Justice for All

Gaza Boys Fenced In, Dale Spencer, Gaza, 2009

Heavens above,

rain down justice;

let the clouds pour it down.

Let the earth open,

so that salvation springs up,

and justice sprouts with it.

                 (Isaiah 45:8)

This week I’ve been carrying the word “justice” with me like a prayer.

Stories of downed airplanes, shelling of refugee shelters in Gaza, frightened children held at the US border: my heart whispers “let justice rain – and reign.”

Justice is one of those words encompassing a rich mix of multiple meanings, illuminated by interchangeable translations between the Hebrew words mishpat and tzedaqah and the English words justice, righteousness, equity, mercy, victory, salvation, “doing all that’s good and right.”

Mishpat has been described as “rectifying justice” – giving people their due, as when an offended  victim cries “I want justice!”

But track mishpat through Hebrew scripture and it takes on new dimensions. First is the insistence that courts and judges view all offenders or complainants as equal regardless of wealth or status. That alone is a goal still poorly realized, when our prisons are full of poor kids serving time for trivial offences while white collar criminals responsible for the theft of billions continue unimpeded. 

But mishpat went far beyond to work of the courts to insist on rectifying inequity, insisting that the most marginalized (widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor) receive their fair share of the community’s goods and blessings.

As Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and author of Generous Justice, explains:

The mishpat, or justness, of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice, of mishpat. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.” 

But mishpat is only one of the words that is sometimes translated “justice.” Tzedeqah is the other, even more expansive than mishpat: 

Primary justice, or tzadeqah, is behavior that, if it was prevalent in the world, would render rectifying justice unnecessary, because everyone would be living in right relationship to everyone else. Therefore, though tzadeqah is primarily about being in a right relationship with God, the righteous life that results is profoundly social.

From what I can tell, primary justice, tzadeqah, is both goal and action, end and means. Passages in Psalms suggest that God’s justice, righteousness, and love are so inextricably linked that we can’t know one without seeking, receiving, and sharing all three: 

The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love. (Psalm 33:5)

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.  (Psalm 89:14)

There are Christians, like Keller, and churches, like Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian, that are deeply committed to both seeking and sharing justice. But for far too many who claim to follow Christ, justice is considered optional, or even objectionable. I grieve at the many times I’ve heard thoughtful voices dismissed with “oh, he’s one of those social justice Christians.”

If God is a God of justice as well as love, I’d argue that justice should be part of every Christians’ DNA – and I’d argue, as well, that the church’s lack of credibility and effective witness is in direct proportion to its lack of interest in seeking and maintaining justice. 

In a short video introduction to the 2011 Justice Conference, Walter Brueggeman invited the listener to rethink the connections between love of God, love of neighbor, and a life of justice and righteousness: 

One of the misfortunes in the long history of the church is that we have mistakenly separated love of God from love of neighbor and always they are held together in prophetic poetry. Covenant members who practice justice and righteousness are to be active advocates for the vulnerable and the marginalized and people without resources. And that then becomes the way to act out and exhibit one’s love of God.

 So love of God gets translated into love of vulnerable neighbors. And the doing of justice is the prophetic invitation to do what needs to be done to enable the poor and the disadvantaged and the neglected to participate in the resources and wealth of the community.

 And injustice is the outcome of having skewed neighborly processes so some are put at an unbearable disadvantage. And the Gospel invitation is that people intervene in that to correct those mistaken arrangements. 

We are surrounded by vulnerable neighbors. How do we intervene?

A friend, responding to my post last week about liberty and constraint, wrote of the injustice of a legal system that provides nothing for poor families seeking justice for their murdered daughters: 

In an 8 month trial, families learn to constrain themselves, and to expect very little from the system that cares so deeply about principles and the accused, while the poor and vulnerable struggle in the land of plenty.

 I find, it does not matter what language is spoken, liberty is a construct defined by the educated elite that has no real bearing on the working poor.

I hear in her lament the “mistaken arrangements” that ignore the needs of grieving families and pay little attention to the underlying inequities that spill over into violence and despair. 

No need to look far for other examples: another friend told me this week of the urban school where her children struggle in crowded classes with no extra aides or special programs, while just miles away the classes are smaller, with extra attention for children with learning difficulties, a choice of after school activities, plentiful resources. She is deeply aware of the “unbearable disadvantage,” and struggling to move her children to a better school.

Another conversation this week called attention to local companies that make life hard for older workers, hoping those workers will resign (without severence) so younger employees can be hired at lower wages. One member of the conversation had just lost his job after weathering months of attempts to make him quit; all the others had suffered layoffs of their own.

“So how is that supposed to work?” one woman asked. “I mean, for the company, they save money, right? But where are all those older workers supposed to go?”

The Gospel invitation to intervene points us back to the need for wisdom. We may see ways to offer care to individuals affected by injustice, but it's far harder to see ways to address root causes or call for change in entrenched systems that benefit the privileged and powerful. 

I’ve been reading Deepening the Soul for Justice, a little book (just 44 pages) by Bethany Hoang of International Justice Mission. She talks about the danger of burn-out, or of feeling so overwhelmed by injustice we do nothing, and ties effective involvement in injustice to ever deepening spiritual practice. I’m impressed by her description of the way IJM staff begin each day in “stillness,” spending time in prayer before facing into the horrors of human trafficking and the abuse and violence confronting poor women and children. 

I’m also impressed with the way Hoang ties justice to worship: 

Justice is always connected to worship. consider Proverbs 14:31 and the inextricable relationship between how we treat the poor and our worship of God: "Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker; but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.'

The entirety of Scripture emphasizes that true worship, by definition, must always have us thinking about our neighbors in need, just as loving our neighbor should always flow out of our worship. 

Justice is always connected to worship, because both worship and justice are about the right ordering of the world. Both worship and justice proclaim and declare God’s lordship over all–including evil, including oppression. (36-37) 

Hoang points out that most of us will not be first on the scene in situations of human trafficking or domestic abuse.

But we can still make seeking justice part of our every day engagement with the world around us.

Here are some practical steps. Please feel free to share you own.

1. Learn to notice and acknowledge injustice and spend time in prayer about ways to engage. 

2. Think carefully about how we use our influence to include or exclude, to oppress or restore, and take time to treat those around us (cashiers? servers? colleagues? children?) with equal respect and care.    

3. Make purposeful choices that prioritize justice: pay more for fair trade products, buy goods and services from companies that treat their workers well.

4. Review our own privileges and look for ways to share them. Education? Cars? Homes? Vacations? Books? Clothes? Contacts? Energy? Time? 

5. Look for ways to encourage and support others in understanding and pursuing justice.

This is the third in a series exploring words that help or hinder our ability to serve our communities in love while renewing a web of compassionate engagement. Earlier posts:  

Wisdom, July 6, 2014

Liberty and Constraint, July 13, 2014

Other, earlier posts on justice: 

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places? October 20, 2013

How Much Does Justice Cost? September 1, 2013

Seeking Justice, January 20, 2013

Justice, Mercy Parasites? August 19, 2012

Power.Money.Justice.Love? January 15, 2012

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.   

Advent One: How Do I Know?

This is the season when our secular script calls us to account. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday: consumer capitalism is taking attendance and counting the collection. Get your money in motion. It’s your patriotic duty.

I find myself agnostic on free market fundamentalism, and non-compliant on the call to dutiful consumption. I don’t believe our future depends on ever-increasing production. Instead, I’m intrigued by thinkers like EF Shumacher, Herman Daly, Gar Alperovitz, Marjorie Kelly, and their exploration of a commons-based economy less dependent on measures like market shares and GDP and more open to alternative systems of value.

Every year, as Advent collides with our annual consumer celebrations, I find myself thinking about belief systems, identity issues, where we put our hope for the future. Am I of value because I spend? Is my contribution dependent on the size of my paycheck? Is my hope for the future tied to the health of my pension? If I question our economic model, will I be tried for heresy?

We all have beliefs we hold firmly, creeds we confess. Some of those are so deeply embedded we no longer see them for what they are, some so foundational to who we are we’re surprised when someone calls them into question. We hold narratives we assume are normative: Treat the world well. Watch out for your own. Go to a good school, get a good job, make as much as you can.

Somehow we believe our own constructs are the right ones, while simultaneously endorsing the idea that all faiths are equal and your truth is as good as mine.  If everything is equal, then Romney’s version of reality is equivalent to Obama’s, Rush Limbaugh’s rants as reasonable as Jon Stewart’s sly reflections. Are some things true, and others false? Are some valuations right, and others wrong?

Here’s a simple one: do you believe that what we see is what we get? That the material world is the measure of value, that life proceeds according to easily duplicated models, that there are natural laws that nothing can change?

Or are there realities beyond the physical realm? Does my value rest in something you can’t count? Are there times when natural laws are set aside by forces we can’t see?

Maybe not so simple.

Ideas have premises as well as consequences, and each plank in our platforms, each item of our creeds, rests on others, some explicitly affirmed, some studiously suppressed. For most of us, if we make the effort to clarify, we find contradictions, confusions, items of faith held in unacknowledged tension.

My goal in this blog has been to dig around in what I believe, to examine premises as well as consequences, to try to hear the half-heard words that form and inform who I am, what I do.

Advent lands me back at the foundation of that, as the narrative of a baby born two thousand years ago collides with the narrative of power, profit, personal value playing out in the stress and strain of an American December.

So I’ll start here: why would anyone care about the story of that provincial baby, nobody child of nobody, born in an occupied country, in a dusty nowhere town, in a stinking animal stall?

And what halfway intelligent modern person would believe, for even a millisecond, that that baby was the product of a deity’s word, spoken to an unmarried teenage girl, or that mythical creatures no one can document showed up in force to sing to some smelly shepherds?

Approach this as a scientist, and the narrative crumbles quickly.  No one can “prove” the facts of an individual’s conception, immaculate or otherwise, and what scientific evidence would support the songs of angels: undoctored photographs? Phonograph recordings?

The story of Jesus, like many stories of scripture, sits outside the realm of science, which is not to say that scientists can’t be Christians; many are.  But for those who insist on scientific naturalism, on a reality that conforms, is explained, can be proved, by the laws of science, the Christmas narrative is a fairy tale, a silly myth, of no more weight, and maybe less interest, than Seuss’s Grinch, or Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin.

But if science is the measure of meaning – we live in a very flat world indeed.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of “the radical insufficiency of what is finite and limited”, the “cramped and constricted horizon” encountered when “our best and most honest reflection on the nature of things led us to see the material universe as self-sufficient and uncaused; to see its form as the result of random motions, devoid of any plan or purpose.”

Advent is a reminder that we all, whatever we profess to believe, find ourselves constrained by the constricted horizon of "what is." Surrounded by broken systems, broken institutions, broken people, we surrender to the self-protective stance so deeply encouraged by an impatient, uncaring world. Even those of us who say we believe in an active God surrender to the finite, limited vision of reality, measuring our worth in taxable dollars. We fall into compliance with superficial valuations. We become complicit in the competitive enterprise. Our voices are silenced. Our hope for change is dulled.

At first, (as young adults, or willful dreamers) we rebel at the “radical insufficiency” of the current regime: we try to be generous, even though generosity looks foolish. We try to be honest, even when honesty is rarely rewarded. But slowly we cave. We blend. We realize that those ideals we held have no place in a material world.

Then God grabs our world and shakes it – like a child shaking a snow globe – and the scenery changes.

Yesterday I started rereading the gospel of Luke. Luke, the only Gentile writer represented in the Bible, was also one of the most educated: an upper-class Greek doctor, Paul’s “beloved physician”, and a careful historian.

He starts his account of Christ’s life with a promise to share only what he's researched himself and is convinced is true:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us . .  With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account . . .  so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

After his quick introduction, Luke plunges headlong into the story of Zechariah, John the Baptist's father: names, dates, simple history. But in verse eleven, the narrative takes a turn: "Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear."

I love the detail. Not just an angel, but “standing on the right side of the altar.”

The angel explains what is about to happen:  Zechariah’s aging wife will become pregnant with a longed for baby. The child, a son, will be part of God’s plan of intervention for his people, and the world.

I identify deeply with Zechariah’s response: “How do I know this is true?” Religious leader though he is, he's asking for proof: Will you give me some kind of unassailable documentation? Will you come tell my neighbors, so they know I’m not crazy? Could you make this announcement in church next Sunday? So everyone else hears you too?

How do I know?

I love the angel’s response. Polite, but sharp. Let me paraphrase: “Seriously? You’re a priest, here we are in the inner sanctum of the temple, I’m standing here in front of you, straight from God’s throne, me, Gabriel, still God's messenger, the same one who spoke to Daniel, centuries ago. I'm here telling you what God has planned, and you’re wondering if you can believe me, even while you're shaking with fear. You still need proof? Really?”

I’ve never had an encounter with Gabriel, but I’ve seen God intervene in my life. And in the lives of others. I’ve seen the intervention that brings forgiveness, freedom, joy, healing, laughter in the place of pain, a deep sense of belonging for those who felt abandoned.

And still, five minutes later, or five weeks later, five years later, we ask: “How do I know that was true?” “Why should I believe in miracles?” "Where's the proof?"

There are some great discussions of miracles available: a quick overview by Peter Kreeft, CS Lewis’ book “Miracles,” chapter seven of Tim Keller’s Reasons for God, Two interesting websites, Christians in Science in the UK, and American Science Affiliation in the US, offer extensive resources on the compatability of  science and faith. The Biologos Foundation, founded by Human Genome Project geneticist and physician Francis Collins, offers a helpful mix of articles about miracles and science, and a new book by Collins and Karl Giberson, The Language of Science and Faith.

But, for most of us, questions of miracles aren't really the point. We have other things on our minds. We have our own un-examined premises, and that's good enough for now.

In those dark days of the Roman occupation, some of God’s people, like Simeon and Anna in the temple, waited for God’s intervention, and celebrated at the first hint of his appearance. Some, like Zechariah, went about the motions of religion, no longer convinced that God might show up.

My guess is that then, like now, most didn't give it much thought. Life is far too busy. There are Christmas presents to buy.

Earlier Advent posts:

Advent Two: John the Baptist,  Dec. 12, 2010 

Marys' Song,  Dec. 19, 2010 

Christmas Hope,  Dec. 24, 2010 

Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011 

Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011 

Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011 

The Christmas Miracle, Dec. 24, 2011

Risen Indeed? The Hermaneutic Community

Easter morning worship is the high point of the Christian year. I look toward it through the reflections of Lent, the fasting of Good Friday, the inner stillness of silent Saturday, with a sense of  anticipation.

Orthodox icon: Resurrection

Annie Dillard, writing of church attendance, asked:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." (Teaching a Stone to Talk)

I feel that most strongly on Resurrection morning. We gather to celebrate God’s power breaking through, the proclamation of life in a world of death, the promise of all-things-new in a world where we have been held captive far too long by the burdens and the boundaries of the old.

As a child, I attended a small, somewhat somber church. Our organist appeared to meditate before each change of chord. Our hymns echoed in a space too large for our meager few. But Easter morning we took part in a sunrise service with other congregations in a nearby park. I loved the trumpets, often off-key, and the exuberant songs sung together in the early-morning chill:

 Up from the grave he arose;  with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;  he arose a victor from the dark domain,  and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.  He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Watching adults I’d come to know and respect, I could see: they believed it. They sang with rare energy and conviction.

When my own children were small, we attended a much larger church where the rector (our lead pastor) encouraged everyone to bring bells and tambourines to the Easter service. At every proclamation of  “Christ is risen” we were to ring the bells, shake our tambourines or car keys. Our rector himself set the example, with exuberant banging of his tambourine, and our most staid and proper parishioners joined in the buoyant clamour. “Christ is risen!”  “The Lord is risen indeed!”

The Empty Tomb, Bertrand Bahuet, France

At my current church, sharing of space between two services led to the practice of renting a large tent for our contemporary Easter service. The worship community gathered to roll out carpet, arrange potted flowers, hang banners, truck in a large stone to remind us of the open tomb. As we gathered for the service it was with a sense of joyful awe: the community itself was a gift, those gathered were a gift, and we were there because we had seen, lived, experienced together the resurrection power we were there to celebrate.

Our worship itself can be an avenue to encountering God, and we have many in our church family who sat uncomfortably in the back row until God spoke to them in worship, until the resurrection power drew them further into the center of our celebration.

One Easter, as part of our worship, we prepared a visual way of sharing some of our stories. It still makes me cry to watch, as I reflect on the power of the resurrection in the lives of those I know and love.

I regret the few Easter mornings, a guest in other churches, where I’ve found myself listening to talk of “the ‘Easter story,” a weary myth passed down as part of a time-worn liturgy, metaphor for spring, occasion to speak of cocoons and butterflies.

“Go home,” I’ve felt like saying. If it’s just about spring, let’s go outside and pick tulips. I grieve that in far too many churches of my own Episcopal denomination, Easter will be celebrated with pomp, lovely music, and scant awareness of the power invoked and far too often ignored.

Without the resurrection, Christianity is just one more religion: a tattered set of rules, a philosophical construct patched together to shield us from our fear. As the apostle Paul said emphatically to the doubting Corinthians,

“If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God . . . And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. . . .If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Over the years I’ve come to value thoughtful affirmations of the logical, historical evidence for a resurrected Christ. C.S. Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity was helpful early on. More recently, Tim Keller has done good work in defending the resurrection in an accessible way, while N. T. Wright takes a more scholarly approach in the Anglican tradition.  (Both have written books on this, but summary articles and video are available online: Keller in Relevant Magazine, and Wright in a summary video.) For a wider view, Telford Work of Westmont University offers a helpful summary of approaches, with some useful links.

Christ Resurrected, Anna Kocher, 2006

For me, though, the proof of the resurrection goes far beyond logic and historical record. The resurrection is visible in human lives across continents, across centuries. Dig back through the stories of Augustine, Jerome, or Patrick, any of those early saints whose lives were upended by the voice of the risen Christ, calling them to lives of forgiveness, compassion and bold witness of the resurrection.

Or listen to the stories of  Brother Yun of China, who came to know Christ through the miraculous healing of his father and the subsequent discovery of a Bible long hidden in rural China after the Cultural Revolution had done its best to suppress all knowledge of the Christian faith.

Spend time with Christians from other places and stories surface: men and women who met Christ in dreams or visions; teens dramatically transformed by an encounter with the Father who will never leave them; healings on sidewalks in London, under trees in Africa, on hillsides in Bolivia: resurrection power still pouring out, sometimes through human hands and voices, sometimes through the voice of God alone.

Leslie Newbigin, missionary in India from  1936 to 1974, returned to the UK to find a skeptical culture dismissive of the Christian faith. Wrestling with the question of apologetics, he asked:

"How can this strange story of God made man, of a crucified saviour, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it. Does that sound too simplistic? I don't believe it is."

Continuing in his discussion of Evangelism in the City, he noted:

“The hope of which the church is called to be the bearer in the midst of a famine of hope is a radically other-worldly hope. Knowing that Jesus is king and that he will come to reign, it fashions its life and invites the whole community to fashion its life in the light of this reality, because every other way of living is based on illusion. It thus creates signs, parables, foretastes, appetizers of the kingdom in the midst of the hopelessness of the world. It makes it possible to act both hopefully and realistically in a world without hope, a world which trades in illusions. If this radically other-worldly dimension of the church's witness is missing, then all its efforts in the life of the community are merely a series of minor eddies in a current which sweeps relentlessly in the opposite direction.”  

Over the years I’ve watched many people come to faith, and many fall away. Those who see their faith as a list of rules to follow or services to attend, who have seen the church as an arbiter of dogma or shared "values" more than community of grace, are not likely to remain.

The Risen Christ, He Qi, China

Those who have seen, experienced, become part of a living community convinced of resurrection power begin to live that power in their own lives, to share it with others, in ways that build hope, and faith, and deepen love. As walls fall down between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, racially and ethnically divided, as God’s people demonstrate the freedom that comes from full forgiveness and the compassion that springs up from the knowledge that all that’s needed is provided, as gifts are affirmed in women, children, the marginalized, the previously ignored, resurrection becomes visible, inescapable.

If the truth of the resurrection is held in doubt, it’s not our apologetics that needs attention, but our lives together as visible community of love. 

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”  ( N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church )

This is the first in a series considering what it means to be “Resurrection People.”

For others:

The Great Reversal: A Resurrection People

Earth Day Shalom: Ripples of Resurrection

Resurrection Responsibilities: Feed My Sheep

It’s also part of the April Synchroblog examining the truth of the resurrection. Here's a list of bloggers who contributed to this month’s Synchroblog.

• Marta – On Faith Seeking Understanding, Truth, and Theology
• Tim Nichols – How Would Life be Different if Jesus did not Rise?
• Glenn – Kingdom Come or Kingdom Now?
• Sonja Andrews – The Resurrection and the Life
• Josh Morgan – The Role of the Resurrection
• Abbie Watters – What if the Resurrection were a lie?
• Minnow – Resurrection Impact
• Leah – Resurrection – Or Not!
• Hey Sonnie – The Resurrection Hoax
• Liz Dyer – The Resurrection I Firmly Believe In
• Ellen Haroutunian – Is There a Christianity Without the Resurrection?
• Jeannette Altes – What if…
• Christine Sine – If the Resurrection did not happen, how would the world be different?
• KW Leslie – Supposing Jesus is Dead
• Travis Mamone – If the Resurrection was a Hoax
• Kathy Escobar – Jenga Faith
• Jeremy Myers – What if Jesus Did not Rise?

And for poetry and more resurrection art, visit Resurrection.

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!



As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the   __ comments link below to post.