God of the Overlooked Luke 2: 8-15
Luke 2:10 “I bring you good news of great joy”
Over thirty years ago, Dr. James Cone, Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, wrote a breakthrough book in Black Theology called “God of the Oppressed.” This book catapulted Dr. Cone to the forefront of theologians in Black Theology and the liberation movement. Essentially he suggests that “oppression is the denial of freedom, and therefore the opposite of liberation.” He concludes that “God came, and continues to come, to those who are poor and helpless, for the purpose of setting them free.” My meditative reading during this Advent Season caused me to reread Dr. Cone’s work and to reflect on the relevance of his thinking in today’s era.
Advent is more than Jesus coming as a baby to Mary and Joseph in a Bethlehem; it is also the anticipation, the hope, the expectancy, of his coming again. Last month I suggested that the anticipation of Jesus returning provided the early church leaders with the impetus to proclaim the message of Jesus being risen, and that Jesus is ruling with urgency.
We have lost that since of urgency; that compelling reason to witness and to proclaim to sinful world that Jesus Christ the Savior is available to them.
I wondered why. I believe it’s because we have become desensitized to the suffering of segments of our society. I believe we no longer see oppression as the enemy of liberation. Liberation is defined as the release from any form of captivity into the freedom given to us by Jesus Christ.
We no longer see the vestiges of oppression. We no longer feel its awful sting.
We have become callus to the cries of those who are still hurting. We have become oblivious to their pain because we feel that their situation, their predicament, their problem is inherently their own fault.
Aids and homicide is the leading killers of Black Americans. It’s their fault. Through my Foundation work I found that if your take ten students entering elementary school, before they complete middle school three have dropped out, as the class continues on to high school and before that class finishes high school another three have dropped out. Therefore from my initial ten elementary student class, you will find that only four will have graduated from high school on time. Hence we have in Baltimore Schools approximately 40% of the student population graduating on time. While America is experiencing a housing boom and a rising increase in the employment rate, my travels throughout Upton have revealed that our people are having a difficult time finding affordable housing. They are also having trouble finding employment. If there is a housing boom and if there is an increase in the employment rate, it is not happening here!
I walked through the halls of Booker T. Washington Middle School. I talked with the school administrators. They are being overwhelmed by the needs of the students and their lack of resources to address those needs. They have to address the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Law, but those mandates where not funded, and as a result they are spending more time attempting to comply with federal law and less time teaching to meet the needs of the students.
I walked through the halls of Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary School. I walked into the library and was shocked by its condition and the meagerness of its catalogue. In any information technological age that situation was abominable!
As I read Dr. Cone’s book, God of the Oppressed. I realized that we need to go a step further to bring the “good news of great joy” to the people of our time and let them know that not only do we serve a God of the Oppressed, but we serve a God of the Overlooked.
If you feel that no one cares about your situation, I want you to know that God cares. If you think that society has left you out and you have no way to get back in. I want you to know that God sees your situation. God hears your cries. If you think that life is difficult and you are moving through lift anonymously, I want you to know that the God we serve has his “eye on the sparrow, and he also watches over you.”
It’s difficult to live life as one that is overlooked. Foster care children relegated to being constantly moved about, without the benefit of a stable home; without adequate medical attention, without the necessary mental health support, without educational tutoring assistance. Our children are being overlooked. There are over 7,000 children in the foster care system in this State. 60% of those children are in Baltimore. The highest percentage of those children in Baltimore lives in the 21217 zip code of this church. They live in this community. But they are overlooked!
In this season of Advent, we have “good news of great joy.” The God we serve is the God of the Overlooked.
Let’s peruse the text. Of the synoptic gospels, only Luke tells this story of the Angels visiting the Shepherds. I trust the Lukian version of the gospel story because of his attention to the detail of telling not only the story of Jesus Christ, but Luke is credited as the author of the Book of Acts, that informs us of the formation of the early church.
Luke understood the significance of the Angels coming to the Shepherds and telling them that the Savior was born.
D. M. Low’s editing of Edward Gibbon’s work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire provide us with a glimpse of the social structure during that day.
Shepherds were a part of the lower class of freed people. They were peasants. Next to slaves they were relegated to the lowest rung of society. They had no voice. They were not invited to the social functions. They were left out, left alone, and if found lying on the road, left for dead. They didn’t enjoy the privileges of the noble class, the political class, or the economic class. They were overlooked. Societies has always, like the Hindus, had untouchables, people with opinions that don’t matter, people whose contributions don’t count, people whose lives are worthless.
They are the overlooked: nameless faces in the crowd, homeless freezing and dying in the cold, elderly with no one to care, and children who grow up without love.
They are the overlooked!
The angels bring good news and great joy to the overlooked!
We learn three things about good news and great joy.
1. That God love is encompassing. The very fact that God comes to the overlooked in the society should tell you something about God. He is on the side of the oppressed and the overlooked. Jesus would over and over again tell his disciples that he has come to seek those that are lost. He tells them about the joy in heaven when one who is lost is found. God’s love is encompassing. Jesus tells us that for as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. God’s love is encompassing. You must be careful with our Americanized version of religion. We discount that which do not know.
John Hick in his book, God has many faces, reminds us that the great revelation of the 6th of 8th century. When the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Micah, Joel and other began to look to the stars and record the handy work of God, there are Hindu’s in India writing, the Muslims in Africa writing, the Confucius in China writing, the Upanishads, the Taoists, the Buddhist, and all across the world God as revealer began to cause man to commit to writing his understanding of Him.
Rev. Dr. Olin P. Moyd describes it like this when discussing theology. He uses that analogy of blind folded people touching an elephant from different places and being asked to describe an elephant having never seen an elephant. Some are holding its tail, some touching its truck, some holding his leg, some his ear and some was sitting on his back. Being asked to describe from their little perspective something they have never seen. They only have a piece, never the
Whole.
Jesus give us insight into the encompassing nature of God’s love by telling us in the Book of John that, “other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them must I also bring,”
God’s love is encompassing. Jesus tells the story of workers who work all day and some who work only for a hour who receive the same pay. When they complain He tells them that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
God’s love is encompassing. Jesus tells the story of the great supper where a certain man bids the upper class people of his day to come. They are too busy to come. He then says to bring the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind to his supper. He says to go out into the highways and byways to bring them in. God’s love is encompassing.
2. God’s love is embracing. After the shepherds see the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, they along with the Angels rejoice. The shepherds praise and glorify God. Last Friday, Dru/Mondawmin Healthy Family programs that Dr. Hughes manages held its Christmas dinner and fellowship. The Harvey Johnson Center was full of mothers, fathers, counselors, and little children. The children ran, eat food, had their faces painted, played with balloons, and sang with the Kinder Man. A few of the babies present where least then five months old. Some a few weeks. You have to have a very hard heart to be around a new born baby and not seek to hold them, to reassure them, to embrace them. Something about a little baby to touches your spirit. There innocence. There exuberance. There tenderness. There warmth. There cuddle ability. Something about a young child that reminds you that God is always revealing himself. That he uses the essential elements of life to remind us that he is God all by himself. God’s love is embracing. All three gospels record a story of Jesus embracing little children and telling his disciples that of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s love is embracing.
That’s good news, God’s love is encompassing and that God’s love is embracing; but the great joy is…
3. Finally, that God’s love is enduring. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God’s love is enduring. Paul says it this way, what can separate us from the love of God and he continues that it is nothing, absolutely nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
That’s what makes the Advent season so powerful is that it lets us know that the God of the Oppressed is also the God of the Overlooked and that God’s love is encompassing, God’s love is embracing, and God’s love is enduring.
The young children would sing. “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong. They are weak, but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes. Jesus loves me for the Bible tells me so.”
