"God's Delight in the Oppressed" - Isaiah 62:1-5
This week’s text from Isaiah 62 speaks beautifully of God’s love for the people of Israel in one of the lowest moments in the history of the nation. Isaiah writes after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and during the time of their exile in Babylon. His people have lost so much of what they hold dear and are now being forced to live in the country of their oppressors. Many of them understandably believe that God has abandoned them. Yet the word of God comes to Isaiah to let the people know that they are loved and valued by God- not only that, God actually delights in this oppressed community.
As we celebrate our Peace Sunday over this MLK Jr. weekend, we will reflect on the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In his letter from a Birmingham Jail, King expresses his disappointment with white church leaders who failed to support the Civil Rights Movement. King writes, “I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." King believed that Christians are called to love and care for all people, yet these ministers were unwilling to proclaim that black people are our siblings in whom God delights.
Reflecting on God’s loving faithfulness to the oppressed community of Israelite exiles should help shape our perspective on oppressed communities in the present. If God freely chose to love and delight in the Israelites in exile, certainly God chooses to love and delight in marginalized communities today. Recognizing black people as an oppressed group thus leads to the conclusion that God especially loves and delights in them. To God then, black lives don’t just matter, they are precious, they are loved, they are delightful. We, as Christians trying to follow in the example of saints like Martin Luther King Jr., must live in such a way that recognizes that all people, most especially oppressed people, are loved by God. May God help us to embody Her love in the world by sharing in God’s special concern for the liberation of the oppressed.
Pastor Andrew Greenhaw