it is often stated that “good news” for the poor is bread or a job or political freedom. That is true insofar as it goes. But Jesus also cared about the spiritual lives of the poor. He saw them as bodies and souls. His call to repent acknowledges the fact that their poverty doesn’t remove their agency. The poor are capable of sin and repentance. Repentance means that even if they remain poor, they can do so as different people. The enslaved recognized this.
