Sometimes illumination comes to us from a single word. This recently happened to me when I was reading the Gospel of Luke and encountered this verse from the Passion narrative, about Pilate, Barabbas, and Jesus:
And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will. (KJV 23:25)
It’s the deadly precision of “will” that makes the sentence disturbing. That’s the choice here in the King James text, and it’s more compelling than the translation given in the New Jerusalem Bible, “handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they pleased,” and in the New Revised Standard Version, “handed Jesus over as they wished.” Jesus is defenseless before the crowd, its collective will, its fierce determination to do to him whatever it wants. This is mass hatred projected at a single defenseless person, a force-field of destructive energy.
My response to “will” led me to seek further in Luke for resonant words. I came across an injunction that Jesus speaks and then repeats:
I tell you, Nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. (13:3, 5)
“Perish” is powerful, but it’s “repent” that I lingered over and wanted to know more about. It derives from Old French repentir, from re, expressing intensive force, and pentir, based on Latin paenitere, “cause to repent.” The Greek of the original New Testament is metanoeō (verb) and metanoia (noun), a compound of meta, “after” or “change,” and noeō, “to think” or “to perceive.”
To repent is “to change one’s mind”—a transformation not superficial, but penetrating, accompanied by self-transfiguring remorse. True repentance requires the courage to say: “It was me; I said it; I did it.” That’s why Jesus reiterates the command. Repentance is urgent—the difficult discipline of radical self-reflection and change.
From “repent,” I was drawn to Jesus’s proclamation at the beginning of his ministry:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. (4:18)
Jesus is defining his mission, his message of deliverance and liberation for those who are impoverished in material terms and, even more, for the spiritually bereft, whose hearts have been broken.
What does it mean to be brokenhearted? The word has an origin in the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 34:18 and Isaiah 61:1, which Jesus here echoes. In Hebrew, it is shabar lev. Shabar means “to break, crush, or shatter,” like pottery fragmented into pieces. Lev (or levav) is “heart” in the sense of a self in its entirety—mind, will, and conscience. The Greek, suntribō, is equally vivid: “to crush, to smash to pieces.”
A broken heart is more than an emotional injury or momentary loss. It’s a sundering at the core of one’s being, brokenness in body and soul. The promise that Jesus has come “to heal the brokenhearted” is a profound pledge of restoration.
I recall a passage in William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, where he describes the sickness of a soul overcome by doubt and fear:
To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
James identifies the powerlessness in a person when existence becomes anguish, when well-being seems unattainable, and when death looms inescapably. He quotes Hamlet, from the “To be or not to be” soliloquy: “And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought…,” to evoke the depth of this despair. It’s despondency, total and beyond remedy, even as the sick soul yearns for reassurance that some “spirit of the universe” is connected to it, recognizing it’s in pain.
What do we ultimately realize? James answers:
Well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.
I’m moved by the resigned candor in the first sentence’s tone. No matter how sane, virtuous, or robust we may believe ourselves to be, we share vulnerable flesh and blood with the stigmatized and marginalized. Death levels all. No, it’s life that levels all. James’s “alas!”, forlorn, evoking the plight and predicament we’re in, reveals the spiritual need all human beings have in common.
The inevitable question is, what is to be done?
And here religion comes to our rescue and takes our fate into her hands…. The time for tension in our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away.
It’s “religion” that functions, says James, as the rescuing agent. Through it, we dwell at peace in the present; we’re not vexed and fearful about the future. For Christians, this is where Jesus enters the picture. His intervention means the certainty of active comfort and consolation. He offers purification and forgiveness.
From there, a final word in Luke beckoned to me. It’s “rejoice,” in the middle of three verses spoken by Jesus that affirm the specialness of each of us and the human community we’re members of:
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. (10: 19-21)
To rejoice is exhilarating, radiant, inspirational. It signifies a jubilant outlook, a vision of gratitude and wonder, a life shaped by joy.
How many of us “rejoice” today? In the fractured state of the nation in 2025—riven by frustration, anger, and resentment, and rhetorical and real violence—the media and public discourse amplify negativity, corroding our self-perceptions, politics, and relationships. In speech and behavior, we’re unable, or unwilling, to commit to our best selves and show loving concern for others.
Christian and non-Christian alike, few of us rejoice. Why has this happened? How might we be healed?
William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.
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