Love, Justice, & Good News
Luke 4:14-21 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Last week, I had the good fortune to take my son to Washington, DC to visit a friend of his. We were able to do some sightseeing as well, visiting the Library of Congress, walking down Capitol Hill, making stops at various Smithsonian Museums, past the Washington Monument and the war memorials, and eventually ending up at the Lincoln Memorial. Out of all the monuments, the Lincoln Memorial is still my favorite. Not only is the building itself impressive, but the words of Lincoln, etched into marble on both sides of the monument, abide as some of the loftiest expressions of American ideals, ideals we still struggle to live up to. On one side is the Gettysburg Address, and on the other, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1865, about a month before the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination.
In March of 1865, approximately 620,000 soldiers were dead as a result of this four-year conflict. We rightly believe now that the Civil War was fought over slavery, but it was a religious war of sorts as well. After all, both sides, Lincoln noted, read the same Bible and prayed to the same God, and each invoked God’s aid against the other. In fact, there was a voluminous and vigorous defense of American slavery put forth by southern Christian preachers, theologians, priests, and bishops. Many Americans firmly believed that God accepted the system of American slavery and that it was an institution supported by God’s natural order and by God’s inspired word, the Bible.
Though many at the time knew that these interpretations of the Bible were ignorant, misinformed, and just plain wrong, time has continued to throw more and more light on the fact that the Bible can easily be misused, misapplied, and misappropriated for nefarious purposes. Readings of the Bible have been used to support slavery and have been used to hurt and injure groups of people for decades since.
Religious texts can be tricky things. The Bible doesn’t just say one thing but says many things, since it is really a library of religious texts, gathering many, many books of various genres written over a thousand years by different authors, with different purposes, different cultures, and different circumstances that spurred on their writings. There is an art and science to biblical interpretation, and it can be fascinating and complicated, as I’ve learned in my own spiritual, academic, and professional life for the past 40 years.
But at the heart of the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, beats one way of interpretation that has stood the test of time. There is one way of interpreting the Bible that is always right. Even though humans will attempt to use the Bible for their own sinful and selfish purposes, there is one shining light that comes through the Scriptures, one light that is undeniable in its power to inspire goodness, truth, and the liberation of the oppressed. That light is simply the light of Love; the power of Love; a Love that stands above all things, and through all things, and exists for all the people of the world. If you center your interpretation of the Bible on love, you will never go astray.
This is the approach that countless interpreters of the Bible have brought to bear on the Scriptures, and the passage from Luke’s Gospel today is no different. As Jesus stands up in the synagogue to read, he finds the place in the prophet Isaiah in which good news is proclaimed, and he proclaims it. And what Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah is a straightforward message. It’s not complicated. It couldn’t be plainer or simpler: the job of God’s people is to love through creating a more just society. It is to bring good news to the poor, to bring release to the captives, to bring sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Sometimes we imagine that the gospel, or the good news, that Jesus proclaimed was about going to heaven when we die. But the words “eternal life” that we associate with many passages in the Gospel mean something more like “overflowing life” or “abundant life” or “excessive life.” Jesus’s message, I believe, does offer hope for resurrection, but Jesus also teaches that this overflowing life begins NOW, not after we die, and that it’s not just for ME, but it’s for US. This is what the Lord’s Prayer really means when it says that God’s will should be done ON EARTH as it is in HEAVEN. Don’t worry about going up to Heaven when you die; worry about bringing Heaven here to earth, NOW. When we do so, it is called justice and it looks like what Isaiah describes here.
We might even say that God’s justice, that the Kingdom of God, equals love plus action. And in fact, the most important way for anyone to interpret the Bible is not just by saying things about it, but by living out its principles in loving action toward one’s fellow human beings.
Sometimes loving action toward one’s fellow human beings is difficult. Sometimes it involves confessing our sin, our failure to live up to God’s ideals of love in action. Sometimes it involves difficult discussions, difficult conversations that some of us would rather not have.
One of the best books I read last year was this one, by the writer Austin Channing Brown. It’s called I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Ms. Brown writes about her experience as a black woman in middle-class white America. She writes about her experiences as one of the only black students in a majority white private school. She writes about what it is like to work in the corporate world as a black woman. She writes about the good intentions of those in the nonprofits for which she worked who still found ways of demeaning her humanity in spite of those good intentions. She writes poignantly, beautifully, and heartbreakingly about the injustice that lands her cousin Dalin in prison, a prison in which he dies. She writes a letter to her unborn son and expresses her hopes and fears for his black body, his black self, in a white world.
Ms. Brown has not experienced a great deal of love expressed as action in her lifetime. She has heard a great deal about love from her fellow Christians, but mainly she has heard only words. Love in words alone evades responsibility, accountability, and solidarity. Love expressed as action is justice; it is liberty for the captives, it is release for the prisoners. Love, Brown writes, must be “troubled by injustice.” It must be “provoked to anger when Black folks, including our children, lie dead in the streets.” It must be “no longer concerned with tone because it is concerned with life.” It must have “no tolerance for hate, no excuses for racist decisions, no contentment in the status quo.” She concludes by calling for a love that “is fierce in its resilience and sacrifice,” because this is the kind of love that “chooses justice.”
I truly believe that this is exactly what Jesus means when he gets up in the synagogue and quotes Isaiah 61. He means that to walk in the way of Love is to bring good news to the oppressed and to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners; to proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. He means just what he says; to walk in the way of Love is to envision and act upon ways of bringing God’s reign of peace, justice, and equality to earth. NOW.
Maybe at this point in this sermon, if you’re still with me, you’re thinking that this is a challenging message. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s an overwhelming message. Maybe you’re thinking that it is an uncomfortable message. My God, I hope so. I think that Jesus intended to remind his own audience, and continues to remind us today through the Scriptures, that justice does not just show up; justice does not just arrive; justice only comes when the people in power are uncomfortable.
And it is overwhelming, too, to consider the scale of injustices in our society and believe that, you, as a young person, can act in ways to change them. But you most definitely can. This season of Lent reminds us, every year, to look inside ourselves, to look at our own actions, and consider how they influence those around us. If we treat others with unkindness; if we speak harsh words; if we talk about people behind their back; if we make jokes around people that are offensive or insensitive--and these things apply to all of us--then we are moving away from justice because we are moving away from love.
The fierce love that causes us to act in the world for the benefit of God’s kingdom, which means for the benefit of others, especially the least among us: this is our call to action this Lent. May it be so in your life. May it be so in my life. May it be so in the life of our school, that it might pour out into the cities, towns, parishes, states, and nations around us. AMEN.