To heal and mend the world..........

We are knee deep in politics here in America as a dozen men and women press their agendas as potential candidates for the office of President.

What we get to hear is each potential 'next president'  candidate's vision for America.  Their political agenda, and if they are doing it right, their 'call to arms' to the voting public to join them in making America great.

Jesus had an agenda too, and we get to hear it in the 4th chapter of Luke when he quotes from the prophet Isaiah 60.
   

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor,

 release to the captives, sight to the blind

 and freedom to the oppressed.  

To announce the year of the Lord's favor.'

Jesus is talking about turning this world upside down, inside out.....and in the end....upside right.  Jesus is setting out to heal and mend the world.

It's what we've all dreamed of......a world of mutuality, of peace, of fellowship.....a place where the world sings in 'perfect harmony.'  We have a dream; Jesus has a mission.

The healing of the nations is God's great design and desire for this creation.  So through the Son, God acts in this world....in our world....to heal and mend the nations.

And it will start with those who have found themselves at the bottom of the pile:  those imprisoned by ruling authority gone mad, those whose bodies have been broken from the very beginning and whose lives have always been a struggle, and those who are pressed down by the structures humans have created.  But it will not stop there.

Jesus will stand in the midst of all who are held captive by the demons of drugs or mental illness; all those whose spirits have been broken by the brokenness of another; all those who are blind to the truth and those unable to see any possibility beyond today.  Jesus will stand with those oppressed by poverty and those oppressed by others.  Jesus will stand with those who have been wrongly imprisoned and those who are defined by the crimes that put them in prison in the first place.

Jesus will also stand right next to the one who does the oppressing, is guilty of blinding a neighbor, has broken the spirit of another human being.

Jesus will stand right in the midst of the gang wars and abusive homes, the killing fields and depraved indifference.....so that God might be at work in him....healing and mending the world.  Both the do-ers and the receivers.  Nothing less will accomplish God's plan: the whole creation singing in perfect harmony.

For us it is no more than a dream.  For God, it is the future that comes to us in Jesus and at the same time is waiting for us.  Jesus is that tomorrow; Jesus leads us to that tomorrow.  Thanks be to God.

Blessed are those who mourn.........

.......for they will be comforted.  Matthew 5.4

Now, that's a promise.  When you are sitting in the darkness of grief, knowing for certain that comfort is coming may be hard to believe, but it is at least something to hold on to. God's comfort in the face of our grief as a very real blessing.

But there is more.  Jesus is not just teaching about our personal faith life; he is teaching about the kingdom of heaven (other gospels use the phrase kingdom of God but Matthew prefers kingdom of heaven).  Jesus is laying out before his disciples and potential followers the dimensions of the kingdom Jesus is creating even as he sits teaching the crowds.

These crowds are well aware of the kingdom in which they currently live.  They understand the power of the ruling Romans, their oppressive taxation system, the tendency of their own people to take advantage of fellow Israelites, and the terrible toll that life itself takes on a body.  Jesus is announcing the intervention of God in this system through Jesus.....and in Jesus....and the establishment of a new kingdom with new ways of being.

In this kingdom, God blesses a series of behaviors and attitudes. Kingdom behaviors include those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful.  These are the folk you will find in God's kingdom. At the same time, those who seek the kingdom of heaven will become those who are poor in spirit, mourn, etc.

So this mourning is rooted in a larger picture.  Jesus is calling out to those who mourn the system that oppresses and destroys.  These mourners are crushed by the evildoers and the powerful elite whose actions lead to the kind of mourning that all families know.  They mourn the very presence of such evil in the world. In God's kingdom, those who have been oppressed will see freedom; oppression will not have the last word.

Perhaps that is the most helpful of images when dealing with the Beatitudes.  They are about who gets the last word - and what that last word will be.

Jesus tells the crowds the last word is blessing...God's blessing... and it will include those who know no blessings today.

What has you in a twist?

She was crippled, bent over, unable to stand straight. Luke 13.10-17
Life had twisted her in half; her best view was of her own feet.
You know her and so do I.

She's the single mother down the street whose teenager has gone off the rails.
She's the youngster ridiculed and bullied at school.
She's the elderly widow stretching peanut butter and jelly and white bread to last through two weeks because her social security doesn't pay her bills.

And she's not just a woman.  She is every man, woman and child who is bent over by the oppressive forces of this world: economic, cultural, physical, governmental.  On a good day, we find our posture and stand straight and take on the world.  On a bad day, we forget that we are God's beloved, that Jesus has the ultimate victory and the Spirit is moving and shaking and transforming this world.  On a bad day, we are twisted by this world and keep our head down and hope to get through unscathed.

Hear the good news.  No matter what this world throws at you, you are a child of God who loves you beyond all knowing.  Cling to that good news.