Proper 23,  Year C, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church
Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–10; Psalm 133:1–3; 2 Corinthians 2:14–16; Mark 14:3–9

“The Will of God.” Not this Wil of God (one L). The will of God with two L’s.

Let us pray:
May God who is Majesty, Mercy, and Mystery speak words of life, love, and liberation through these words. Amen.

God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberation to the captives,
and freedom to the prisoners…
to comfort all children, women, and men who mourn…
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall restore the ruined cities…

With one word, עֲנָוִים, rendered as two in translation, “the oppressed,” the prophet identifies the very specific kind of oppression that is the result of manufactured poverty; both that poverty and the oppression that maintains it, trapping people in cycles of poverty. The prophet is preaching about profit and it is going to get political because, the use and abuse of money at a societal, structural, level is always political. So this is going to be a political sermon for:

It is the will of God that this good news be proclaimed to those oppressed by the wealthy:
It is the will of God that the the hearts of the brokenhearted be stitched back together.
It is the will of God that liberation comes to all held in captivity.
It is the will of God that those unjustly or justly incarcerated be set free.
It is the will of God that all who mourn, be they children, women, men, non-binary persons, trans folk, be comforted.
Liberation is the will of God.
Restoration is the will of God.

This is the good news God sent God’s servant, more than 2500 years ago, to declare to their people who had been crushed and broken by wave after wave after wave of invasion, colonization and, oppression. But who also, in the beginning of their restoration, broke into factions along economic lines and became the oppressors of their own people as well.

This prophetic sermonic poem is addressed to the oppressed, the poor who are kept in poverty and then punished for their poverty. It is addressed to the brokenhearted, to those in captivity, to those in prison without preconditions or exclusions based on guilt or innocence; it is addressed to those who mourn all of these devastations and more.

But it is written for all of who will hear and read, knowing that some will not be among those living under the oppression of a man-made poverty, brokenhearted, held captive or imprisoned – rightly or wrongly. These words will reach the ears of those who have their thumbs on the scales of justice and the economy, those who are indifferent in the face of the human suffering from which they profit, those who barter and bargain with the lives of others, those who cage people like animals, and those who pervert justice to such a degree that the system breaks and kills those who are supposed to be in their care and custody. And the question is, who are you in the prophet’s audience? Who are we?

If we start by ticking off the elements of our identities, privileges and vulnerabilities, by acknowledging we are – most of us – Americans and Christians, we have already started on the side of the oppressors. Because, in spite of their inspiring foundational literature – and one might say scriptures, for the Constitution has near scriptural authority – in spite of the soaring hopes and aspirations (for some) of the foundational documents, this nation and the Church, in its long history, have been agents of oppression that did more to multiply and enshrine poverty – for some – than to relieve it. And neither has remediated all of the harm of its ancestors, from which they still benefit, down to the present day. For some, these privileges are nominal and in spite of our passports, we live under threat in this country. But within our religious and national identities, most of us without society preferred gender and orientation and ethnicity and physical abilities and migration, immigration and documentation status will find ourselves on the lists of the privileged and the vulnerable.

Yet there are other others who by their very being and doing participate in the structures of oppression and perpetuate them. And, at the same time most of the rest of us are complicit with them without conscious thought or intent; it is our tax dollars that are taken from native and rural hospitals and poor and underfunded schools and given to the wealthy who were already paying their children’s 30 and $50,000 a year tuition with ease.

Our tax dollars are used to fund the engines of war grinding the bodies of Palestinian people – babies, children, women, men, the elderly and disabled – grinding them into dust under their collapsed homes and hospitals. Our tax dollars are being used to form and fund a white supremacist militia to kidnap black and brown folk off the street and ship them to random countries without regard to their citizenship or legal standing in this country. But more than that, without regard to their humanity or their place in the fabric of our lives as family and friends and, not just community members, but community builders. While some of us wrestle and resist being part of the structures of oppression that hurt us and those for whom we care.

And be clear, it is a white supremacist project even when black, brown and beige folk are participating in it, even at very senior levels. The ground troops of white supremacy have always included those who aspire to whiteness – not the artificially constructed racialized ethnicity, but the power structure built around that constructed identity. Some are implicated by much more than the passive use of our tax dollars.

And some of us have been broken by these systems and structures functioning just as they were designed. To keep folk poor. To keep healthcare unaffordable. To hoard the stolen resources of this country. To use the labor, skills, and ingenuity of our neighbors and co-laborers from around the world and then discard and criminalize them for having shared their gifts and talents to make us be more healthy, eat more deliciously, see more beauty and envision what we could not have imagined by ourselves. Who are you in in the prophet’s audience?

To those who are oppressed by the wealthy and the systems they have built to profit off the labor and ingenuities of others and, keep workers trapped in jobs without enough hours and and salaries and wages at or below the poverty line, often with no benefits and in some cases subject to wage theft, the prophet declares a message of good news.

To those whose hearts and hopes are broken, the prophet says that though it may not look like it now, you will not always be in this ragged broken place. There is no person, no betrayal, no wicked system whose hurt and harm cannot be healed. There is no heart so broken that it cannot be made whole. These broken hearts of ours can be bound like a broken limb and held in place by a supportive embrace until they are strong enough to navigate the world at their own pace. We are called to bind up each other’s wounds, to hold each other in our brokenness, even as we are being held. The prophet does not predicate the comfort of the brokenhearted on the destruction or reversal of any of the systems of oppression that hold the people captive. We don’t have to wait for the world to be made right in order for we, ourselves, to be made whole or to hold others on their journey to wholeness.

And to those who are held captive and imprisoned, physically and metaphorically, to those seized by military forces denied their legal, civil and human legal rights, to those snatched up and roughed up by policing and civil forces because of the color of their skin and the place that they are in, to those held captive by desires, diseases and addictions against which they struggle and sometimes lose, to those held captive and imprisoned in communities without public transportation or grocery stores or – still in this day and age – running water, the prophet declares freedom and liberation.

This is more than the physical turning of the keys and opening prison doors for, the prisons in minds and hearts have to be not just opened, but deconstructed. Dismantling the structures that imprison, that lead to incarceration is the way to liberation. Dismantling the precursors of poverty, lack of opportunity, over policing, vigilantism, underfunded and under-resourced education, racial, ethnic and cultural biases – dismantling these will set folk free. Free from predatory behavior born of previous cycles of predation, rage, hopelessness and helplessness and, free from those who would prey on them.

Liberation is the will of God. But precious few of us are partnering with God in this holy work. Perhaps because it seems like so much, too much. But God does not ask us to tear down all of these systems by ourselves. God calls us to do the work of liberation that is ours to do with what we have in our hands wherever we are.

Jesus said:
For always shall you have the poor with you
and whenever you wish you can do good by them…

Poverty endures because we as a society, and sometimes as individuals, choose not to address the causes nor even the symptoms of poverty with any regularity or consistency. Not enough of us bring what we have, whether it’s the widow’s mite or our prize possession alabaster jar to the work. And so poverty persists.

The good news in this passage is not that Jesus will come and fix it. The good news is that we have it within us, within our hands to do more than just proclaim this gospel, this good news, but also, to do it. To live it. To undermine and even tear down the structures that oppress people. To feed the poor and address the structural causes of poverty. To fight against oppression with the tools and resources we have at hand. It’s not easy work and it is not fast work but it is our work.

The unnamed woman whose gospel is to be proclaimed and preached in memory of her – even as the recorders and preservers of the gospels contrive to do so while erasing her name or lumping her in with all of the other Mary’s – this woman did the part of the work that was hers to do. It was not to sell this precious vessel and its expensive oil to feed the poor. It was to comfort a man already identified as an enemy of the state and its dictator, soon to be placed, unjustly, on death row. To claim his body for God so that no matter what state sponsored torturers and executioners did to it, he would be reminded by the scent of that precious oil that permeated the mud and blood, of who he was, of whose he was. The epistle uses that very image, of a fragrant aroma, to identify us as belonging with and to Jesus. We don’t all have the same work. It’s not always financial, even when combating poverty. But if we all do our work all of the work will get done: resisting, disrupting, undermining the structures that oppress and hold captive, that break and wound hearts and keep the poor poor.

And then:
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall restore the ruined cities…

The survivors of every kind of destruction and devastation shall rebuild. And they shall raise up. And they shall restore. They will rebuild their families, homes and communities. They shall raise up children and grandchildren. They shall raise up new life from the soil that had only seen blood and death. They shall raise up new homes on new foundations. And they shall restore their neighborhoods, homes and schools. They shall see liberation right here, in this world. Because liberation is not some cloud bound heavenly reward. Liberation is freedom from oppression right here. They shall transform the world around them. And they shall be transformed. Just look at Jesus, his ruined, devastated body raised up to new life.

Liberation is the will of God.
Restoration is the will of God.
Transformation is the will of God.
Resurrection is the will of God.

It is not enough to crack the foundations of the structures that oppress us, our friends and kin. We are called to the sacred work of rebuilding and restoring. A deconstruction without reconstruction is not liberation. But when we do our work, pour our oil, stand with the condemned, comfort those who mourn, wrap our arms around the brokenhearted, reject the kingship of the national tyrant, preach and prophesy, live this gospel, and when necessary, lay down our lives for the sake of the gospel then, may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Liberator Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do God’s will, working among us that which is pleasing in God’s sight, through Jesus our Liberator, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

May God the restorer of broken hearts, minds and bodies
Accompany you through the gaps and brokenness in your life
Nurture, sustain and transform you to change the world around you. Amen.