Another election cycle has ended…and begun. People have been elected to positions at the city, county, state and national levels of government. These elected officials are called “leaders”.
There is someone we call our leader, someone we follow. He was not elected by vote,
but we elected to follow his lead in our life. He calls us to be united around our individual and collective choice to put the kingdom he serves before any government. His inaugural address is recorded in the gospel of Luke and borrowed from the book of Isaiah.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
And lest we think his call to serve the kingdom of God is a call to withdraw from the world as it is, let’s remember we follow one who meddled mightily in the world as it was: naming the sin of oppression, healing the broken and burdened, bringing the profane into the sacred. It got him into trouble. If we follow Jesus and we’re not in trouble at least some of the time, then we’re probably following somebody else.