Jesus and the Oppressed

By Olivia Sonell

Oppression is something each of us experience everyday of our lives; whether we are aware of it or not, most of us (unless you can be counted among the 1%) are oppressed. For you and me this can mean not being able to vote because the lines at the polls are too long, the ballots were thrown out, or there isn’t enough money for rent, retirement, childcare, after school activities, or food. It can be when the cops stop you because you’re Black or Transgender (or both). It can be when your partner hits you or when the government chooses to bail out the banks and leave workers vulnerable, poor, and desperate–again. 

In short, oppression is when someone takes away your power to shape your life and material conditions so that you thrive, rather than simply get by. As humans who experience these daily attacks on our lives where to look for guidance in addressing them is a pressing question, especially as a Christian. Perhaps we might look to the words and deeds of Jesus, as we Christian's are wont to do.  

“To Set The Captives Free”

According to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus announces what his whole ministry is about he declares he came “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives…and to let the oppressed go free.”(Luke 4:16-21). What I hear when I read these words is that Jesus cared about the quality of life of those he spoke to, that he wanted something better for them than poverty, imprisonment, and oppression - and that God had sent him to make that a reality.  

Before Mary had ever given birth, the Gospel of Luke tells us what she believed Jesus would do with his life. In fact some of the earliest words Mary spoke about Jesus were that he would feed the hungry, seek justice for the poor, and punish those who had used their power and wealth unjustly. (Luke 1:46-55) 

The scriptural commitment to resisting oppression goes all the way back to the first books of the Bible. In the book of Exodus Moses leads the future people of Israel away from Egypt where they were oppressed as slaves, forced to live and work at the whims of others, to a new land where they would be free to shape their own destiny. This concern about justice and oppression is a biblical throughline, appearing again and again and again, from the Psalms to the Prophets, to the existential writings of Ecclesiastes and Apocryphal texts like 1st & 2nd Maccabees.

Despite the thousands year gap, and the many changes brought as a result, there are still similarities to be drawn between what Moses and Jesus may have experienced and the ways we are oppressed today. These connections might not be immediately obvious to some of us, especially in the United States where unless we’re in prison, most of us are not slaves; however, we are all still caught up in oppressive systems. Familiar to us might be the systems of racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia, but driving all of them is capitalism, along with related systems, colonialism and imperialism.

 It is in these systems we can see the ancient/modern parallels, after all the occupying presence of U.S. police in Black and Brown communities certainly bears resemblance to the occupation of 1st century Palestine by Roman legions. And it occurs for many of the same reasons, namely that both the modern United States and Ancient Rome are Empires built on the extraction of wealth from colonized peoples.

While they may not sit on thrones like rulers of old, bosses, CEOs, and major shareholders take the profits the working classes produce and hoard it for themselves; today, just as in Jesus’ day, it is this “love of money” that is the root of all evil. (1Timothy 6:10) Because the rulers own the land, the machines, materials, and technology used in the process of production, as well as the majority of politicians, workers have little choice but to labor at our places of work in exchange for scraps from their tables. How much easier might that theft be to achieve when the people whose wealth that is being stolen are living in occupied lands?

This state of affairs isn't truly sustainable, either today or two-thousand years ago. Workers and the oppressed always rise up and attempt to fight back against the oppressors, hence the necessity of an occupying police force and/or legion. Along with misinformation spread through the media, one function of the occupying forces is to prevent the linking up of different oppressed communities. 

Something to keep in mind is that not everyone is oppressed in the same way. For example, I live paycheck to paycheck and the Coronavirus and its effects on the economy have impacted my and my wife’s lives in ways we did not anticipate. That promising new job I started in January? Gone. And there are people out there who suffer oppression in ways that I can only imagine—those who are sick and can’t afford healthcare, the elderly who have been pushed to the curb because they can longer compete with younger labor, and folks who have been pushed out of their homes. Their oppression and mine and yours are linked, because capitalism oppresses all of us. 

That being the case, might being a Christian mean more than simply acknowledging and fighting our own oppression separately, and instead, understanding how everyone else’s oppression is interconnected with our own. After all Jesus didn’t come to set just one captive free, but all of them. And if we’re to follow him faithfully it seems to me that we must seek to do so as well. This means something deeper than simply calling your representatives, signing petitions, and voting every two years. It means committing to developing relationships with those people in our faith communities and in our neighborhoods who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and to seeking out organizations who are working towards a vision that might align with what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven. A better world is possible, we just have to fight for it..

Questions for Reflection:

What struggles do you deal with everyday that might make Jesus angry?

In what ways do you think you are unequal in power or in access to the richest US Americans?

What are some ways that the CEO’s, landlord’s, or lender’s "love of money" negatively affects you and your loved ones?

What other forms of oppression are there that you don’t experience, but other people do? How is that form of oppression interconnected to yours?

What might “loving your neighbor” look like, knowing that our oppressions are interrelated and interconnected?