Thomas Kleinert
Could the good bishop have said anything at all even remotely related to the gospel of Jesus Christ without offending the great leader? Clearly, at the solemnities in the magnificent cathedral, her plea for mercy was considered out of place by the perpetually aggrieved man. Will he wait for his third term to assert by executive order his right to install America’s bishops?
“It is astonishing,” James Baldwin wrote, “it is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”[1] Truthful mirror is an apt description of the living word of God, and we’re here to remember that no shouts on Truth Social will dim, let alone break, that mirror.
Cole Riley got my attention this past week when she shared her wise observations — on Instagram, of all places.
If you’re feeling a kind of bone-deep, soul-body exhaustion today, please remember that is by design. However futile resistance and goodness and beauty feel today, do not surrender your appetite for them.
She urges me to understand that the overwhelming exhaustion I feel, this deep hunger for goodness and beauty, is at least in part an intentional deprivation, and she insists that I don’t surrender this hunger by numbing it with the endless offerings of the distraction economy. “Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” she writes.[2] What I hear her say, is, Be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. Be careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape your world.
Waves of ugliness and lies can be overwhelming, and you may feel like you’re drowning. But remember: beauty and truth can overwhelm you as well, too much to fully take in — so big the waves can be, they bear you up and carry you in the power of the Spirit.
“The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork,” the psalmist declares.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth
and their words to the end of the world.
The psalmist knows what it is like when we behold more than we can say, when we run out of words to give voice to wonder and awe. And so we’re invited to watch the sun rise like a groom coming out of the honeymoon suite and taking a run around the world.
Kathleen Norris used to teach poetry in elementary schools for a few years.
Whenever I gave the kids an assignment — such as, “Write something and compare it to this or that” — they would pour out their heart and soul. I got back some incredible revelations of who these kids were and what their lives were like. Sometimes it was painful. And sometimes it was just glorious. My favorite paper was by one little girl. I have no idea what the assignment was. … It may have been to write about color or nature, I don’t know — I tended to give very open-ended assignments. Well, she wrote down, “The sky is full of blue and full of the mind of God.”
Norris thinks the girl was in fourth grade, and her family was stationed at Minot Air Force Base, “transferred fairly recently from a base in someplace like Louisiana.”[3] A little girl in awe of the North Dakota sky; a young psalmist, practicing the art of praise. Soon, I hope, she discovered, like the psalmists of old, the beauty and truth of God’s torah, divine words that revive the soul, make wise, and gladden the heart, Spirit-breathing words that are enlightening, enduring, true and righteous altogether. Words that tune our hearts to sing God’s praise and be fearless. More desirable than gold they are, sweeter than honey, and in keeping them there is great reward.
Jesus clung to that promise, and with his whole being he lived it for us and our salvation. Luke tells us Jesus was back in Nazareth where they’d known him all his life. They’d heard stories, bits and pieces about his teachings and the wondrous things he’d been doing down in Capernaum and other places by the lake. It was the Sabbath, and he was in the synagogue as was his custom. He was invited to do one of the readings and teach, and they handed him the scroll of Isaiah. And now all of the Spirit-driven movement of the opening chapters — the back and forth from Nazareth to Bethlehem, back to Nazareth and down to Jerusalem, over to the Jordan and into the wilderness and back to Galilee — all the movement slows down to this moment.
He opens the scroll.
He finds the passage he wants to read.
He begins:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
He sits down.
The eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him, Luke tells us. Everybody wants to know what he has to say. They are eager to hear his teaching. They long for a word to assure them that the ancient promise is still firm, still theirs. They hunger for a word encouraging them not to surrender their hope: that the day of release would come; that captivity and oppression would come to an end one blessed day, and God’s people would live in freedom.
And when Jesus speaks, the first word out of his mouth is “today” — not some day soon, not one fine day, but today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t merely reading, he was giving his inaugural address. This is who I am. This is what I’m about. This is my mission: Good news for the poor. Release for the captives. Sight for the blind. Freedom for the oppressed. His Sabbath talk was short because his whole life was the teaching and the fulfillment.
Jesus read his kingdom manifesto from Isaiah, but he skipped a line. What’s written in Isaiah is, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” — but Jesus didn’t read that part, and I don’t think he dropped that half-verse by accident, do you? I believe he dropped it because the good news he lives and proclaims is not about vengeance; the good news of Jesus and his church is about mercy and release, it is about our liberation from all that has kept humans from living in the fullness of God’s love.
Sometimes we say the good news of Jesus is about the forgiveness of sins, and it is — as long as we grasp the full scale of our release from our entanglement in sin’s dominion. When Jesus proclaims good news for the poor, he means the poor, and not just “poor sinners.” He looks at his disciples and says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” He says to those with the means to host big dinners, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” He tells the story of a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. And Jesus calls Zacchaeus down from his tree, and soon the chief tax collector tells him, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”[4] It’s good news for the poor, because the compassion and mercy of Christ ripple out into all our sin-distorted relationships and bring about justice until we’re all fully disentangled from sin’s dominion.
Yes, compassion and mercy and justice rule — not vengeance. So be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. And be very careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape not only your world, but the one we all share.
“Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” writes Cole Riley, and I would love to talk with her about that. I don’t want my imagination colonized by liars and peddlers of fear — I want an imagination fully formed by the beauty and truth of God, an imagination schooled in the company of Jesus and continually shaped by the same Spirit that anointed him.
God’s words instruct us to perceive the beauty and wisdom in which all parts of creation are knit together in mutual belonging. Wendell Berry writes,
We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time.[5]
No, nobody knows it all the time, but the Spirit of God who’s made her home among us knows. The Spirit that anointed Jesus will not cease to inspire and invite us to entrust ourselves to her movement.
When Jesus said, “Today” he meant that very day; and when we hear him say, “Today” he still means today. He’s addressing our hunger, our captivity, our impaired vision, our entanglement in imperial oppression, and he’s come to break our chains, open our eyes, and lead us out.
In the meantime, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our redeemer.
[1] James Baldwin https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/09/this-morning-this-evening-so-soon/658022/
[2] https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/p/DFDZn5qOFyo/?img_index=2
[3] https://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr07/norris1.html
[4] See Luke 6:20; 14:13; 16:19-31; 19:8
[5] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and The Survival of Creation,” Cross Currents, Summer 1993, Vol. 43, Issue 2.