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“Ain’t I a woman?” abolitionist and former slave Sojourner Truth challenged in 1851, to upend cultural notions of racial and gender inferiority. In her lecture at a women’s rights conference, Truth wasn’t asking, but delivering her famous words to express that she was free, and not a victim. Eight years before her speech, she avowed that God had called her to preach the truth and renamed herself Sojourner Truth. Her speech was one of the many ways she fulfilled God’s calling on her to proclaim freedom for African-Americans and women.

In Isaiah 61:1, we find the prophetic words Jesus would finally deliver as He spoke in synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath (Luke 4: 14-24). In this passage the words poor, brokenhearted, captives, prisoners describe the wounded, marginalized, and oppressed among us—or us. Or in other words, victims. Victims of broken relationships, unethical leaders, and corrupt societal systems. To the poor, brokenhearted, captives, and prisoners, Jesus’s words meant freedom. His words meant that their sorrows and brokenness had been heard by God and God, not flawed human leaders, would be their deliverer. God, not corrupt and broken justice systems, would bind their wounds and release them from darkness.

Jesus’ proclamation of freedom wasn’t just for those gathered in the synagogue that day, his proclamation of freedom is for us today. -Michelle R. Loyd-Paige