I can't believe I did a peace sign on TV - like Ringo Starr!
That is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged.
Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others.
Philadelphia caught my attention in 1995 when a group of homeless families were living in an abandoned cathedral. Even from the beginning they connected theology with what they were doing. They put a banner on the front of the cathedral that said, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday. "
We don't actually have rich and poor together instead we have a family. What does it mean? If you have resources, you hold them with open hands. The mark of the early church was that they began sharing and it said there were no needy persons among them. They ended poverty as they created this new loving community.
We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.
The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.
I would have gone right ahead but the only thing, the only phenomenon that's going on now of course, which is different in my experiences, is that you are getting things planted in the Net by people about the Woman in White on the Net. That's not a nice change.
He who would really benefit mankind must reach them through their work.
Microfinance is an idea whose time has come.
. . . and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.