I want to talk about Dolly Parton, John the Baptist and Jesus.
Today I taught a class on Jesus’ primary proclamation and it was not “Love God and Love others” though those are very good and basic tenants of Christianity. The primary proclamation of Jesus was that the kingdom of heaven has come. Therefore, as John the Baptist says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. When the people ask John how, he says go and give your belongings away and feed the poor, live rightly. Don’t lie about people, don’t extort them.
John thought that what you did socially showed if your heart was repentant and bent toward God, or if you simply said, “Abraham is our father and so we’re saved!'“ It’s the equivalent of calling yourself a lover of God while you act in ways that show you don’t love God. This is the sin of pride. How can I be wrong if I am bearing God’s name? Jesus had a lot to say to the religious and it wasn’t great.
Jesus preaches this same message JTB preached. Prophets teach from the same playbook of their prophet superhero's. It is interesting considering that it appears Jesus and John didn’t know each other well. It’s not like they checked notes. But if the Spirit is on you, you are going to all act like the Spirit. God doesn’t change when he falls on different bodies.
Jesus quotes from Isaiah that the Spirit of the lord is upon me. And my message is good news TO THE POOR. He has sent me to proclaim freedom FOR THE PRISONERS. To HEAL THE BLIND, SET THE OPPRESSED FREE, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. This is the year of Jubilee when all financial debts were forgiven after 50 years.1
If I can paraphrase what Jesus thinks the kingdom of heaven (in contrast to the kingdom of the world) looks like: It is real relief for the poor with food and resources. It is real freedom to those enslaved, imprisoned, and mistreated systematically by establishments fueled poverty. It is real and true medical care which heals people. And it chases after this by breaking systematic poverty every 50 years. What one generation got themselves into, cannot be passed onto their children. You cannot have generations of poor people if they are fed, medically cared for, housed, and forgiven their payday loans with atrocious interest rates (see John’s notes to the tax collectors). Prisons suddenly get less and less full when we attack poverty, literacy, health care.
When Dolly came into lots of wealth, instead of amassing it to become a billionaire, she remembered her childhood growing up poor, with minimal education/literacy, medical care, disaster relief in her small, forgotten town. This is because true repentance keeps in step with the Father and bears the same fruit. JTB preached it. Jesus preached it, and with her actions, Dolly preached it. The Spirit doesn’t have different goals in mind when it falls on different bodies. God is wildly consistent from the Old To the New Testament to the Now.
I’m sad about Dolly Parton. It seems like she was something everyone agreed on in this country. Being a good human is a blessing to everyone, not just one side. If there’s anything to learn from her, I think it’s love. Love that transcends hate & party lines. She really cared about the poor & especially women and children.
In 1995, She started the Imagination Library which gave a free book every month to children from birth to age five, regardless of family income. MILLIONS of books to help children learn. Because poor literacy is attached to systematic poverty.2 The Washington State Department of Corrections partnered with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to put the books inside the visiting rooms of all 11 Washington state prisons. That makes me cry. Break that cycle, Dolly.
She worked to improve educational outcomes of the poorest by setting up the Dollywood Foundation. And she promised 7-8th graders in her hometown to give them $500 if they graduated highscool. The dropout rate fell from 35 to 6%.
For the 2016 Tennessee wildfires, Families who lost their primary residences received $1,000 per month for six months; ultimately more than $12 million was raised and distributed. Talk ab using your influence for good. She multiplied her own fishes and loaves by coming up with an idea where everyone could join in on the generosity.
Her name is on the Sevier county birthing center because she donated $1 million to provide healthcare for women and babies. Her legacy is memorialized by an aggressive care for the marginalized. Her name is on the Knoxville children’s hospital as well. This is how you get your name on buildings as opposed to just naming everything after yourself. And I bet she could care less. Her long time producer said the public would never know how much she gave, because she gave so much anonymously.
She worked to improve educational outcomes of the poorest by setting up the Dollywood foundation. And she promised 7th-8th graders in her hometown to give them $500 if they graduated high school. The dropout rate fell from 35 to 6%.
In 2024, she donated $2 million for hurricane relief. She donated a large sum of money for the development of the COVID vaccine (whether people like this or not) the gesture shows she cared about the medical well-being of YOU, a stranger she didn’t know.
If I can paraphrase here: Dolly cared about poverty as it is connected to what keeps people in poverty. Poor medical care, poor literacy, not enough money to make ends meet, disaster relief (very hard to recover from when you already don’t have enough resources), and understanding that women and children are disproportionately vulnerable. Dolly cared about embodying the year of Jubilee and breaking cycles of poverty in the world. She did that in big and small ways. She was an untraditional candidate for who we think embodies the teachings of Jesus: A busty country music superstar with a propensity towards plastic surgery? But then again, Jesus didn’t care much about appearances. He saw the heart.
Dolly received enormous wealth in her vibrant career. She didn’t want to become a billionaire. She certainly could have accumulated substantially more wealth had she not spent decades giving money away.
Dolly famously said, “When people are in a position to help, you should help. I try to put my money where my heart is.” & “I count my blessings a whole lot more than I count my money.” My hunch is that Dolly had her finances in order and was prepared for the end. If she felt responsibility in life, she certainly felt it in death. I believe we will see her legacy live on through generations to come.
With so much chaos and wealth hoarding, it was nice to have a Dolly in the world to be comforted by. I am thankful to think of her and Jesus by the fireside, her with her guitar and Jesus with an egg shaker? Jk. Tambourine at least. I know she’s smiling her famous smile being with him.
Lord, let us carry Dolly’s legacy of generosity in your own communities.
In a world of Musks, be a Dolly,
Jami
Leviticus 25:8–13 describes the Year of Jubilee: Slaves/servants were released, Debts and economic burdens were reset, Land that had been sold because of poverty was returned to the original family, Families returned to their ancestral property, Israel was not to permanently accumulate land at the expense of others, The land itself was given a Sabbath rest. Jesus comes to do this spiritually of course. But he does it physically in how he behaves with whoever he is interacting with. In God’s reordered society he builds in Leviticus (and elsewhere), he finds social justice extremely important and creates systems to be guard rails for the people. It is very ANTI-empiracle. Empire behaves in the opposite ways: wealth hoarding, crushing the poor, mistreating the foreigner, could care less who is dying or living, as long as they keep getting wealthy.
It reminds me when Mary is sitting and learning at Jesus feet, and He says, she chose the better thing. God loves learning! Or when Paul says, LET THEM(the women) LEARN! In 2 Timothy. The women were systematically held back from learning and they had a lot of catching up to do.
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