The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to [Jesus.] 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.” Luke 4: 17-19
A book that’s been on my shelf since back in the mid-1980s is ‘Mountains of the Middle Kingdom’ by Galen Rowell. The ‘middle kingdom’ the title refers to is the Xinjiang region of China. Xinjiang is where some of the highest mountain ranges in the world are found, and home to the Uighur people, whom Rowell’s book introduced me to.
Today the Uighurs are being erased through a policy of cultural genocide by the Chinese Communist Party. Because their religion, traditions and loyalties conflict with the policies of Beijing, their worship is banned, their mosques are being destroyed, their history is being expunged, their culture is prohibited, and their people are dying. Which begs the questions; why should we care what happens to Muslims living in a remote province of China? Doesn’t it matter that others of their faith are doing the same thing to Yazidis and Coptic Christians? Why should we speak up for Uighurs?
How we choose to answer these questions offers insight into just how far we are willing to follow Jesus. We can approach this through the lens of our cultural, economic and political identities, or we can approach it through the lens of discipleship. One is centered in what will make us more secure, affluent and culturally dominant. The other is centered in the gospel, which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, while reminding us that our neighbor includes folks like Samaritans and Uighurs.
Following in the footsteps of Jesus is an invitation to embrace the prophetic imagination of scripture, which proclaims that God is always working new things in us. This is the ancient voice that reminds us that the world is rarely how we imagine it to be, and that it is almost never how we wish that it would be. And yet, this is the world we are given to serve. We are called to live amid the religious, racial and cultural wreckage of the 21st Century as the living voices and hands of God.
All throughout scripture, prophets remind the people of Israel that their own experience of slavery should forever shape their lives as God’s people. They are admonished to live in this new way by treating immigrants, refugees and foreigners as they treat one another. This prophetic voice re-imagines what living a faithful life looks like for people who have already experienced the pain of cultural genocide at the hand of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Rome.
Perhaps more than any other part of our faith tradition, this is the command that we run away from when we feel threatened by outside forces we can’t control. We turn inward, build walls, and angrily lash out at those who are different from us. We forget the mandate shared with us from the upper room on the night of Jesus’ betrayal; that we are to love this world as fervently as we are loved. The sin found in our turning away from what’s happening in places like Xinjiang is the sin of believing that God’s love is finite instead of infinite, that it’s scarce instead of abundant. It’s the sin of believing that if God loves those people, then God can’t really love us, too.
Following Jesus comes with a cost. It requires bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to captives, and setting the oppressed free, which often places us outside the mainstream. When Jesus read those words from Isaiah in his hometown synagogue, he reminded the crowd that God loves and cares for foreigners just as God loves and cares for them. This so enraged his neighbors that they took him to a cliff intending to throw him off. Following Jesus’ example by standing with Muslim Uighurs today just may incite the same response in our own neighbors. And yet, this is exactly what we are called to do.
God’s love for this world has no boundaries. It’s poured upon us in every moment no matter what our ethnic, social, racial, religious, or sexual identities may be. This is a radical way of envisioning the world. Embracing the gospel in its fullness is a calling to stand in direct opposition any who proclaim the unworthiness of others in the name of God or nation. Those of us who proclaim the Christian faith are commanded to be the ones who protect the weak, the abused, the neglected, and the disenfranchised of this world from harm, meaning anyone and everyone whose humanity is being stripped from them.
Instead of returning hatred with hatred and violence with violence, we are invited to mirror Jesus’ life of sacrifice, inclusion and love. It is only through our relentless love for the whole world that the evils of ethnic and religious cleansing will one day disappear.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.
Leave a Reply