Roots of Liberation Richard Rohr
Sunday, June 24, 2018
One of the great themes of the Bible, beginning with the Hebrew Scriptures and continued by Jesus and Paul, is “the preferential option for the poor.” I call it “the bias toward the bottom.” The Hebrew people’s exodus out of slavery, and YHWH’s complete identification with them, is the pattern of our universal spiritual journey to liberation.
Moses, himself a man at “the bottom” (a murderer on the run, caring for his father-in-law’s sheep), first encounters God in an ordinary bush that “burns” without being consumed (Exodus 3:2). Moses’ experience is both external and interior, earth-based and transcendent: “Take off your shoes, this is holy ground,” he hears (3:5). Awestruck and fully present, Moses is able to perceive God’s surprising call: “I have heard the groaning of my people in Egypt. You, Moses, are to go confront the Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go” (3:9-10).
Here we have the perfect integration of action and contemplation. First, the contemplative experience comes—the burning bush. Immediately it has social, economic, and political implications. There is no authentic God experience that does not situate you in the world in a different way. You see things differently, and you have the security to be free from your usual loyalties: privilege, position, group, and economy. Yet this transformation has costly consequences. Moses had to leave Pharaoh’s palace to ask new questions and become the liberator of his people.
The Exodus story is the root of all liberation theology, which Jesus then teaches and fully exemplifies (see Luke 4:18-19). It is obvious that he is primarily a healer of the poor and powerless. Liberation theology focuses on freeing people from religious, political, social, and economic oppression (i.e., what Pope John Paul II called “structural sin” and “institutional evil”). [1] It goes beyond just trying to free individuals from their own naughty behaviors, which many people identify as the only meaning of sin. In our individualistic society, structural sin is accepted as good and necessary on the corporate or national level. Large companies, churches, and governments get away with and are even applauded for killing (war), greed, vanity, pride, and ambition. The capital sins are rewarded at the corporate level but shamed at the individual level. This is our conflicted Christian morality!
Instead of legitimating the status quo, liberation theology tries to read history and the Bible not from the side of the powerful, but from the side of the pain. Its beginning point is not sin management, but “Where is the suffering?”
The world tends to define poverty and riches simply in terms of economics. But poverty has many faces—weakness, dependence, and many forms of humiliation. Essentially, poverty is a lack of means to accomplish what one desires or needs, be it lack of money, relationships, influence, power, intellectual ability, physical strength, freedom, or dignity.
God hears the cry of the poor. And we, created in God’s image and likeness, must do the same to be like God.
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Inalienable Rights
Monday, June 25, 2018
No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. —Matthew 6:24
In his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus critiques and reorders the values of his culture from the bottom up. He “betrays” the prevailing institutions of family, religion, power, and economy (i.e., controlling resources) by his loyalty to another world vision which he calls the Reign of God. Such loyalty cost him popularity, the support of the authorities, immense inner agony, and finally his own life. By putting the picture into the largest possible frame, Jesus called into question all smaller frames and forced a radical transformation of consciousness upon his hearers. Most seemed unready for this paradigm shift, including his inner circle.
What is Western culture’s primary frame of reference? Money and power seem to come first. The dominant system in our society is production and consumption. Manipulative marketing convinces us we must have the newest version, regardless of what we actually need. Status is attained by having money and the freedom to use it.
Uncontrolled greed (no longer considered a capital sin) widens the gap between the haves and the have nots, the powerful and the powerless. Today in the U.S., the 4oo richest people own more wealth than the entire bottom 64 percent of the population (204 million people). Over 40 million Americans live below the poverty line. [1]
When the bottom line is money and politicians are in the pockets of big corporations, resources as foundational as clean water, housing, and health care go to the highest bidder. This inequality is absolutely counter to the Gospel message. In “The Souls of Poor Folk”—an audit of America fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign—the message is clear:
There is inalienable worth and intrinsic value to every person, regardless of wealth or public position. Policies that hurt the poor are a violation of that inalienable value. . . . We are all worthy of the very necessities of life.
To be a Christian (and a decent human being!) we cannot “make moral claims about caring for the souls of people, but then pass policies that destroy their bodies and communities.” [2]
Economic justice is not popular. Who will hold our politicians and corporations accountable today? Jim Wallis, founder of the faith-based nonprofit Sojourners, writes:
What if the calls for economic justice were made in the name of Jesus—or Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah—instead of from more ideological sources and causes? . . . What if behavior in the economic spheres of our lives became the substance of adult Sunday school curriculums and Bible study groups? And what if the hard political questions about corporate responsibility, tax benefits, trade policies, budget priorities, and campaign financing were coming from religious congregations that political leaders couldn’t afford to ignore? Nothing could do more to bring about a change of fortunes in the battles of class warfare. [3]
There has been a permanent state of class warfare of the rich against the poor throughout history, but for some strange reason it is only called class warfare when it is the poor against the rich!
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JUNE 25 OPEN YOUR HANDS
and your heart to receive this day as a precious gift from Me. I begin each day with a sunrise, announcing My radiant Presence. By the time you rise from your bed, I have already prepared the way before you. I eagerly await your first conscious thought. I rejoice when you glance My way. Bring Me the gift of thanksgiving, which opens your heart to rich communion with Me. Because I am God, from whom all blessings flow, thankfulness is the best way to draw near Me. Sing praise songs to Me; tell of My wondrous works. Remember that I take great delight in you; I rejoice over you with singing.
This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. —PSALM 118:24
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. —PSALM 95:1–2
The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. —ZEPHANIAH 3:17
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