A Nuissance.
I take seriously the fact that sacred text has infant mortality taking center stage in both the Old Testament (the slaughtering of Hebrew babies by Pharaoh) and the New Testament (Herod the Great's slaughtering of the innocent).
In both cases, it is no accident.
It is systemic and much more sinister.
Power securing and reproducing itself is never in short supply of neutrality, innocence, and justification. Yet, it is always forceful and violent, no matter how reasonable and necessary it identifies itself to be.
It is intentional.
You begin to realize that it is not by chance that disproportionate death surrounds you, but is tied to systemic causes and power.
(SEE YOUNSGTOWN & INFANT MORTALITY)
So then, the heart of the minister is to care for those being harmed by those systems.
Liberation: let my people go. Solidarity of conditions is authentic solidarity.
Brueggemann describes this as the exchange of loyalty.
Liberation: flee to Egypt (The flight of the Holy Family).
But also to be a pest: to cry out against injustice.
To vocalize harm, injustice, and oppression.
We believe that the cry for justice has divine importance.
Resist the devil.
Resistance.
Berrigan’s negative virtues: noncompliance, nonviolence, noncooperation, non-betrayal.
Isaiah 50
4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
5 The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
6 I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
7 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.