Tag Archives: Nehemiah

Freeing the Body

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During the governorship of Nehemiah, when the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt to protect the returning exiles from Babylon, the scribe Ezra read the Law of Moses to the people.(Neh. 8: 1–12) The Law of Moses taught the Jews how they were to live together in community under the God who had first delivered them from Egypt and latterly, from Babylon. The people wept. Was that because they realized how short they fell from what the Law of Moses required of them? Or did they weep for joy because they knew what was asked of them and knew what to do? In any case, Ezra told the people to go and have a great feast to celebrate the reading of the Law. Touchingly, Ezra told them to send portions “to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord.” (Neh. 8: 10) Clearly, such sharing is what the Law of Moses is all about.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul teaches the values of Christian community through the analogy between the human body and the Body of Christ. (1 Cor. 12: 12–31) Both are one while composed of many members, each with a distinctive function for the benefit of the whole. Each member has need of all the other members, even, rather especially, the supposedly weaker members of the body. If a member of the body were to be considered foreign and so expelled, the whole body would suffer the loss.

Luke inaugurates Jesus’ ministry with his appearance at the synagogue in Nazareth. While Ezra read the Law of Moses, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, after which he said: “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk. 4: 21) This implies that Jesus himself has been anointed by the Spirit and that he is bringing about what Isaiah had prophesied. That is, Jesus is bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. Quite a lot to proclaim in a society where many people were imprisoned in many ways, blind in many ways, and poor in many ways. One could say that Jesus has put the table sharing enjoined by Ezra and the caring of one part of the body by the others enjoined by Paul on steroids. Given this prominent placing in Luke’s Gospel, we should rank this brief teaching alongside the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew as a baseline teaching for a life devoted to Jesus.

The political implications are enormous, both in Jesus’ time and in the present day. However, we should not leave the implementation of this program to the politicians, especially at a time when many politicians are going in the opposite direction. We ourselves should seek out those who are imprisoned in any way, perhaps in hatred or fear, and try to free them. Likewise, we should heal our own blindness so as to heal the blindness of others in whatever way we and others are blind. And so on with the other items in this list. That is to say, we need to accept healing and freedom in order to heal and free others.

When we speak of freeing captives and healing the blind, we tend to think that some people are captured and others are captors. Some people are blind and some are blinded by others. When we think in those terms, our own fear of being blinded or captured tempts us to join the blinders and captors. But that is only an alternate form of imprisonment and blindness. That is, those who capture others, imprison others, blind others, are just as imprisoned and captured and blind as the victims. One could say it is an inverted body where, instead of each part of the body caring for the others, each part tries to capture and imprison the others. What a way to have a complete breakdown in the health of the body!

This inaugural sermon of Jesus is a challenge to begin anew, which is what the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee, is all about. The Jubilee year in the Law of Moses is God’s way of periodically offering all of us a new start by canceling debts and returning land to those from whom it had been alienated. Captives are freed to get a new start. So far, the people who think they are the captors and imprisoners have, at least for the most part, resisted efforts to implement this biblical teaching. Can we ever learn that nobody is free unless everybody is free? Can we learn to desire true freedom for ourselves which entails giving freedom to others? Can we open our eyes so that we can help others open their eyes?

See also How About a Jubilee? for similar reflections

How About a Jubilee?

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After celebrating the Baptism of Jesus and the Wedding at Cana with its Eucharistic overtones, Luke’s lectionary cycle takes us to visions of the Body of Christ as community, what Martin Luther King, Jr. whose birthday we celebrated this week, called “the Beloved Community. This theme is most appropriate for the octave for Christian unity.

The reading from Nehemiah 8 gives us a glimpse of the initiation of the body of worship that became the synagogue. Ezra reads the Law (the Torah) and includes explanation, which is the heart of synagogue worship to this day. Nehemiah and Ezra conclude with these comforting words: “This day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Neh. 8: 10) Unfortunately these two leaders also thought that social cohesion required the expulsion of all wives who are not sufficiently “pure” to be part of this emerging Jewish community, a recurring problem of creating unity through division.

In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul counters the exclusionary behavior in this church with his famous analogy of the human body with the Church as the Body of Christ. This analogy gives us a powerful vision of unity in diversity with each part interacting with all the others. If one part of the body hurts, all parts hurt. This analogy also reminds of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words: “Nobody is free until we are all free.” The implication is that if we try to exert our “freedom” by expelling others, we are not free.

The Gospel reading from Luke portrays the opening of Jesus’ teaching ministry. As the forerunner John the Baptist quoted Isaiah’s words about Israel’s return from the Babylonian exile as God’s preparing a way for the people to return over rough country made smooth, Jesus began by quoting Isaiah’s words about what a settled people should do: Have a jubilee. The Jubilee was designed to make high economic mountains and low valleys more level; to give everybody a new start by cancelling crippling debts. This really was good news for the poor who particularly needed another start. But there is more: Isaiah also envisioned freeing captives and giving sight to the blind. Could it be that economic injustice makes all of us blind to what is really going on? In any case, Jesus is broadening the scope of the Jubilee to apply to everything we can do to strengthen community. To return to Paul’s analogy of the Church as Christ’s Body: it is as if some parts of the body swelled and caused other parts to shrink. Maybe the swollen parts thought that was a good deal, but the reality is that the whole body, not least the swollen parts, is sick when that happens. Economic issues are unmistakable in Luke but a Jubilee is about and for everybody. So how do all of us participate in the Jubilee? What about problems of exclusion? Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a society where the exclusionary practices of race would no longer tear the nation and the churches apart. More important, King sought to achieve this end through reconciliation rather than through adversarial approaches. Isaiah had also proclaimed the freeing of captives. Besides re-evaluating our prison system, we should reflect on how we imprison each other and most of all ourselves in resentment and vengefulness.

The only words of Jesus that Luke quotes are: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk. 4: 21) This is particularly startling. According to Leviticus, a Jubilee happened every seven years with a super Jubilee every seventy years. A Jubilee was something to look forward to, but Jesus is telling us to celebrate the Jubilee NOW. Not next week or tomorrow, but NOW. That puts all of us on the hot seat right now and calls us to consider what we can do NOW to participate in the Jubilee. Since Jesus’ quoting Isaiah is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, it stands to reason that the rest of the Gospel shows us ways to live the Jubilee. That is, Luke’s Gospel is a Jubilee Gospel. The famous Lukan parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son give us powerful examples of what Jubilee looks like.

I will close with an example from a presentation by the black theologian Julia Robinson Moore in North Carolina whom I heard a few months ago. She said that a white parish with many descendants of slave owners offered an apology to her black congregation for their enslavement of the forebears of her congregation. This may not seem like much given the enormity of slavery’s cruelty, but Julia said the apology was both significant and meaningful for her and her congregation. Their acceptance of the apology is another act of Jubilee. Even if we start small, we can hope for an increase of sixty, eighty and a hundredfold.

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