{"id":20292,"date":"2021-07-06T09:47:29","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T13:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20292"},"modified":"2021-07-06T10:01:47","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T14:01:47","slug":"20292","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=20292","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/So94m-Lp6Pw\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Luke&#8217;s Good News:<br>God&#8217;s Justice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For Luke, while the ultimate meaning of the good news is still the nearness of God\u2019s kingdom, he says it differently. He speaks not of God\u2019s kingdom but of God\u2019s justice, and he especially emphasizes the privileged position of the poor. Luke\u2019s Gospel is sometimes called the \u201cGospel of the poor\u201d or the \u201cGospel of mercy.\u201d He stresses the freedom and liberation which come from living simply and humbly, in right relationship with others, under the reign of God. He sees Jesus as fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 61: \u201cThe spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord\u201d (Luke 4:18\u201319).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we think of justice, we ordinarily think of a balance: if the scales tip too much on the side of wrong, justice is needed to set things right. But God\u2019s justice does not make sense to human ideas of justice! We define justice in terms of what we\u2019ve done, what we\u2019ve earned, and what we\u2019ve merited. Our image of justice is often some form of retribution, which we then project onto God. When most people say, \u201cWe want justice!\u201d they normally mean that bad deeds should be punished or that they want vengeance. But <strong>Jesus says that\u2019s simply not the case with God. The issue is how much can we trust God? How much can we stand in the flow of God\u2019s infinite love? How much can we let God love us in our worst moments?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is God\u2019s justice? It is certainly not our Western image of a blindfolded woman standing with a scale and weighing the different sides.<strong> God\u2019s justice is delivered simply by God being true to God\u2019s nature<\/strong>. And what is God\u2019s nature? Love. God is love, so God\u2019s justice is in fact total, steadfast love, total unconditional giving of love. (Many of us now call this <strong>\u201crestorative justice\u201d instead of retributive justice.)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brian McLaren reflects on Luke\u2019s Gospel and God\u2019s justice through the stories of Mary and Elizabeth\u2019s miraculous pregnancies [Luke 1]. He understands these stories as <strong>invitations to join an adventure with God in which another world is possible:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>What if their purpose is to challenge us to <strong>blur the line between what we think is possible and what we think is impossible?<\/strong> Could we ever come to a time when swords would be beaten into plowshares? When the predatory people in power\u2014the lions\u2014would lie down in peace with the vulnerable and the poor\u2014the lambs? When God\u2019s justice would flow like a river\u2014to the lowest and most \u201cgod-forsaken\u201d places on Earth? When the brokenhearted would be comforted and the poor would receive good news? If you think,\u00a0<em>Never\u2014it\u2019s impossible<\/em>, then maybe you need to think again. Maybe it\u2019s not too late for something beautiful to be born. Maybe t<strong>he present moment is pregnant with possibilities we can\u2019t see or even imagine.<\/strong> <\/p><cite><br><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"348\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-2-500x348.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20298\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-2-500x348.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-2-300x209.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-2-768x534.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-2.png 1876w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luke&#8217;s Good News:God&#8217;s Justice For Luke, while the ultimate meaning of the good news is still the nearness of God\u2019s kingdom, he says it differently. He speaks not of God\u2019s kingdom but of God\u2019s justice, and he especially emphasizes the privileged position of the poor. Luke\u2019s Gospel is sometimes called the \u201cGospel of the poor\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20292"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20300,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20292\/revisions\/20300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}