Erin Dufault-Hunter Preaches the 'Deep Reality' of Injustice

Fuller Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics Preaches on Luke 6 at All-Seminary Chapel :: 01/16/13

“I don’t know about you, but I was a little squirmy being a 21^st century upper-middle class white person reading this text,” Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics Erin Dufault-Hunter told the audience at All-Seminary Chapel on January 16.

The text was a passage from Luke 6—the famous scripture called the “Beatitudes” in which Jesus tells the disciples that the poor, hungry, and weeping are blessed.

Dufault-Hunter’s message, titled “The Bad News About the Good News,” highlighted that the “Beatitudes" in the gospel of Luke are followed by the “woes” to warn people that ignoring the poverty and sorrow of the world is to miss the kingdom of God.

But people, like herself, who live comfortable lives are often made nervous by the “Beatitudes,” Dufault-Hunter said. As a result, people try to avoid poverty, injustice, and sorrow, because they fail to see that pain is part of the gospel.

She explained that students in her college dormitory used to hang a poster on their walls with the image of a richly dressed man next to a fancy car and the words “Poverty Sucks” written underneath.

“Despite posters like this, Jesus says you have it all wrong,” Dufault-Hunter told the audience. “This is how the world is, and not because poverty is great or hunger isn’t horrible. This is how the world is because God acts in the world—God sees, he fills and satisfies—and he will make right the world.”

This is where the woes come in, she said. It’s a warning to those who are comfortable. “You have missed and you are missing the kingdom of God.”

Dufault-Hunter said that the way to live in God’s joy and blessing in the world is to take seriously that God blesses the poor. She asked the audience to examine their lives and reflect on that truth. Instead of avoiding the needs of others and avoiding the truth that humanity desperately needs God’s salvation on earth, people should live the deep reality of poverty and injustice “so that our resources, our time, our energy will be reoriented,” she said.

At the end of chapel, the audience was given a slip of paper with the first Beatitude written on it: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Dufault-Hunter asked the audience to display the message somewhere and be reminded of the good news daily.

“So that, unlike the world that will inundate all of us with messages like, ‘Poverty sucks, keep consuming something so you don’t feel the pain of the world’, instead we put up the truth,” she said. “May we all live our lives in a way that the good news is seen and proclaimed and, indeed, that the woes--the warnings—to others might be evident in our lives.”