends and colleagues that each of them is valuable to You and loved by You. Our Lord Jesus, I pray this in Your name, Amen.
Summary
I work three days a week at a shelter that was established by the Public Assistance Act. It is a facility that provides housing for people who have lost their home to various different circumstances including illness and domestic violence. Through this experience, I’ve realized my own lack of power and the limitations of people helping other people, of the Japanese social security system, and what people can actually do for people in need. Even so, God makes his presence known and reminds me, “I am here” in unexpected ways. I find God in the smiles of those who have been unable to smile for a time and in the ability of people to open up and share their struggles. These are small but sure signs of God’s love. It is where we find the seeds of the kingdom of God.
For Discussion
What does the “kingdom of God” mean to you? When do you sense the kingdom of God?