great light
During the Dust Bowl era in these United States, “officers eyeballed passengers on California-bound trains, looking for hints of poverty…If the riders looked shabby? The police stopped them from entering the Golden State. This country has long argued over who should be allowed in. It still does.” Hailey Branson-Potts
The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.
Darkness, when it descends, makes people feel so hopeless.
Oppressed people feel hopeless.
Oppressed people need a great light.
Years ago, a group of men read these words:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
When the question was posed, “Who are the poor”,
the men hemmed and hawed.
They knew that they were not poor;
neither were they rich. They finally
identified themselves as middle class.
“There is no middle class in the Bible,” their leader sagely said.
The Bible sheds light on our delusions.
One might posit that anyone living in this country is rich.
One might argue that no one living here experiences the famine
or lack of resources of the third world.
One might think that. One would be wrong.
Jesus came for oppressed people.
People living under the tyranny of the government of Rome.
People suffering from diseases that made them untouchable.
People subject to intense hunger and thirst.
We think we are oppressed when our taxes go up
when, in fact, the poor among us don’t even make enough to pay taxes.
We think we are oppressed when our portfolio drops in value
when, in fact, the poor among us have no portfolio nor a safety net of any kind.
We think we’re oppressed when we don’t get the job we want
or get into the school that was our top pick
when, in fact, there are people for whom every door of opportunity
is closed because of their gender, the color of their skin
or the language they do or do not speak.
I’m a woman. My head has hit the glass ceiling.
I have sipped oppression.
But I am not the oppressed.
There are people in this country now, who work hard
at menial jobs, pay their taxes, learn English,
provide for large extended families for years and years,
only to learn that all their efforts have not kept them off
the list of the hunted. All this because some who are fat
and self-satisfied have decided that we ourselves are oppressed.
What would Jesus think?
What would Jesus say?
What would Jesus do?
Would he not say to those oppressors
who consider themselves oppressed,
“not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter
the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”
And his apostle James said, “Religion that God our Father accepts
as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their
distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
To keep oneself from being polluted by corrupt politicians and judges,
To keep oneself from being polluted by our stock portfolios
To keep oneself from being polluted by silo-ing social media
To keep oneself from being polluted by self-interest in all its forms.
If we would just come to grips with this truth:
we are the rich. And only as we care for the least of these
our brothers and sisters, the black and the brown ones,
the aliens and sojourners, the widows and orphans,
only then will we know the kingdom of God,
then we will see the train of the angel procession,
merging with the great and dazzling light.
Liz McFadzean
“Middle-class median Americans are the richest people at any time and place in all of human history…yet we’re pretty impoverished spiritually and communally.” Ben Sasse
