President-Elect Trump has made some frightening Cabinet choices. He and his team, including Elon Musk, are saying frightening things about what they want to do. Our country and the world are still confronted by interlocking crises - extreme weather events, massive hunger and poverty, aggressive authoritarian powers, and many violent conflicts. I wish our incoming government well, but it seems unlikely that they will make things better.
It’s a good time to read the Bible, and I’m now making my way through the gospel of Luke. The first chapters are about Jesus’ birth, John the Baptist, and the early days of Jesus’ public life. What most strikes me as I read them now is how much they refer to the Roman Empire and to the kings and priests who served as its local agents.
“In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Lk. 2:1). Rome imposed oppressive taxes on the people it had conquered, and this empire-wide enrollment was designed to make sure everybody paid. For lots of families, that meant going without their daily bread. Many peasants were driven into impossible debt.
Luke’s account of John the Baptist starts with a detailed list of the governmental leaders of the day: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrach of the region of Ituraea and Trachnonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the God came to John the son of Zachariah in the wilderness.”
This verse makes me smile - a wilderness preacher among all these powerful men. Yet the word of God came to John the Baptist.
After Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness he announces that God’s kingdom is at hand, “God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
The promised kingdom of God will supplant the Roman empire, but the kingdom is also present right now. Sick people are healed. Blind people are given sight. Fisher folk are called to become missionaries.
We’re like those fisher folk. We have relatively little power, but we carry the word of God and hope for a better world.
I’m dealing with the stresses of our time by focusing on God’s forgiving love for humanity and on things I can do to make things better.