For those of us who have experienced marginalization, are we confident that God is actively seeking the lost and rejected souls in our communities? And for those of us with social privilege, do we embody this confidence by extending love to those on the margins—the outcast, the silenced, those with no voice or vote?
Scripture has acquired a lethal familiarity in our political culture of scattering. Can we listen to its words differently together, so that the generous light of God’s creative Word might shine through them and gather us?
When Israel fights Hamas, very little is left for Mizrahim and women, but these two domestic Others of Israeli society are there as a form of resistance to the globalized lexicon of “War on Terror.” Both enable conceptualizing Gaza also in domestic terms, as another Israeli periphery.
Rather than starting from a diagnostic superficiality of her image, a seemingly inevitable lure as evidenced by the myriad books about Weil that display her photo on their cover, when we really dwell with Weil’s writing in relation to her self-fashioning, what emerges is how profoundly she sought a more engaged connection with the world.
Those experiencing rejection because of their sociopolitical identities can know that God does not condone discrimination, that God’s promises are a proclamation of reversal.
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.
The Kingdom of God – the kingdom pictured in Psalm 72 – seems a long way off, a dream growing more distant everyday as we move inexorably closer to the inauguration.
This is a salutary call to counter the provincialism of narrow focus in individual fields (Classics often falls in this trap) by expanding the scope of study beyond any single culture.
By reimagining belonging as Jesus did—focusing on relationship rather than societal status—we are called to open the doors of God’s family wide, embracing the diversity of God’s creation with love, dignity, and grace.
These books demonstrate that animal studies as a new field offers a powerful perspective for understanding the history shared with our companions in the multi-species universe.
I am interested in this sense of the ordinary, ongoing strike. This humble strike—not necessarily modest but rather close to the ground—could involve a politics of refusal and boycott, where those terms could be understood not only as negatives, but also as holding space for a new international community, and thus connecting explicitly something already connected or entangled in practice.
In inaugurating this new world through this birth, Luke shows us that God is and will not be bound by these political structures. Joseph went with Mary, but the baby was ultimately born under cover of darkness, nameless, undocumented, and outdoors.