moments vs movements

The latest Oxfam campaign update was basking in the extreme heat of my flat hallway as I arrived home from work today.

I opened the envelope and cynically began to look for the bottom line, namely 'how-much-do-they-want-from-me-now?'

It was all so different a year ago. I stood in Hyde Park at Live 8, pledging my support in the campaign to make poverty history.

And yet today my little world is finding that promise such an inconvenience.

So what's wrong? Is it just me or is this a wider thing? I'd dare to suggest it's a wider thing, because it's easier to live for the moment, to say I was there, than to take what you have encountered in that moment and run with it.

How many of the people who attended Live 8 where there simply for the satisfaction of saying 'I was there' rather than to be able to tell their grandchildren that they had responded to a call to help neighbours they have never met.

I expect at this point you are thinking I am about to launch into a rant about the selfishness and evil of the 21st century, but it's a big old internet and there are people who do that much better than me...

But I want to think about the preaching of Jesus. How he often attracted a crowd when he rolled into town. People who listened, responded to the teaching and even became professing disciples. And yet we read in John 6:60-69 that many of those who had heard Jesus firsthand decided that they'd heard one challenging teaching too many, that enough was enough and that following Him was just too hard and too great a cost.

They were prepared to follow Jesus for the moment, but not join the movement.

And I then think long and hard about those if have known over the years, who promised to join a movement and only stayed for a moment before turning their back on Him.

I pray that they'll find their way back home.

But before an attitude of smug superiority is allowed to arise, then I remember the attitude I had towards the Oxfam letter. That I have it within me to follow the easy path, to revel in saying I was there, but when in reality my attendance had no lasting impact on my lifestyle.

So I have to choose to reaffirm my promises to be part of Oxfam's charitable movement. And I choose to ask for the strength to stand committed to Jesus, echoing Peter's response of 'Lord, where else shall we go?' rather than listening to the temptation to abandon commitment to Jesus' movement and opt only for momentary involvement.