The Fourth Sunday of Lent: Let Justice Roll

Justice is sweet and musical;
but injustice is harsh and discordant.
-Henry David Thoreau



Justice.

A powerful word. An even more powerful ideal. Yet we so often mess it up. Whenever I am teaching ethics I have to stop and explain that from an ethics standpoint justice is not what we normally think it is. Legally, it is usually seen as giving someone what they deserve.

• “We want justice to be done against that criminal.” 
• (Justice is the appropriate penalty for having done something wrong.)
• “Justice was served!” 
• (They got what was coming to them.)

In ethics, however, justice is all about equity and equality.

• Justice is about appropriate use of resources so people are not left out. 
• Justice is making sure that people get what they need, not what they deserve.

A Google search gave me this definition:

• Just behavior or treatment.
• synonyms: fairness, justness, fair play, fair-mindedness, equity, even-handedness, impartiality, objectivity, neutrality, honesty, righteousness
• The administration of the law or authority in maintaining this.

Hence Thoreau’s quote above is a great way to start thinking about justice- it is sweet and musical!

I love the thoughts that come with that phrase. When justice is done it is more than just good. It is sweet. I has a sense of rightness and purpose to it. Justice helps people look at a situation and not let preconceived notions or ideology get in the way. Justice helps people recognize the needs of neighbors as much as our own needs. Justice, in God’s universe, is giving people what they need! Using the musical metaphor, there is harmony to justice, the justice that helps people get what they need brings us together.

One of my favorite quotes on justice is from the prophet Amos, chapter 5, verses 23-24:

Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (NIV)

Institutionalized oppression was the rule instead of the exception. God didn't like that.

• Prayers and sacrifices do not make up for bad deeds.
• "Practice of religious acts is no insurance against the judgment of God"
• Behaving justly is much more important than ritual.
• By oppressing the poor and failing to practice justice the Israelites were behaving unrighteously.
• Social justice was to be enacted as a core of God's message in Amos' prophetic teachings. (Link)

Yet we humans are not good at this kind of justice. The prophets remind the people regularly. Jesus tells the parable of the workers waiting in the village square waiting to be hired for a day’s work. Some are hired at the crack of dawn, others at noon, and a few more are hired with but a few hours left. At the end of the day they all got paid the same. It was the amount promised to the first worker and the last. In the parable the ones who worked all day get upset.

“We worked all day out there and these loafers came along at the end of the day. They shouldn’t get the same. At the least they should get less.”

“This is what I promised,” said the owner. “Do you begrudge me my generosity?”

You better believe we do!

It was just, no one was wronged. Everyone got what they were promised. Generosity. Justice. Grace!

God is telling the people through Amos that even their best and most sacred music (music, again!) is useless if there is not justice in the land. Jesus is telling his listeners that a promise is a promise. Words must lead to appropriate responses. Heavy-duty stuff. Again, a common theme it seems this Lenten season: Words aren’t what it’s all about. It is in our actions that we show what we are made of, that we show what we believe.

God is the different drummer, the one giving the rhythm to a more just and loving world. God is telling us to be "just" as God is "just."

Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven!

BUT, I don’t want God to be just to those who aren’t as good as I am. I don’t want the sinner over there to get the same grace as I get. It’s all about me! What I want. God being “just” or giving “justice” is different.

Thanks be to God!

• Do I truly believe in God’s justice, God’s justness, God’s generosity, and finally and eternally, God’s grace?
• Do I truly believe that God wants true justice to flow like an everlasting river?
• Do I truly believe that my actions are more important than my prayers and my “humble” words and worship?

• This Lent, may I be open to hearing the words of justice from a loving God.
• This Lent, may I seek ways to be a channel of God’s justice.
• This Lent, may the words of my mouth and the meditations from my heart lead to true worship in standing with those who need God’s justice.
• This Lent, may I discover the wonders of grace lived and acted out in God’s Name.

That may be the most beautiful thing I can share!

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,

we must carry it with us or we find it not.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is Required of Us?

Since I don't preach any more, I don't usually look at the Sunday lessons. But I thought this week would be a good one to do so. There are many things that have happened in this first week of the Trump era, I wondered what wisdom and guidance might be found in Sunday's lectionary. I wasn't surprised or disappointed.

The Hebrew Bible Lesson: Micah 6: 6-8

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you but to

• do justice, and
• to love kindness, and
• to walk humbly with your God?

The Gospel Lesson: Matthew 5: 1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

• “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
• “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
• “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
• “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
• “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
• “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
• “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

May we hear and then heed.

Singing a New Church

In many, many ways the "old hymn tunes" still have an amazing musical power that most newer contemporary tunes don't have. Some of that, of course, is because the older tunes have an emotional power that new songs can't match. The old tunes are also rich in musicality. I am a big supporter of those who write new words to these older tunes.

Delores Dufner, OSB, is one of those amazing lyricists.

Last week in church we sang one of her powerful hymns, Sing a New Church, which is sung to the old tune many of us know as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. That song is amazing and the connection with the old tune gives the tune itself a staying power.

Dufner's words hit me with the wonder of the third line of the refrain. It is a call to "sing a new church into being."

A new church- a renewed church- sung into being. SUNG into being. The music and melody of faith bringing faith into being.

I love her use of words that describe this:

• Summoned
• Gathered

• Diversity
• Unity

• Male AND Female
• In God's Image

• Dare to Dream
• The Vision Promised

• The Art of every race
• Weaving a song of
• Peace and Justice

Then finally coming together in the Eucharist- the Table

• All the human family
• A circle wide and
• Free

Amen- and
Amen!

© Oregon Catholic Press

The Reason for the Season

In Jim Wallis’s latest email he got my attention with the title: The Night I Left My Church.  In the email he says it happened when he was 15:

“Jim, Christianity has nothing to do with racism.”

That's what my church elder told me when I was a 15-year-old boy. Can you believe that? “That's political, and our faith is personal,” he said.

That's the night I left my church.

This kind of story is all too common. So that's exactly why we founded Sojourners 40 years ago – to call Christians back to a radical Jesus, the one who called us to be with “the least of these,” including those people living with the realities of poverty, racism, and war.
Forty years ago, many Christians didn't understand that we are called to the public meaning of faith, as well as the personal.

Well, I have liked Sojourners for many years now and think highly of their social justice stance that calls into question so much of what the Religious [sic] Right [sic] considers "Christian." I think this story of Wallis's says why so many have had such difficulty with the church. I cannot overlook that a baby being born to an unmarried mother and having to put the child in a manger is pretty radical stuff. Christmas is a message of hope for the least and lost. It is a message of challenge to the rest of us.

Which is why I like this simple reminder of what Christmas is really all about:

What About These Don't We Understand

Yesterday's Moravian Daily Texts jumped off the page at me when I read them last evening:

Isaiah 10:1-2 New International Version (NIV)

1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

Philippians 2:3-4 New International Version (NIV)

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Doesn't leave much doubt on where God might stand on some of the more controversial issues of the day or about how God's definition of "justice" might be a whole lot different than what we may say.

Why the Incarnation Matters

Got this from The Beatitudes Society Weekly Circuit Reader. It fits right in with what I have been reading and meditating on this Christmas season:

"In the scandalous Christmas stories of God-made-flesh, we see crystallized in Jesus the promise of a world transformed, a world of justice and peace where empire must be challenged, where God asks sleeping, frightened shepherds -- like us -- to jump up and run. God still comes, God is still being born, in our tired world. Incarnation calls us to face into the future, and to put flesh on Micah's ancient dream: ". . . they shall all sit under their own fig trees and no one shall make them afraid."
--~ From Anne Howard’s response to
Patheos December blogging challenge
"Why the Incarnation Matters."

Wisdom Quotes

Over at Connexions Kim posted 20 pearls of wisdom from the late William Sloane Coffin. Coffin was a clergy activist and strong peace and justice advocate, former chaplain at Yale and Sr. minister at Riverside Church. These pearls are truly quick, to-the-point, and pointed.

True, we have to hate evil; else we’re sentimental. But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters, and of those the world already has too many.

The argument that gays threaten to destroy heterosexual marriage is an assertion only, not an argument. If anything destroys marriage, it’s married people, not gays.

All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality.

Christians forget that it was the Devil who tempted Jesus with unbounded wealth and power. And it is the Devil in every American that makes us feel good about being so powerful.

The trouble with violence is that it changes not too much, but too little. Nonviolence is more radical because it is more truthful. Violence always ends up calling on lies to defend it, just as lies call on violence to defend them.