Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “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.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:14-21
Something very important happened in that synagogue 2000 years ago. Jesus of Nazareth took as his own mission statement a vision of the prophet Isaiah, spoken so many centuries earlier (Isaiah 61:1ff).
That vision is about a community of peace with justice, which is most often called Shalom in Hebrew. It is a vision of a world in which all have not only enough to eat, but abundance enough for feasting. It is a world where disease does not kill, and all live into old age. It assumes a world where people do not learn war any more. It is a vision based on the belief that all human beings have equal worth and dignity, and that some are not more equal than others.
Jesus’ claiming this mission confronted the injustice of the society in which he lived, a nation occupied by a foreign power, in which a small elite was growing wealthier while most of the population was losing its land and the ability to grow its own food. That mounting inequity gave rise to plenty of unrest, and when a leader like Jesus began to gather large crowds to hear about the kingdom of God, a kingdom based on justice, and ruled not by Caesar but by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he became an obvious and immediate political threat.
People in all ages have had to confront systems of injustice that keep some in poverty and want, while others prosper. Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged this nation to dream with him of a world where children are judged on the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin, and he linked that prejudice about skin color to ongoing economic inequity. Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa recently put it this way, “while some starve, others are getting stinking rich.”
Our own nation has roots in the quest for liberty and equality, for freedom from tyranny, and the search for abundance. The movements to liberate slaves, to give women the freedom to use all their gifts, and to keep this nation out of wars of conquest, have roots in that same grand vision for a world of shalom. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said so eloquently, the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice “even if it is a very long arc. That arc lies before each one of you.
We do not yet live in a world where the poor and oppressed receive good news, where the ill are healed, where those imprisoned by ignorance receive education, where those oppressed by prejudice and discrimination are set free for abundant life, where no one studies war anymore. That hope still lies before us, in the arc of hope and eternal yearning. That arc of justice is served by prophets, who speak truth about the injustice of what is, and also speak words of comfort (strength) and hope for the journey toward that vision of a healed world. We need prophets in our own day, and you can be among them.
Those of you about to leave this place have the opportunity to share this kind of prophetic work, whether you identify yourselves as Christians or not. This work of rebuilding the world requires the ability to cross boundaries ” of nationality, religion, and narrow self-interest. That arc toward justice will be served by those who share the dream, whatever its origin. Your boundary-crossing can be an important witness to our interconnectedness, to the reality that all of us are bound up in each other, as John Donne said, that none of us is an island, entire of itself, and that the death of anyone diminishes each of us.
We live in an age that is increasingly aware of the interconnected nature of all of reality. Not only do we continually see disasters of both natural and human origin on TV screens and computer monitors, we are beginning to understand how even small actions here have significant consequences around the globe. You have spent your time here learning something about the vast connectedness of this world, connections that draw you and your interests far beyond Cedar Rapids or Iowa. The corn that’s grown around here may end up feeding cows in Guatemala or people in Kenya. The ethanol into which some of that corn is converted may fuel cars and trucks all across this continent. The carbon dioxide and methane produced by those cows and cars will have an impact on temperatures not only here but all around the globe. The rise in sea level that is a consequence of those rising temperatures is affecting not only hurricanes on our own Gulf Coast but the lives and livelihoods of those who live on the vast coastal plains of Bangladesh. Our government’s policies about crop subsidies and imports relative to that same corn affect the lives of farmers here, in Mexico, and in Kenya, and those policies are almost always far more favorable to people here than elsewhere. A prophet would urge us all to pay attention to those impacts that often fall most heavily on the poorest among us.
Those connections and consequences can be positive as well. This state is famous for research that has contributed to a growing abundance of corn harvests, and the ability to feed more people than would have been possible otherwise. You can be participants in that hopeful and creative kind of prophetic encouragement.
I represent a community of faith which is intensely focused on the vision of a healed world, that vision of shalom for all. We are focusing our work beyond these shores through the Millennium Development Goals, which speak of halving the worst hunger and poverty that beset half the world’s population and doing it by the year 2015. The prophets among us continue to remind us that the MDGs only go part way toward that grand vision of Isaiah and Jesus. The whole world needs to eat, be housed, have clean water and adequate sanitation, not just a majority of its inhabitants.
The goals include providing universal primary education, drastically cutting rates of child mortality and disease, as well as improving maternal health and health care; working to treat and prevent diseases like AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, which kill millions every year. The goals include providing clean water for 1 billion people, and adequate sanitation for 2.5 billion. Together, addressing those two needs would save the lives of 200 million children every year. The funds necessary to do this work are significant, yet represent less than 1% of the annual budgets of the world’s developed nations. Those nations have agreed to work toward this kind of global healing, yet only the Scandinavian countries have met their promise. The numbers seem almost mind-numbingly large to some, yet in relative terms they are very small. We could provide universal primary education for $10 billion, less than half of what this nation spends on ice cream each year.
Prophets dream big dreams like these, and encourage others to dream them too, and then to join in challenging the systems that perpetuate injustice. Prophets need perspective ” or perspicacity “the ability to see what’s going on in terms of injustice and oppression, and then to tell the truth about what they see. Prophets also need compassion to see the suffering so rampant in this world. Prophets need an abiding sense of hope that change is possible, that that arc does bend toward justice. Those gifts of vision, compassion, and hope usually find their source in a community who share that dream. It’s tough to be an effective prophet all alone.
Your work, your lives, your play, the relationships you build in the coming years can serve the needs of all, or they can serve primarily you and those closest to you. The choice is largely yours, and it is a choice that will come before you daily, even hourly. We live in the midst of a market-driven culture that is intensely focused on consumption and instantaneous self-gratification. The true prophets set out a vision that is larger and ultimately more rewarding “the healing of the world. You “in the decisions you make as individuals, in the collaborative networks you build and nurture, and in the dreams you dream “have the capacity to bring us closer to that great vision.
May each one of us be able to say that today, and in each day of our lives, in ways both small and large, that this dream has been realized, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”