The Gospel Still Sets Us Free

Luke 4:16–21

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Galatians 5:1

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Amos 5:24

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Let’s begin where Jesus begins, in his hometown, in his body, and in his story.

 In Luke 4:16–21, Jesus stands up in the synagogue of Nazareth, the place where he grew up. It’s not Jerusalem, not Rome, not a seat of power. It’s a small, working-class village, a place people looked down on. Remember what Nathanael said when he first heard of Jesus?

 "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

And that is where God chose to start the revolution of redemption.

 Not in the palace, not in the temple, but in the margins, among the poor, the overlooked, the colonized, the ones who never get to set the rules.

When Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor”, he’s not offering a spiritual metaphor. He’s naming real people in real oppression.

 He’s talking about the poor under Roman taxation, the prisoners under imperial law, the blind who were excluded from temple life, the oppressed who were told their suffering was a punishment from God.

This is a sermon preached from below, not from above.

 It’s liberation from the inside out.

 And when Jesus finishes reading, he sits down and says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

That’s not poetry. That’s protest.

 That’s public theology.

 That’s Jesus declaring: “This is what God looks like when God shows up in the flesh.”

Let’s talk about social location, that sacred lens of where we stand when we read scripture.

 If we read the gospel from a place of comfort, we’ll miss its urgency.

 If we read it from a position of privilege, we’ll confuse control for righteousness.

 But if we read it from the street corner, the detention center, the unemployment line, the LGBTQ+ youth shelter, the reservation, or the minimum-wage job, then suddenly, the text starts to sound familiar.

Because the God of Scripture speaks from the underside of history.

 God has always shown up with the enslaved, the exiled, the silenced, and the forgotten.

When the Hebrew slaves cried out under Pharaoh, God didn’t tell them to be patient, God sent Moses.

 When Israel sat in Babylonian captivity, God didn’t send comfort, God sent a word of homecoming through the prophets.

 When Mary sang her Magnificat, she didn’t sing about the mighty staying mighty, she sang of the proud being scattered and the lowly being lifted up.

That’s the lineage Jesus stands in when he says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

So if we take social location seriously, we have to ask:

 Where is the gospel being preached from today?

 And who gets to hear it as good news?

Because if the gospel we preach today sounds like good news to the powerful but not to the poor, if it comforts the comfortable but does not confront the oppressor, if it excuses systems of exclusion while ignoring the cries of those pushed to the margins, then it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus will always sound like freedom to the enslaved, justice to the wronged, dignity to the despised, and peace to those who have never known it.

It will always begin in Nazareth, not in Rome.

And it will always stand with the oppressed, never with the empire that crucifies them.

We are not in ancient Nazareth, but we are most certainly in a world crying out for liberation. And we must ask ourselves: what gospel are we preaching now?

Are we still proclaiming “good news to the poor,” or have we become chaplains to the rich?

 Are we still declaring “freedom to the captives,” or have we decided certain people don’t deserve it?

 Are we still lifting up the oppressed, or have we become too afraid to even name who they are?

Let’s tell the truth.

In the United States today, discrimination isn’t some historic sin we’ve conquered, it’s a present, persistent reality.

 It is woven into laws, church policies, classrooms, hiring decisions, courtrooms, social media algorithms, and dinner table conversations.

And the targets are not hidden.

Black and Brown communities are still over-policed, under-resourced, and held to different standards of justice.

Immigrants and asylum seekers are demonized from podiums while their children are detained in cages that the public forgets still exist.

Transgender and nonbinary people, especially youth, are being legislated out of their own lives, told where they can use the bathroom, what healthcare they can access, and even what names they’re allowed to be called.

LGBTQ+ families are watching elected officials erase them from school curriculums and public life.

Women and people who can become pregnant are facing new restrictions on their bodies in state after state, denied the dignity of personal autonomy under the banner of “protection.”

Disabled people continue to be left out of justice conversations, and Muslim, Jewish, and Sikh Americans are again experiencing a wave of religiously motivated hate crimes that rarely make national headlines.

Let’s be honest: this is not accidental.

This is the fruit of a national culture that treats some lives as disposable, some truths as threatening, and some people as permanently “other.”

 And what makes it even more dangerous is that much of it is being done in the name of God.

In too many pulpits, discrimination is rebranded as “conviction.”

 Hatred is justified as “biblical.”

 Inclusion is mocked as “wokeness.”

 And silence is baptized as “staying neutral.”

But friends, neutrality is not gospel.

 Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

 And a gospel that’s only good news for the powerful is not the gospel of Jesus, it’s propaganda for empire.

Jesus did not come to preserve the social order.

 He came to flip the tables, to disrupt the injustice, and to set the captives free.

So I ask again: What gospel are we preaching in November 2025?

Because if it doesn’t speak healing to those most harmed, if it doesn’t affirm the sacredness of Black lives, if it doesn’t honor queer and trans children as beloved of God, if it doesn’t confront the dehumanizing logic of white Christian nationalism, if it doesn’t fight for the immigrant and the houseless and the historically excluded, 

Then it is not good news.

It is not gospel.

And it is not Christ.

Church, the world is watching us. But more importantly, the Spirit is upon us. And that Spirit is still calling us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, not just in our songs and sermons, but in our policy, in our public witness, in our politics, in our schools, in our pulpits, in our streets, and in our systems.

The gospel is not safe.

It is liberating.

And we are the ones called to carry it.

But, The gospel is not neutral.

 It never has been. It never will be.

Neutrality is the language of the powerful.

 It’s the tone used by those who don’t want to disturb the systems that benefit them.

 But the gospel, the real gospel of Jesus Christ, is a direct confrontation with the lie that injustice can be ignored.

Let’s go back to Luke 4.

 Jesus doesn’t stand up in the synagogue and say, “Let both sides be heard.”

 He doesn’t preach, “Let’s stay balanced.”

 He doesn’t say, “Let’s take our time and be careful not to offend.”

No.

 He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor… to set the oppressed free.”

That is not neutrality. That is alignment.

Jesus aligns himself with the hurting.

 With the harmed.

 With the ones empire would rather forget.

So when we as a church remain silent about policies and politics that cause real harm to real people, when we sit back and say, “Well, that’s not our issue,”, we are not being pastoral.

 We are being passive in the face of oppression.

Let me be even more direct:

When states outlaw trans healthcare, and the Church says nothing, that is not neutrality. That is cruelty in silence.

When school boards ban Black authors, and pulpits shrug their shoulders, that is not balance. That is complicity.

When churches talk about “unity” but not about racism, what they are actually saying is, “We’d rather protect the feelings of the privileged than center the survival of the marginalized.”

This is not the gospel.

 This is cowardice wrapped in tradition.

In the words of the Black liberation theologian Dr. James Cone:

“The gospel of Jesus is not the gospel of safety. It is the gospel of liberation. It means siding with the least of these.”

That means that our sermons must speak truth.

 Our prayers must name pain.

 Our communities must disrupt comfort.

 And our discipleship must cost us something.

Look again at the life of Jesus:

He was not crucified for being nice.

 He was crucified for being disruptive.

 For turning the world upside down.

 For challenging the unjust religious leaders, the violent empire, the corrupt economic system.

 For touching the “unclean,” feeding the undeserving, healing the “unworthy,”

 and saying, loudly, that God’s favor rests on those we’ve been told to reject.

Jesus got run out of his hometown for that sermon.

 He got crucified by the state for living it out.

 And we dare not preach a softer gospel now.

Because friends, in 2025, we don’t need a gospel that plays it safe.

We need a gospel that tells the truth.

 We need a gospel that takes sides.

 We need a gospel that is brave enough to say:

Black lives matter.

Trans kids deserve to live.

Immigrants are not illegal.

The poor are not disposable.

Women and queer people and people of faith who dissent still belong in the church and at the table.

The gospel is not a tool for domination.

 It is a weapon of liberation.

 And if it doesn’t set people free, it’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” , Amos 5:24

This verse gets quoted a lot. It’s stitched into banners and printed on t-shirts and shouted from stages.

 But church, let’s not forget why Amos said it.

He was speaking to a nation that was prosperous but corrupt, religious but unjust, ritualistic but heartless.

He was speaking to a people who loved the sound of their own worship but refused to hear the cry of the oppressed.

God says through Amos, just a few verses earlier:

“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… Take away from me the noise of your songs.”

Why?

Because while the people were singing psalms, they were also crushing the poor.

 While they were offering sacrifices, they were closing their gates to the vulnerable.

 While they were declaring themselves blessed, they were ignoring the blood in the streets.

Church, Amos could have written this yesterday.

We live in a nation where politicians pray in public while slashing support for hungry children.

Where school boards ban books by Black, queer, and Indigenous authors in the name of “protection,” but do nothing to stop the bullying and harassment that drives kids into isolation and despair.

Where elected officials quote Scripture on the House floor, but then pass laws that strip bodily autonomy from women and gender-diverse people.

Where churches host elaborate worship services but stay silent on police violence, on voting suppression, on the mass incarceration of Black and Brown bodies, on the rise of white Christian nationalism in our schools and sanctuaries.

And still we call it worship?

Amos is still crying out.

And the question is: Will we stop singing long enough to listen?

Amos is not asking us to sing better songs.

 He is demanding we live better lives.

 He is calling for justice not as a mood, not as a sermon series, not as a tagline, but as a river.

Rivers move. Rivers disrupt. Rivers flood and reshape and saturate.

And so must our faith.

We don’t need more worship nights if they don’t move us to action.

 We don’t need more small groups if they don’t challenge how we live in systems of privilege.

 We don’t need more prayers for peace if we are unwilling to confront the violence of white supremacy, patriarchy, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism woven into the fabric of our daily lives.

God doesn’t need our performances. God demands our participation.

Participation in justice.

 In compassion.

 In liberation.

Let justice roll down.

 Not trickle. Not pause. Not wait.

Let it roll. Let it flood. Let it wash away every system that claims the name of God but denies the humanity of God’s children.

Because if our faith doesn’t demand justice, it’s not prophetic.

 It’s performative.

And if our churches don’t become rivers of righteousness, they will become monuments to irrelevance.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” , Galatians 5:1

Church, hear this loud and clear:

The good news of Jesus Christ is not about restriction. It is not about domination. It is not about legislating morality, enforcing conformity, or upholding cultural purity.

The gospel is about freedom.

Not the cheap kind of freedom that means “I get to do whatever I want.”

But the deep, soul-rooted, world-shaking freedom that breaks every chain.

 Freedom from fear.

 Freedom from shame.

 Freedom from the lies that tell us we are not enough.

 Freedom from systems that say we must earn our worth.

 Freedom from empires that try to own our bodies and silence our voices.

So when Galatians tells us, “Stand firm and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery,”, what is that slavery today?

It is the slavery of white supremacy that still cages Black children in underfunded schools and brutalizes their bodies on camera.

It is the slavery of nationalism that disguises itself as faith but forgets the foreigner.

It is the slavery of purity culture that shames women and queer people while hiding abuse behind stained-glass windows.

It is the slavery of forced poverty, where the cost of insulin, childcare, or housing can determine whether someone survives.

It is the slavery of silence, where pastors are told not to “get political,” even while policies are breaking families apart in their pews.

It is the slavery of a theology that worships control more than it worships Christ.

Church, Christ did not set us free so we could chain others.

Christ did not suffer the cross so we could build cages out of Scripture.

 Christ did not rise from the dead so we could bury people in shame again.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

And so the church must stand firm:

Against every law that strips people of dignity.

Against every theology that tells people they must change to be loved.

Against every policy that makes the vulnerable more vulnerable still.

To preach the gospel is to fight for the freedom of all God’s children.

And that freedom doesn’t begin with borders.

 It doesn’t end with doctrine.

 It doesn’t conform to the status quo.

It breaks chains. It opens doors. It tears down dividing walls.

Galatians goes on to say: “In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

That’s not just a feel-good verse.

It’s a revolution.

It’s a rejection of the hierarchies and categories that human beings use to justify inequality.

So if our gospel is not liberating, it is not Galatians.

 If our theology is not dismantling oppression, it is not the gospel of Jesus.

 And if our churches are not safe spaces for the oppressed, then we are not preaching Christ, we are preaching empire.

Beloved, we have shouted. We have wept. We have stood in the fire of prophetic tradition.

 Now the question remains:

What will we do with it?

Because the gospel doesn’t end in the pulpit. It begins there.

 This not the work, it is the call to the work.

So I say to you:

 Be the good news.

Don’t just preach liberation.

 Live it.

 Don’t just post about justice.

 Build it.

 Don’t just lament systems.

 Interrupt them.

 Undo them.

 Create something better.

If the Church is to be faithful in 2025, we must stop trying to be safe.

 Stop trying to be respectable.

 Stop trying to be neutral.

The world is groaning.

The groans of the earth are in the fires, the floods, and the poisoned air.

 The groans of God’s children are in detention centers, banned books, closed clinics, and homeless shelters filled with the mentally ill and medically abandoned.

The good news is that God still hears.

 And God is still calling the Church to rise.

Not to power.

 But to presence.

Not to dominance.

 But to deliverance.

So here’s the charge:

When you see racism, call it what it is: sin.

 When you hear anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, name it: spiritual violence.

 When you encounter policies that silence, starve, or stigmatize, resist them with your vote, your voice, and your body.

Do not wait for a movement to begin.

 You are the movement.

Be a safe place for trans teens.

 Be a supporter of disabled voices.

 Be a neighbor to immigrants and asylum seekers.

 Be a disruptor in systems of white comfort.

 Be a sanctuary, not a fortress.

Because the church isn’t dying, friends.

 The empire is dying.

 And the gospel will survive it.

Remember this:

 Jesus never promised us comfort.

 He promised us resurrection.

 But resurrection only comes after death.

 After the death of fear.

 Of patriarchy.

 Of racism.

 Of performative religion.

 Of cheap grace.

So let it die.

 Let it all die, so something holy can rise.

The world is watching.

 And more importantly, the hurting are watching.

Let them see, in us, a Church that refuses to sell out the gospel to remain popular.

 Let them see, in us, a Church that will speak when others are silent, that will stand when others sit down, that will march when others retreat.

Let them see, in us, the Jesus who broke every chain, and broke every rule that kept love from doing its work.

Because it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Now go, and make that freedom visible.

Amen. And amen.