31 October 2009
Let My People Go
Brother Jesus, wounds still fresh,
stumbled down on pierced feet into the depths,
into the council of the great ones,
stood naked and bleeding before principalities and powers
and said, it’s over.
You’ve lost, he said.
Let my people go.
You demons of oppression and depression,
voices of condemnation and fearful silences,
you who stifle hearts and torture minds:
you drowners of dreams, it’s over.
I’m dragging you down with me to the grave.
Let my people go.
You hollow bellied temptations with your empty promises
offering yet providing no lasting pleasure;
you bitter food that only the starving find sweet,
prisons of promiscuity and pride, it’s over.
My flesh, my blood is a richer feast.
Let my people go.
You thrones and dominions, masters of violence,
powers that rule by force and by fear,
you breeders of war and destruction, it’s over.
My cross has exposed you for what you are,
what harm you do, and cannot do.
Let my people go.
Brother Jesus, Easter-crowned,
clothed in Resurrection flesh,
speaks to us in the garden and says,
something new begins today.
In the story of the Transfiguration, Matthew and Mark both mention that Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah, but only Luke says what it was they talked about: “The exodus he was about to bring about in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). The Greek is the same word used to describe the exodus from Egypt (ἔξοδον, “exodon”). The Exodus from Egypt began with the Passover the night before, but that was just the prelude for a total upheaval in the physical, social, and political world of the Israelites. It was not just a story about escaping from God’s wrath, but about unexpected deliverance from a slavery that had seemed inescapable.
We need to celebrate the fact that what has come about through Jesus is an even greater liberation. It is not just a change in our spiritual status. It is victory over everything that binds us. For some people, the victory they need most desperately is over addiction to sin. But for others, it is freedom from shame over their own failings. For others, their deepest need is healing not from their own sin but from the wounds that others have left. For others, salvation means freedom from depression or anxiety or any other product of this world’s brokenness. And for others it means escape from social injustice. All of this is the Gospel. We all need liberation in all these areas, each of us more urgently in some than in others, so for many of us forgiveness may not be the deepest need. “Preaching the Gospel” doesn’t just mean reciting a formula about forgiveness of sins, it means declaring all these forms of salvation.