But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth– everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
– Isaiah 43:1–7 (NRSVUE)
As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
– Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 (NRSVUE)
Oppression overwhelms. Its incessant dehumanizing and dishonoring practices work together to undermine human dignity and quench the spark of hope that dreams of otherwise possibilities. Surviving and overcoming oppression require what Mother Ruby Sales has coined “spiritual genius.” This genius represents a determined refusal to surrender one’s value and worth to the deformed imagination of the oppressor.
Sales describes this genius as conscience-making work, where the fundamental narratives that make life meaningful affirm self-love without requiring hatred of others. For Sales, spiritual genius requires intimacy with the Creator and the ability to never let hate take root in the heart.
Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is on the 15th, said in his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, “The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of [their] intellect, [their] racial origin or [their] social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God.” The ultimate problem with oppression is its intention to profane – to render the oppressed beyond divine relationality – to violently desacralize the human subject.
Isaiah and Luke, too, knew something of oppression and spiritual genius. Their texts provide helpful insights for communities today by narrating relational configurations and reexaminations that challenge oppressive power and unearth the transformative power of beloved community.
Isaiah opens with a grand divine power claim by naming God as Israel’s creator. This primary parental relationship affirms the nature of Israel’s covenant with God and its spiritual, political, and social ramifications. Even though Israel’s lived experience of captivity and oppression challenges God’s faithfulness and their understanding of chosenness, the text refuses to surrender their God-given dignity to the weight of their oppression. The text’s spiritual genius rehearses a communal consciousness that transcends the harsh realities of Babylonian captivity. Israel’s relentless oppression, desecration, and degradation are neither their origin nor their final destination. By affirming Israel’s connection to the Holy One, Isaiah points to a power that even the most oppressive earthly forces cannot overcome.
The Holy One accompanies Israel through the waters, hearkening back to their ancestors’ passage across the Sea of Reeds. The Holy One walks with them through the fires, acknowledging their recent experience of the Temple’s destruction by the Babylonian captain, Nebuzaradan (2 Kings 25:8-9). Power in this text belongs to God, their parent, and is wielded on behalf of and for the sake of God’s children near and far.
Even as the circumstances are terrifying (v5), God’s powerful presence and unquestionable commitment confirm their survival, their offspring, and everyone called by the Holy One’s name (v7). God’s power to save Israel manifests in God’s willingness to barter, exchange, and demand to reconstitute, as a singular whole, all those created for God’s glory. In this passage, God recognizes the dire situation of God’s people and intervenes as companion, ransomer, and commander.
Isaiah’s spiritual genius discerned and imagined a God whose presence and agency rebuild the necessary components of communal flourishing. Such bold claims might appear hyperbolic on the surface, but dismissing them as such misses a profound gift of faith they offer – the promise of a God is with those who suffer. God’s children must believe that God can and will find and protect them and help them thrive. Faith invites a mindful trust in God’s ultimate vision for human flourishing as a sign of God’s glory. Oppression is neither a testimony of God’s absence nor a confirmation of worthlessness. Isaiah reminds the people that they are related to God and each other and that their future is one of flourishing because God’s justice will prevail.
In Luke, John the Baptist has built a following by preaching a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins. Initially, this does not present as a passage about oppression, but when taken in the context of the chapter, it is clear that John’s preaching recognizes how the community’s oppression impacted their relations with each other. In particular, those who held positions sanctioned by Herod, the Roman-appointed King of Judea, exploited community members for personal gain.
The lectionary does not include content from John’s sermons (vs. 7-14), which address the people’s collective misreading of their familial relationship to God as descendants of Abram. John’s message of repentance is a nod to the people’s need for communion with God and each other and recognizes how oppression undermines their collective flourishing. For Luke’s John, to be in the family of God is best symbolized by a commitment to communal relations that favor those in need (vs. 11) and refuse to extend oppression forward (vs. 12-14).
John’s message of repentance appealed so widely and was received so broadly that people were convinced he could be the messiah – an ultimate expression of God’s incarnation. His bold and open speech against the Roman government helped fuel the idea that he could be the one to restore the kingdom of Israel and would ultimately cost him his life (Luke 3:20 and 9:7).
Luke’s John preaches a message of communal solidarity and care. The work of justice begins with one’s most intimate relations and branches outward. It begins by recognizing one’s connection to the Divine and how that connection should inform one’s connection with others.
Spiritual genius appears in John the Baptist’s message that hurt people should not hurt each other. Luke’s John invites those coming into the wilderness to journey together, to attend to each other’s needs, and to use their resources to support one another – to be familial in ways that are affirming and transformative. Even Jesus receives John’s message and baptism. Like Isaiah, John affirms God’s incarnational presence as a force that will fill the community with Spirit and fire and whose commitment to justice and righteousness will prevail.
Jesus’ participation in baptism affirms John’s message of communal re-examination and justice-making and God’s interest in familial connection. God says, this is my beloved son. Jesus is a beloved son whose own baptism marks an interest in communal relations where people’s needs are met and they are not exploited by each other.
The spiritual genius across these texts testifies to a God who works intimately in and through communal relations as a creator-parent, affirmed child, baptizing cousin, and caring neighbor. John’s message affirms repentance as a way to make things right with God by making them right with the people around you.
Oppressed people, by seeing themselves as members of God’s family, do not have to extend oppressive practices forward. Audre Lorde suggested that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” And the master’s tools certainly won’t prevent the oppressed from seeing themselves and those who suffer with them as divine siblings. King recognized this too when he warned:
“In our individual lives we all too often distill our frustrations into an essence of bitterness, or drown ourselves in the deep waters of self-pity, or adopt a fatalistic philosophy that whatever happens must happen and all events are determined by necessity. These reactions poison the soul and scar the personality, always harming the person who harbors them more than anyone else” (47).
Like Isaiah and John before him, King recognized that an oppressed person’s social and political condition can lead to self-destructive despair. When Isaiah reminds fractured Israelites of God’s promise to bring them together, and when John calls people into a baptism born of renewed commitment to community, they work against the soul’s poisoning. The gift of faith, if it is anything, should enable oppressed people to see in themselves the divine spark that refuses the totalizing subjection oppression intends.
Today, we must discern how modern deployments of oppressive power impede human flourishing. In over a week, America will perform a civil liturgy of its democratic power. Much of what we witness from the president-elect gives pause about how he will use his power oppressively. The president-elect has been a voice crying out false claims in the wilderness of social media. His desire for retribution and promises to punish do little to assure oppressed citizens of strengthened communities – even as many conservative Christians see his election is a divine blessing.
That the American people have made this choice testifies to a collective conscience that misapprehends justice as revenge and domination rather than a community transformed by radical kinship and love. Isaiah, John, King, Mother Ruby, and so many others imagine another way.
The grace revealed in these texts testifies to an inclusive transformative power born through communities of care and concern. God, through transformed people, makes provisions for the community’s welfare and well-being when they need it most and sometimes when they least expect it. The gift of divine power is that it descends into a lowly estate (Luke 1:48) for the sake of bringing people to their collective best –a way to live that subverts greed, champions forgiveness, and, as King noted, achieves the most challenging thing of all: loving one’s enemies.
At best, a community’s accumulated power lies not just in its ability to tear others down but in a desire to use Grace-given resources to affirm what oppression never can – that all are worthy of love, care, life, and dignity.
To create a human environment of trust and care, we must first focus on our relationships. It’s important to remember that we can be both the oppressed and the oppressor. Human relations are not a one-way street where systems or the collective manipulate people for their gain. Each individual must take personal accountability for their interactions, shaping the dynamics of their relationships.
Therefore, as we begin the new year, we must use this opportunity to transform our relationships into communities of care, humanization, and empowerment. It’s not just a collective effort, but a personal responsibility that each of us must take on.
Guillermo, Yes! That’s what’s remarkable about John’s message. He calls the people to repentance grounded in justice-making in their most intimate and proximal connections. By doing so, John affirms their power to create a community that resists the Roman Empire and its openness to exploitation. John’s baptism and orientation toward justice precedes Jesus’ ministry and establishes the context in which Jesus’ ministry is affirmed as divine.