Oppression

...how [Jesus] went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. (Acts)

Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth... (Isaiah)

"Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here..." (Mark)

The discussions of the past 2 days here on campus really have me wondering, "what is oppression?" The three passages above all seem to give different indications of oppression. Jesus healed those "oppressed by the devil." Isaiah promised that God would wipe away tears and disgrace. The young man in white of Mark tells of Jesus rising from the dead.

As I struggle with white privledge and the original sin of racism I can't help but run across all these different ways of looking at oppression. But each of these definitions is used as a description of what it looks like to end oppression. People are healed, disgrace is wiped away, Jesus is alive.

Here's the point. Oppression only ends with God. With Jesus we are reconciled to God. As such we have the opportunity to be reconciled to one another. For as on Easter we come to know that God cannot be defeated, so too as an Easter poeople we must know that we are no longer slaves to sin, but to Jesus Christ who calls us to love the poor, to embrace persecution, and to be reconciled.

The hard part of course is what this end of oppression and reconciliation looks like. For that I don't have an answer. All I have is a hope that on Easter I will once again be reminded that 1- all things are possible for God and 2- its not about me.