The history of politics and of the church has been written and controlled by people with access, power, and education to write books and get them published. The Bible, however, is a rarity, for it is extraordinarily subversive. The Bible consistently took the side of people on the bottom and not the people on the top. The rejected son, the barren woman, the sinner, the leper, the outsider, all of them were the ones chosen by God.
We repeatedly see God showing barren women favor in the Hebrew Scriptures. Sarah, Abraham’s wife (Genesis 17:15-19), Rachel, Jacob’s wife (Genesis 30:22-24), and barren Hannah was given Samuel (1 Samuel 1).
The pattern has always been “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). This is so consistently the pattern that we no longer recognize its subversive character. We see this, especially in Mary, a “humble servant” (Luke 1:48).
In case after case, the victim becomes the real victor, “the privileged position of the victim” is the revolutionary perspective of the Bible. Without it, it would be very difficult to understand the “folly of the cross” of Jesus.
Without this favoring those at the bottom, religion would end up defending legitimacy instead of human pain, the prevailing norm instead of the suffering masses, success and victory instead of truth, and ministerial privilege instead of charity and compassion.
The Bible invariably took the cases of powerlessness, and from there God creates a new kind of power – the power handed to the early disciples and today longing to once again break forth…
Acts 17:6 “These men who have turned the world upside down”
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