When, despite Scripture, unscrupulous officials continue to “oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan” and “thrust aside the alien,” and a plurality of white, evangelical Christian voters endorse this behavior, how might other believers keep up faith and hope in a Gospel order that upholds justice?
Kings and rulers often justify themselves through their pedigrees. Jeremiah’s political hope, however, does not rest on elite politics. It rests on a policy of righteousness for all.
Even in the midst of an empire that crucifies the innocent for political gain, despair is not warranted. Instead, there is work to be done.
As we ask what it means to love in the face of such loss, Hannah appears with her tears, words, and song to teach us lessons about loss and love. Hannah reminds us to think twice (or thrice) before speaking too soon.
This widow of Mark 12 is the same widow of Psalm 146 and the same widow of the Torah that God promises to uphold, protect, and do justice for. We are called to do the same.
My hope this All Saints Sunday is that we would fully and faithfully engage in the realities of life and death, so that those who have gone before us will continue to inspire us to work towards love for those around us in the land of the living.
Many foundational myths of community formation and development situate “after the storm” as the moment when positive change began to happen for them as a people… Isaiah 53:4-12 can be understood as an act of collective storytelling to imagine life “after the storm.”
If we put Amos’ critique in more contemporary language, the “trampling” and “levies of grain” decried in 5:11 are the twin burdens of rents and fees, which often led to cycles of impoverishment and debt slavery. The lifestyles of the rich are financed by extracting from the poor.
God provides a reminder: whatever reforms might take place in the formal leadership structure, God is going to keep favouring those outside that structure. The centre might expand, but God’s preference for the margin is not going away.
To undertake the reformation of desires is a calling, with no guarantees of success, but some promise of God’s grace along the way.