The Key to Understanding Luke 4:18-19: "release the oppressed."

First, a few questions.  For the children of Israel in Egypt, who was the oppressor, who were the oppressed, what was the system of oppression, what was the damage done to the oppressed?  During the time of the NT gospels, who was the oppressor, who were the oppressed, what was the system of oppression, what was the damage done to the oppressed?  In the modern U. S., (2015), who are the oppressors, who are the oppressed, what is the system of oppression, what damage is being done to the oppressed?

As Jesus was reading from Isaiah 61 (Luke 4:18-19), he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58:6 "to release the oppressed."  This idea must have been extremely important to Jesus for him to have added it to Isaiah 61.

But most white Americans are quite ignorant about oppression---biblically, historically and sociologically.  During my 89 years, I have never heard a sermon on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression.  There is almost no theological literature by white American theologians on oppression.  Most Bible dictionaries either omit oppression altogether or lightly touch it, even though there are 555 references to oppression in the OT.

"To release the oppressed" in America, white Christians and churches must first identify and then repent from what they are doing, then engage in restitution, then repair the damage oppression has done to individuals, families, communities and cultures.

Biblically, oppression not only smashes the body, but it also crushes the spirit.   Please extensively meditate on Exodus 6:9 which concisely describes the damage oppression did to the people of Israel.  I think the same damage is being done today in America.  Their spirits were so badly broken by oppression that they could not even hear or believe God when he said he would free them from slavery.  Today, we might label this mass PTSD, or cultural PTSS.  Oppression damage creates individual, family and cultural dysfunction.  Damage precedes dysfunction.

What is the biblical answer to oppression?  It is found in 4:19: "the year of the Lord's favor."  This refers to the OT Sabbath Year, the Jubilee Year when slaves were freed every seven years, when debts were canceled every seven years, when land was returned every 50 years.  How radical is your understanding of justice?  Bandaid justice will not suffice.  Only a kingdom of God justice, a liberating justice will do.  A shallow understanding of oppression leads to a shallow practice of justice; far too common in modern America.  In America, we really don't end systems of oppression, though we think we do; we merely redesign them.

Who in the Bible actually did release the oppressed?  Pharaoh finally released the Egyptian slaves, but relunctantly, after judgment, after God slayed the first-born.

Not even Jesus succeeded in releasing the oppressed in Israel.  He tried hard to convince the Jewish religio-politico-economic elite to repent---"Woe to the rich" Luke 6:24;  "Woe to the scribes and Pharisees"  Mt. 23 and Luke 11; and he cleansed the temple and called it a den of robbers.  All to no avail; they refused to repent and end the oppression.  James, in chapter 2, scorched the church for being pro-rich, pro-oppression, and anti poor.  Most of the modern American white church has repeated the James 2 church error, either sitting idly by or participating in Indian genocide, slavery, segregation, taking half of Mexico's land.  For the past 30 years doing little to stop mass incarceration.

Luke 4:18-19 guides the Spirit-filled church on how to release the oppressed by implementing Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice.  Why has the American church chosen to neglect this part of the gospel?

Nineveh, the great city, did repent; Zaccheus, the tax collector did repent and restitute.  But for the most part people, even most American Christians prefer to enjoy the fruit of ethnocentrism and oppression---superiority and wealth---so much that they refuse to repent and release the oppressed poor.

World Bank, Bread for the World, and many other NGO's are committed to ending extreme poverty by 2030.  Will the church commit itself to ending extreme oppression by 2030?

Pope Francis, the kingdom of God, and . . . .

Pope Francis, the kingdom of God, and the failure of the American church to preach and practice the kingdom of God/Jubilee justice gospel.

As he spoke to the nation, Pope Francis presented a brilliant biblical blend of the pastoral and prophetic, a call to do justice in love.  Matthew 25, one of pastor Francis' favorite biblical passages, draws a stark line between acts of love and justice, and the neglect of justice and the love of God.  One path leads to heaven; the leads to judgment.

America stands at a fork in the road.  God has spoken through Pastor Francis.  Now will all the American church speak and act much more biblically than in the past?  If not, can judgment be far away?

Insiders say that when Francis became Pope, he became a different person, a transformed person, an empowered  person.  My interpretation: the Holy Spirit anointed pastor Francis for his special mission/ministry.  Believers and non-believers alike recognize something special in Pastor Francis.

It has been great to have Francis in our nation preaching the justice gospel; also practicing, at least symbolically, the priority of taking the gospel to the poor and oppressed.  But it will be 100 times more important for every pulpit in American, every church in America, every Protestant and Catholic, to follow up Francis with a series of sermons on oppression an the OT, a series on oppression in the NT, a series on justice in the OT, a series on justice in the NT; a sermon on the relationship of the Spirit and the kingdom based on Acts 1:1-8; the combined gospel, the kingdom and Jesus, based on Acts 8:12; 28:23 & 31;  the Messianic passage from Isaiah beginning with 9:6-7; the tie between Luke 4:18-30 and Mt. 25:31ff.

Then every church will be prepared to heed Francis'admonition: "Leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets."  Or John Perkins: "Every church should start or support and Christian Community Development ministry among the oppressed poor."

According to Mt. 3:2 and Mark 1:15, a different version is found in Luke 4:18-30, Jesus began his public ministry with these important words:  "Repent, for the kingdom of God is here!" (Noble paraphrase).   In dozens of informal surveys of hundreds of persons from 1995 to 2010, I have not found a clear and compelling understanding of the kingdom of God.  Why this almost total ignorance about the kingdom in the American church?  The  American church has not repented for the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression; instead it has rationalized social evil as necessary and renamed it as something good; ethnocentrism becomes American exceptionalism, oppression becomes Manifest Destiny.  Without repentance, one cannot enter nor understand the kingdom of God.

What is biblical repentance?  It is a paradigm shift, a radical change in both attitude and action, a turning around and a going in a new direction; a turning from sin and a doing of right.  Biblical repentance must include restitution and repair of individuals, families, and communities damaged by oppression.  If repentance does does not end with doing justice, it is flawed.

Most American Christians are too self-righteous, too nationalistic to repent.  In terms of Haiti, President Clinton did repent; for the full story, read Haiti: After the Earthquake, page 150.  Clinton shipped too much food to Haiti thereby undermining Haitian  farmers, driving some rice farmers out of business.

The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice---justice that releases the oppressed and repairs the damage done.  The dynamic of the kingdom of  God is the Holy Spirit---the power, wisdom and truth needed to identify social evil and then implement Jubilee justice.

American church: repent, restitute and repair; incarnate the kingdom.

Do We Need the Justice of the New Testament Desperately?

Back in New Testament times, there was a small rich elite that ran Palestine composed of Herodians, high priests, and a lay aristocracy, one to two percent of the population.  Another 5 percent served the rich elite.  Rural peasants---small landowners, tenants, day laborers and slaves---made up around 75 percent of the Palestinian population; the majority were poor or near poor.  Things were going from bad to worse as a predatory financial/economic system was pushing farmers off their land.  Justice was broken; oppression was running wild; some of the worst oppressors were the religious rich.  For more documentation, google Matthew: A Log Cabin Publican? Good News for Sex Workers.

Rich elites seem to prosper in either dictatorships or democracies (aristocracies/plutocracies.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, brilliant Reformed philosopher/theologian, declares that English translators and theologians have "dejusticized" the English translations of the New Testament, have separated justice and love.  This also means that few English readers of the New Testament tie the kingdom of God and liberating justice together; most, therefore, neglect justice and the love of God (Mt. 6:33; Luke 11).  Therefore, they do not grasp Graham Cray' assertion: "The agenda of the kingdom of God is justice; the dynamic of the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit."

Steven Voth, a professional Bible translator (chapter 14, The Challenge of Bible Translation), documents Wolterstorff's claim that English New Testaments have been dejusticized.  Voth made a statistical comparison of different language translations of the New Testament.  The KJV NT has zero references to justice; the NIV, only 16 references to justice; whereas a typical Spanish, French or Latin translation of the NT has around 100 references to justice.

Wolterstorff says there are around 300 dik-stems in the Greek NT; the fundamental meanings of dik are just, justice or adik injustice/oppression.

In Matthew 25:31-46. the whole meaning of the passage hangs on were you just or unjust in your treatment of others; the final judgment is based on the doing of justice or the neglect of justice.  "Luke contains the same number of dik-words as Matthew (28) but the additional 25 uses in Acts make Luke the New Testament author second only to Paul (114 uses plus 25 in the pastoral letters).  In Luke-Acts, 19 of the 53 uses involve words signifying oppression/injustice."

The Christian Reformed Church's Committee to Study Restorative Justice states:

"[American] Justice is broken. . . . we need a concept of justice that corrects and restores what is broken [as a result of oppression]. . . .  Confusion sometimes occurs because the single word justice is used for both justice in the sense of being right and justice in the sense of setting right.  The Bible is concerned, for the most part, with setting right.  It does not so much describe justice as prescribe it. . . . .Paul has in mind a setting right of what is wrong.  This, of course, is God's setting right, but there is also in Scripture a call for a human setting right [a liberating justice]."

In modern day America, justice is broken and ethnocentrism and oppression are running wild.  Not only is America refusing to repent and repair over its sins, its social evil, it has renamed and rationalized them.  We have sanitized our national evils by calling them American exceptionalism, westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, Christian nation, the American Dream, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  Out of our ignorance and arrogance, we built an Arch to celebrate our sin of Indian genocide.  Lewis and Clark are celebrated as heroes, not as genocide spies

When a nation doesn't repent of its sins, it repeats them over and over again---in Hawaii, in the Philippines, in Tokyo Bay.  Could our invasion of Tokyo Bay been one of the factors that, long term, led to Pearl Harbor?  We don't repent because we reap the fruit of oppression.  The DeWolf slave trading clan said they were in it for the MONEY.  Jefferson and Jackson wanted free Indian land.  Washington and Jefferson wanted free black labor.

When faced with a choice to repent or celebrate, we celebrate our sins, our social evils; we sin and celebrate.  Seldom do our pastors pray the Daniel 9 prayer for America.  After all, a self-righteous people sees no need to repent and repair.

Ethnic History and a Theology of Reconciliation

This review essay is based on the following books:

  Miroslav Volf.  Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, 1996.  Ronald Takaki.  A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, 1993.  Stephan and Abigal Thernstorm.  America in Black and White, 1997.  Andrew Sung Park.  The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, 1993.  Andrew Sung Park.  Racial Conflict and Healing, 1996.  

Miroslav Volf  was a professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary who now teaches at Yale.  A native Croatian, he writes out of his own experience of teaching in Croatia during the civil war in former Yugoslavia.  In a time of ethnic conflict, even ethnic cleansing which is a type of genocide, we need a word of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Is such a thing possible in the midst of bitterness, hatred and violence?  Volf says YES!---that exclusion or ethnocentrism can be replaced by the embrace of reconciliation.

Sometimes people who have experienced suffering and oppression can speak a clear and powerful word that can clarify for the rest of us what an appropriate Christian response should be.  Volf does so with both personal passion and theological sophistication.  Little theology of this kind exists so Volf's contribution is welcome indeed.  In the Preface, Volf describes his dilemma:

"After I finished my lecture Professor Jurgen Moltman stood up and asked one of his typical questions, both concrete and penetrating: 'But can you embrace a cetnik?'  It was the winter of 1993.  For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called 'cetnik' had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities.  I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God embraced us in Christ.  Can I embrace a cetnik---the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? . . .

"My thought was pulled in two different directions by the blood of the innocent crying out to God and by the blood of God's Lamb offered for the guilty.  How does remain loyal to both the demand of the oppressed for justice and to the gift of forgiveness that the Crucified offered to the perpetrators?"

How can we celebrate our ethnicity without degenerating into ethnic superiority (ethnocentrism) or exclusion?  What is the relationship between our ethnic identity and our Christian identity?  Can we maintain both?  Must one be given priority?  Can I hold strong to my own ethnic heritage and still respect a different ethnic heritage?  For Volf, answers center in the cross.

The cross is an example of self-giving love, not only for all sinners but also for all enemies.  The cross involved suffering, sacrifice and pain; no cheap forgiveness or cheap reconciliation here.  We are offered the grace of God, forgiveness, reconciliation.  Can we, will we, offer the same to our enemies?  Volf says, "I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."

Exclusion or embrace?  Only through Christ can "we distance ourselves from ourselves and our cultures in order to create space for the other" person.  Does the emphasis on embrace sweep oppression under the rug?  Where does justice come in?  Whose perspective on justice?  We seem to want to define justice more by our own class and culture than by God's universal standards.  Must we struggle against injustice before a full agreement on what justice is can be agreed upon?  Must we understand oppression before we can understand justice?

The above questions are not idle speculations to Volf.  He struggles with them at length and in depth.  These are not tangential issues; they go to the heart of the Christian faith.  See the end of this article for a list of quotations from Volf.

Next, A Different Mirror by Takaki.  In my opinion, Ronald Takaki, a Japanese American, is the foremost historian of ethnicity in America today.  He has a doctorate in American history and he has been a professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for more than two decades. His first two books dealt with Afro American studies; two other books covered Asian Americans.  This book is a broad survey of ethnic history in America.

Takaki asserts that we need to know more about our ethnic past in order to prepare for our increasingly ethnic future.  In the 1990s, "one-third of the American people do not trace their ancestry their origins to Europe."  By 2056, the majority of Americans will trace their ancestry to non-European origins.  Some America scholars such as Allan Bloom. E. D. Hirsch and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., are worried about the loss of "civilized values," that we are becoming an ethnic "tower of Babel," or that we are experiencing a "disuniting of America."

Instead, Takaki sees this increasing ethnic diversity as an asset, an opportunity; a "multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history."

We could, of course, degenerate into increasing ethnic conflict as is happening in many areas of the world.  Religio-ethnic conflict has been a tragic part of too much of European history.  If Euro Americans (WASP"s) insist on maintaining their superior position, glorifying Western civilization and values and denigrating other cultures and values, then unending ethnic conflict will be our destiny also.  But if Euro Americans, and especially Euro Christians, will humble themselves and sit at the feet of an ethnic scholar such as Takaki,  repent, and then see other ethnic heritages as of equal value, then we can build a new American culture that will be much better than our often tragic past of Indian genocide and African enslavement.

Though brimming with a broad and sophisticated scholarship, Takaki writes with an easy reading prose punctuated with interesting stories, poems and songs.  The reader is caught up in the human dimension of ethnic history, not just the tragic side.  Multiculturalism can be seen as a threat or an asset.  I believe that the reader will conclude after reading this rich tapestry of American history that our future as a nation will be bright if we see our ethnic diversity as an asset.

On the negative side,one of the most important insights to be gleaned from A Different Mirror is the way the British treated the Irish and how this pattern of ethnocentrism was transplanted to America.  Before the British colonists landed on American shores, the British had conquered and colonized Ireland.  They developed an ethnocentric vocabulary of dehumanization which called the Irish savages and brutes; this type of language and attitude legitimated the acts of violence that followed, including violence and depopulation of the land so the British could settle it.  Takaki says the British colonists saw Indians as similar to the Irish; so the colonists repeated the same ethnocentrism and oppression against the Indians.  It is almost as if the brutal treatment of the Irish was a dress rehearsal for the later treatment of American Indians and African slaves.

Though I was already fairly widely read in ethnic history, I gained many new insights as I read A Different Mirror.  I highly recommend it as a must read.

Next America in Black and White by the Thernstorms.  This is a large book (545 pages of text and 124 pages of notes) crammed with historical information, social data and public policy analysis.  The historical section (from the rigid segregation Jim Crow era of the South up to 1960) is probably the best part of the book.  The third section dealing with public policy and the changing racial climate is the more debatable and controversial section.

At its best, this book approaches a masterpiece; at its worst, it become a bit of ideological propaganda, arguing against almost any and all government action to improve race/ethnic relations.  It is a tricky book to read for the average reader because the text flows easily from historical and social fact to ideological interpretation.  At times, only an expert will be able to sort out fact from ideology.  So, in one sense, this book is a must read, but, in another sense, it is a dangerous read.

Glenn Loury, an Afro American scholar, complains that on the racism issue the Therstorms miss the point when they say the worst of racism is over.  Loury asserts that the ethnocentrism problem is worse than the Thernstorms admit, and he is particularly incensed at their assertion that "black failure" is now the heart of the problem.  To read Loury's ten page review, see the November, 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Next, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin by Andrew Sung Park.  Few theologians have been close enough to oppression to feel the pain of it and thus be driven to wrestle with it theologically.  Therefore a serious discussion of oppression is missing from most theology.  Listen to the personal comments by Park, a Korean American theologian:

"Among our family members, my mother has suffered the most: patriarchal suppression and repression, the wars, and the hardship of a preacher's wife.  Her life was a series of tragedies and human anguish.  She was born in han and died in han [suffering/oppression].  She is the reason I write about han, so that fewer people might suffer as she did.

"The deep pain of human agony has been a primary concern of my theological reflection.  This issue of han has been more significant in my life than the problem of sin.  Accordingly my theological theme has been how to resolve the human suffering which wounds the heart of God."

Park see the doctrine of justice for the oppressed as important as the doctrine of justification by faith is for the sinner.  In fact, he is highly critical of a one-sided emphasis on justification by faith alone.  He sees this as overly individualistic.  Full salvation must include justice for the oppressed.  Love and justice for the oppressed must be put along side justification by faith and grace.

In his next book, Racial Conflict and Healing, Park calls for a theology of society.  Right on, but from my perspective Park could have strengthened his theological discussions by going directly to the Scriptures and doing his own analysis of oppression as well as his own analysis of what the Scriptures teach about ethnos and ethnocentrism.

Next, a few quotations from Exclusion and Embrace:

"Europe colonized and oppressed, destroyed cultures and imposed its religion . . . in the name of its own absolute religion and superior civilization."

"" . . . truth and justice are unavailable outside of the will to embrace the other [enemy].  I immediately continue to argue, however, that the embrace itself---full reconciliation---cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done."

"Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them---in God's name and with good conscience."

"[When] Christian and cultural commitments merge . . . it can transmute what is in fact a murder into an act of piety."

"What we should turn away from seems clear:  it is captivity to our own culture, coupled so often with blind self-righteousness."

" . . .the struggle against oppression must be guided by a vision of reconciliation between oppressed and oppressors, . . . "