Strong and impassioned, Pastor Nadia decided to do what she called to do an "outlaw preacher" thing and preach about the verse just before the Gospel reading Pastor Lenny had chosen - Luke's account of Jesus' first sermon - that relates his appearance in the synagogue happens just after he is tempted by Satan.
She then "gossiped" about the spirit of the poor and related it to the same spirit of freedom that animates holy figures throughout the Bible. Pastor Nadia identified it was not only this spirit but that this was the same spirit that led him into the wilderness to begin with. Preaching freedom is cool but it takes some wilderness, temptations, tensions, resistance and repentance to get there. It was only after a couple of rounds with Satan that Jesus was filled with the spirit and moved forward with his ministry.
She asked the people of the Messiah / Jubilee collective to remind them to remember that Pastor Lenny preaches the good news to the poor, unemployed, undervalued, undocumented and the unconsidered not from his awokeness but from his poverty. That it comes from the time he spent in jail, not on book tour that give his words of good news their power.
"The spirit makes liberation preaching possible," Pastor Nadia acknowledged, "she just doesn't make it easy."
She closed with a gentle reminder to Lenny that every single gospel thing that the s
pirit gives him to proclaim to the people the spirit gives to him as well. The call to repentance, to change, the reminders that they are beloved. She gave him a blessing "May the preaching of your own sermons be fulfilled in your own hearing of them."
I will be excited to see where this ministry, that is so close to Creator, will go.
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