A Fresh Perspective - 12/19/08
In Luke's Gospel Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." For Luke this was Jesus' job description.
"The year of the Lord's favor" points to the year of Jubilee. To prevent the oppression of the poor, special legislation was built into Israel's law so that every Sabbatical year the land was given a vacation, debts were erased, and slaves (indentured servants) were set free. On the year of Jubilee (every 49th year) there was an even greater shake up: land reverted back to the original owners. Jesus is saying that God's reign—which he proclaimed, embodied, and manifested—is about redistributing natural and human resources, lifting the impoverished out of poverty and oppression, and celebrating God's deliverance.
This is God's justice and in the Isaiah text from which Jesus read, the prophet says: "I, the Lord, love justice" (Isa. 61:8). Jesus says in Luke 4 that he was anointed and sent by God to preach good news to the poor and set the oppressed free.
The gospel of Jesus is not just about a social ethic, it "is" a social ethic. How is it then, since Jesus' central message and ministry was about justice, that so many Christians stand in the way of justice, either by direct opposition or by doing nothing, thus becoming complicit in domination systems that oppress?
It took Southern Baptists an entire century to finally repent of their participation in and support of slavery. Why is it that still today so many Christians oppose basic civil rights for homosexual couples? Why is it that so many Christians oppose women who are called and gifted to pastor from fulfilling their pastoral calling? Why is it that so many oppose legislation that would lessen the disparity between the very wealthy and the poor?
God raised Jesus from the dead and overcame death, but we distort the gospel of Jesus when we morph his message of justice into a message about the afterlife. Jesus was all about God's kingdom (God's reign, God's new world) coming on earth.
Read the Gospel of Luke this Christmas season and let the radical prophet, sage, and Messiah of Nazareth challenge your faith and ignite hope for a new world.