ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
July 21, 2022
The Nigerian Ethicist, Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie, wrote: “There can be no liberation of African society without the liberation of African women.” In the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States, Fannie Lou Hamer noted that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” There are others who have said similar things, and it makes me think about Jesus. He did not start with the powerful, those who found the economy working for them or those who were healthy. Jesus found the sick, the marginalized and the oppressed. These were the people he healed and liberated. It might be because he understood that freedom for all creation had to have its genesis in freedom for those who truly found freedom out of reach. The freedom I enjoy must be the baseline for everyone else. Anything less leaves all of us, whether we recognize it or not, still longing for true freedom.
May the blessing of freedom I know be understood as a responsibility I have for those who know no freedom. Holy God, may it be so. Amen.
