Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, January 22, 2023
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Jesus offers words of comfort to people whose situations were unlikely to change much.
If you are reading this, you are likely living in a capitalist society. The driving force behind capitalism is that private owners can produce, sell, and make a profit off products freely available to a free market. The more businesses sell, the more money they make. To sell more, businesses must create a need for their product. They create the need by advertising how good life would be with the product, and how awful life will be without it. Capitalism, then, does better when people do worse. Our entire economy thrives on people’s suffering.
One of the downfalls of this system is that it preys upon the poor. The entire system is designed to make the rich richer and keep the poor in poverty. In a sense, our culture values the status quo of wealth and poverty, of thriving and suffering. To bring people out of poverty, silence, meekness, and suffering would mean the toppling of the capitalist system, and that’s a tall order. Systems don’t easily change.
Jesus saw a similar systemic imbalance in his world. There was a deep divide between the wealthy and the poor, those with a voice and those without. Jesus’ words were strength and comfort to people with little chance of escaping their social status. True, Jesus came to turn the world’s social structure on its head. Also true, it was a goal that will likely never be fully realized.
Jesus’ words assured people: your suffering doesn’t go unnoticed. It isn’t irrelevant. It won’t last forever. God knows and remembers those mourning, suffering, silenced, sick, and poor. God blesses those who cannot find blessings for themselves. And Jesus promised the upheaval of the world—because you have been treated as the least on earth, you will be greatest in heaven.
