Poor, Prisoner, Blind, and Oppressed Lives Matter

I was reading Luke chapter four the other day and I came across Jesus words when he quoted Isaiah while referring to himself. 

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.   

Without going to deep, the general message is that in addition to Jesus coming for all who call upon His name, He was also about bringing justice to those who were oppressed.  So to use the now well-known slogan, the lives of those people He was speaking about mattered.  I think when we look at black history and the current condition for many in the black community we can also agree with the slogan “black lives matter”, because blacks have been and continue in some ways to be oppressed.  In that sense I really do believe that Jesus would agree with the sentiment coming from the Black Lives Matter movement.

But………………. There’s always a “but” isn’t there.  In the gospel of John Jesus is referred to as coming full of truth and grace.  I can’t help but wonder where truth has been in all of this.  Jesus was about healing the whole person.  That means spiritually too.  He would forgive sins and He would tell people to go and sin no more.  I’m wondering how many of us need to face up to the truth of our sins on this issue.  On one side how many need to face up to the fact that they would rather ignore unfair treatment of another race because it doesn’t really affect them?  Or that while the majority of police officers are doing an awesome job, there are indeed some bad apples, who at the very least are too violent and too quick to pull their gun and at the worst are racially motivated to act in such a way.  On the other side it seems like we are still waiting for a civil rights leader to honestly address the one thing that contributes most to young black men getting in trouble with the law in the first place; the absence of fathers in their lives.  That’s a moral issue for many but it’s especially so in the black community.  It’s also what leads to a far more serious problem which is young black men killing other young black men at an alarming rate.  I think these are all things that make Jesus weep; because again, black lives do matter.

I guess I’m just doing a lot of wondering for this blog entry.  Wondering when folks on both sides will start facing up to some difficult truths.  I think that’s when the real healing will begin.