One year ago: Bono at the NPB

It's a good day to remember the speech Bono gave before the National Prayer Breakfast. It was on February 2, 2006 that Bono spoke before the president and a host of dignitaries. Here are some experts.

… in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British Christians went and ruined my shtick—my reproachfulness.  They did it by describing the Millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world’s poorest people.  They had the audacity to renew the Lord’s call—and were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic’s point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almighty.

‘Jubilee’—why ‘Jubilee’? What was this year of Jubilee, this year of our Lords favor?
I’d always read the Scriptures, even the obscure stuff.  There it was in Leviticus (25:35)…
‘If your brother becomes poor,’ the Scriptures say, ‘and cannot maintain himself… you shall maintain him…  You shall not lend him your money at interest, not give him your food for profit.’ 

It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. Jesus is a young man, he’s met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people are talking.  The elders say, he’s a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn’t done much… yet.  He hasn’t spoken in public before…

When he does, is first words are from Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,’ he says, ‘because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.’  And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour, the year of Jubilee.  (Luke 4:18) What he was really talking about was an era of grace—and we’re still in it.

------------------------------------------------

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.  “If you remove the yolk from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places”

------------------------------------------------

From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come.  There is much more to do.  There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.

And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it?  It’s about justice. 

Let me repeat that:  It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store.   This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

------------------------------------------------

...This wise man said: stop. He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.

Well, God, as I said, is with the poor.  That, I believe, is what God is doing. And that is what He’s calling us to do.

See an excerpt of the speech from ABC News here. Read the whole speech here.

Comments

[Greg M. Johnson]

Your typo is no yoke!

[Tim]

Thanks Greg. That one took awhile to find! I usually write these posts late at night and never mind a corrective. You're right, it's somewhat of a prophetic typo. I think I'll leeve it!
Tim

[Linda]

A powerful/prophetic speech!

[kent burgess]

Tim, you must have a different crowd coming by your blog than I. Sometime last fall I put a link on my blog to this speech and got accused of preaching the gospel of Bono and that of a socialist. I'm still stunned when folks in the church react like that when you express a concern for the poor or the oppressed. It leaves me scratching my head.

Thanks for the reminder of this speech.

Kent