Ownership and Justice: Rich People are Idiots, unless. . . .

I will build my comments upon Luke 4:18-19.  Here I find four crucial concepts: the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and justice, Jubilee justice.  Most of 4:18-19 is from Isaiah 61, but the phrase "to release the oppressed" is from Isaiah 58:6.  In chapter 58, Isaiah condemned an apparently deeply religious people who worshiped, fasted and prayed, but these same people also exploited their workers and exploited their poor.  Isaiah called upon these hypocrites to stop their oppression and do justice.

When Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, the synagogue congregation was amazed as Jesus said, "Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in you hearing."  Or my paraphrase, "Today, I begin my ministry of incarnating the kingdom of God here on earth with a special focus on justice for the oppressed poor."

Biblically, the primary, but not the only, cause of poverty is oppression.  According to Thomas Hanks, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms in the Old Testament, and often one will find poverty in the context.  So a biblical ministry among the poor must deal with oppression.  Oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslave and/or kills persons created in the image of God.

If oppression is a central biblical concept, then we must identify the oppressor before we can do justice. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus identifies the oppressors in Luke 6:24 and in a host of other references: 1:53; 3:10-14; 8:14; 11:39-42; 16:13-14; 18:22-24; 19:45-46; 19:8.  Luke powerfully and concisely summarizes these teachings about the rich and poor in this statement: "Woe to the rich!"  The worst oppressors in Palestine were not the Romans; instead the worst oppressors were the local religio-politico-economic elite who ran the sacred Temple and had turned it into "a den of robbers." or a system of oppression.  There was so much gold in the temple when the Romans destroyed and looted it and then began to circulating it, that the price of gold dropped by one-half in nearby Syria.

Who are the greedy oppressors?  They are idiots who hoard wealth.  The Greek phrase "ta idia" means 'one's own."  Having enough to be self-sufficient in terms of the necessities of life is fine, but piling up more and more of "one's own,"  becoming rich, is idiocy.  Are you an idiot?