Taking the Side of the Victims

Luke 4:14-21

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

January 24, 2016

Wait! I thought God loved everyone, that Jesus came for everyone! But in today’s gospel, he says he was sent to the poor, the prisoners, the blind and oppressed. Really? What about everybody else -- the rest of us who, relatively speaking, aren’t poor, or in prison, or blind, or oppressed? What about us?

The problem parallels this past year’s arguments over the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Opponents of that movement have insisted that all lives matter, not just black lives. Why the focus on black lives to the exclusion of everyone else?

Of course, that’s not what the movement is saying. Rather, it’s calling out the fact that in our present world and culture, black lives don’t matter, at least not as much as white ones do. When the day comes that black lives really do matter, then we'll be able to truly say that all lives matter.

As one African-American pastor put it: “When you see a house on fire and direct the firefighters to that house, you’re not saying that all the other houses in the neighborhood don’t matter; you’re saying this one especially matters because it’s on fire. Right now,” he says, “our house [the house of African Americans] is on fire.”

Jesus is doing something similar. He has just been baptized by John the Baptist and spent a long retreat in the wilderness. Filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, he’s ready to begin his ministry. He returns to his hometown synagogue for his inaugural address. They hand him the Book of the prophet Isaiah. Out of the tens of thousands of words in that book, he deliberately selects the ones we just heard, focusing his entire new ministry on the poor and the imprisoned, the blind and the oppressed --  the people the world overlooks, doesn’t want, discards.

In other words, Jesus takes the side of the victims. He is like the mother who loves all her children -- of course! -- but runs to defend her younger one when her older one is picking on him. Today, Jesus takes the side of the exploited immigrant worker receiving less than the minimum wage, but also takes the side of his wife if he should return home and abuse her.

Whoever takes advantage of the vulnerable will answer to God for it. To announce the good news of God’s reign today is to say that God comes to offer all of us a new way to live: as brothers and sisters in a new creation. 

As one central American poet put it, “A religion that doesn’t have the courage to speak out for human beings doesn’t have the right to speak out for God.” That is the price of credible ministry today.

And this is the work Jesus today, ministering through the only body he now has, what Paul calls the Body of Christ. And on this day of our annual meeting, Paul reminds us that we are each members of that Body, each with our own unique role. Many years after Paul wrote those words, St. Therese echoed them, and I’ll close with her familiar words:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.