Sermon - Tarrytown United Methodist Church

Pursuing Justice

Helen Almanza
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 15, 2007

Text: Amos 7: 7-9, Colossians 1:9-14

The Scriptures I have studied for this sermon have given me an awkward if not surprising insight. They include the two read this morning from Amos and Colossians as well as Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan (10:25-37.) and Psalm 82.

Perhaps if you studied them you are also surprised. If I asked you what is most important in leading a life worthy of the Lord, pleasing to the Lord, what would you say? Think a moment – say the top 5 things?

I wish I could hear what you are thinking. My immediate response was to write a long list. At the top: (1) love of God and neighbor, (2) living a life of faith.
Then,

caring for others
supporting and building up God’s people
personal piety
action on behalf of others

My list went on and on.

What I am embarrassed to say is that the word “justice,” although it was on the list, was nowhere near the top in importance. It really came as an afterthought. And after studying the Scriptures, I have been reminded that justice needs be at the top of that list. Justice is not only important to God, but critically important. If I am to lead a life worthy of the Lord, pleasing to the Lord then I must be concerned with justice.

The Book of Amos is also all about justice. Amos was an 8th century prophet in the Northern kingdom (called Israel) during the reign of Jeroboam I. . In the passage today, Amos has a dream, and in the traditional translation, the Lord is standing next to a wall with a plumb line in his hand. A plumb line is a piece of string with a weight attached that is used by builders to see if the vertical lines (e.g. on a wall) are straight or “plumb.” The Lord tells Amos that the plumb line has been set in the middle of the people of Israel, and they don’t measure up to God’s standards for right living. God is not happy with the way the people are bending and buckling. No longer will things be the way they have been. God’s willingness to bear with sinners and wait for them to change has been a kind of credo in Israel; but God’s patience has finally run out! God tells Amos that all the high places and sanctuaries of Israel are going to be demolished and the house of Jeroboam will be destroyed. God will never come this way again!

The problem is that although Israel is prosperous and growing, it is at the expense of the peasants. The workers are impoverished, the hungry are starving and many people don’t even have clothing. Large estates are being built by landowners who live in luxury and leisure while those who build them have nothing to eat. The gap between the “haves” and “have not” is enormous. The royal courtiers and merchants are at the top of a pyramid and the great mass of people is being ground into poverty at the bottom. The courts are corrupt (Amos 5:10-13) and you can actually buy a poor person for a few coins of silver. The needy can be purchased for a pair of sandals (Amos 8:6; 2:6). God is very angry because the fundamental sense of justice that is so important to God is being ignored. Therefore, they will be destroyed. Israel has been use to God rescuing them but Amos tells them there will be no rescue. The House of David is destroyed and the line is ended until 700 years later when the Messiah is born.

Then, I read the letter of Paul to the Colossians. In it, he expresses his genuine appreciation of their faith and commitment. He prays that they will lead lives worthy of the Lord by growing in the knowledge of God and bearing fruit in every good work. He discusses the spiritual wisdom and understanding that is required to bear fruit in good works.

It is always a surprise to me when I am reminded of how important good works are to Paul. In many of his letters he is clear that authentic faith shows itself in doing good (Romans 13:3; 2 Cor 5:10; Gal 6:10; 1 Thess 5:15.) For example, in 2nd Thess 2:17 he speaks of strengthening others in every good work and deed while in 2 Cor 9:8, he asks the “Corinthians to share abundantly in every good work.

It was when I read Paul’s letter and then Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan who acts as a neighbor to the victim in the ditch paired with Amos and Psalm 82 that I realized the significance of the discussion in Colossians of the spiritual wisdom and understanding that entail bearing fruit in every good work (1:9-10). Such good work is elaborated later in terms of justice and fairness (4:1). Colossians stresses the hope of the gospel as the motivation for the faith and love that find their expression in the pursuit of justice.

The concept of justice is pervasive throughout the Bible. Jeremiah tells us that justice is a basic requirement of life, and he speaks of the “rights of the needy” (Jer 5:28.) Justice is a right! Not only do we find the word “just” and “justice” many, many times in the Books of the Bible but also the original term in Hebrew is frequently translated in English in our Bibles as “righteousness” and “judgment.”

Justice is also a chief attribute of God. God is the defender of the poor and the oppressed (Jer. 9:23-24; Psalm 10:17-18) and is characterized as having a special regard for the poor and the weak. In both the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament, responses to God are empty or diminished if they exist without justice (Amos 5:21-24; Mic 6:6-8; Matt 23:23.) In 2 Cor (9:8-10) Paul tells us that God’s justice is grace flowing into and through believers to the needy.

There can be no question about it. Justice should have been in the top 3 on my list. But, what is justice and how am I to lead a life worthy of the Lord through justice?
Surely, justice is about fairness and equality. The Psalms (76:9) say justice rectifies gross social inequities of the disadvantaged and puts an end to the conditions that produce the injustice (Ps 10:18).

Ron Campbell and I talked about this for a long. We thought about the many efforts we make to help the disadvantaged; but we weren’t quite sure if they were efforts of justice. We decided we were having trouble distinguishing between charity and justice. Is it charity or justice to build a Habitat for Humanity house? Is it an act of charity or an act of justice to go to Russia? Of course, everything doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Then we remembered the old story about the babies in the river. Many of you may have heard it also.

Two people are strolling by the riverside when suddenly they see a baby in the river. They jump in, rescue the baby and turn him over to a kind stranger who rushes the baby to the hospital. The next day they see two babies in the river. Once again, they rescue the babies and give them to 2 strangers who rush them to the hospital.

The next day they see many babies in the river. They call EMS and rescue as many as they can, but many of the babies struggle and drown. The first man says to the other, “Isn’t it wonderful that through our faith we are here during this tragic time of need?” “Yes” says the other man; but “ I think we better get moving and go to the head of the river and find out why all these babies are getting thrown into the river in the first place.” Rescuing the babies is obviously important and it is an act of charity. But going to the head of the river to stop babies from getting into the river is an act of justice. And we need both

So that brought me back to my question. Am I engaged in acts of justice as well as charity? My favorite activity in the world is to participate in Mobile Fishes and Loaves. It is a truck that hands out simple meals and clothing (socks and T shirts). First Church shares one with 1st Baptist Church. St. Louis has three trucks that go out nightly and St John Newman has four. It is a wonderful experience to help homeless people. It is charity and much needed. But where is the justice for those folks? They clearly fit the definition in the Psalms of the disadvantaged for whom justice is to rectify gross social inequities. What do I do to work on the conditions that have brought about the homelessness?

Believe it or not, I can remember a time when there were very few people here in Texas who were visibly homeless. We didn’t have beggars when I was a child. It wasn’t until the mental institutions were shut down in the 60’s that we began to see people on the streets. The institutionalized folks had been promised community facilities to care for them. But they never materialized and they began living on the streets.

Now the homeless are everywhere. I can’t even begin to say why there are so many homeless people and what needs to be done. But if I am so interested in the homeless, why haven’t I looked at those issues? Those are issues of justice. I am not saying that the charity I have done is not worthwhile. What I am saying is that I (and you too) need to be looking for what to do to bring justice to these people.

And there are so many things we need to look at and organize to do the acts of justice that are so important to God. All we have to do is read the newspaper. Think about it:

Our mental health system
If you are poor, forget it. There is no help for you. Oh, you might get into MHMR if you are lucky. Maybe you can see a doctor twice a year. Maybe you can get medication. Maybe. To take care of mental health problems requires money – how many people do you know who have sold their homes, depleted their savings, taken everything out of their retirement fund to take care of someone in their family? And they have money.

How many people do we have on the streets of Austin who are mentally ill and they don’t have access to their medicine? Or they need to be monitored to be certain they take their medicine?

How many people are in jail or prison because of the acts they have committed as a result of untreated mental illness? Remember the man who went after the policeman with a big butcher knife? He was killed because he was threatening the cop. Why did it come down to that? Apparently everyone who knew him knew he was mentally ill and receiving no treatment. The policeman was forced to kill him to save his own life. We need to do something about our mental health system. It is wrong that poor people do not have access to care.

Our foster care system
We take children out of homes all the time. They are being abused, neglected and abandoned. They need to be taken out but what do we do with them? Did you read the article about children sleeping on office floors because they didn’t have anyplace to put them? We have been paying people with master’s degrees to spend the night in offices with children who are already confused and abused. A judge ordered that to stop. Now the children are taken to shelters where someone has to still spend the night with them because the shelter is full and their personnel cannot watch the child. How more defenseless can you get than to be a child who has been taken away from their parents?
These children need justice.

Our justice system
How many people were there who were awaiting execution in Illinois when the group of law students investigated their cases and found enough evidence that they were exonerated and given pardons? Last I heard it was 26. They were going to be executed. They were poor people who could not afford a lawyer. And they were innocent.
We just need to face it. Certainly we have many guilty people in our prisons, but we obviously have innocent ones too if the Illinois situation is any indication. Our system requires good lawyers who have to be paid to earn a living. That is only fair. But what do you do is you don’t have the money?

Our health care system
According to the American Statesman newspaper (July 11, 2007), the governor is just getting ready to sign a bill that allows 127,000 children of the working poor to receive health care benefits. This brings the total to 360,000. The legislature approved money over the next two years to add families to the CHIP rolls but that still leaves an estimated 1 million Texas children without health insurance. These are children whose parents are working.

If I am to live a life worthy of God, I need to be involved in acts of justice. Clearly God is expecting justice. I had the opportunity to be in a workshop led by Peter Storey from Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the pastor who integrated the First United Methodist Church in Johannesburg during apartheid. He lost over 200 members. He led many non-violent (at least on his part) marches with the Reverend Bishop Tutu asking for justice. He was jailed, beaten, interrogated; he faced guns and tanks on behalf of justice carrying nothing but his Bible. He praised efforts of charity but he said that private charity is no substitute for organized justice; that it is false to think that just by everyone loving each other will rectify injustice. He said “One Jew can love one Arab and one Arab can love one Jew; but a group of Jews and a group of Arabs will never love each other. Groups by their nature cannot love each other or live and relate by agape, only individuals can. If we are to have one group in relationship with another in a “loving ” way it can only be done through justice. Justice is love distributed over large groups and cultures.”

He continued to say that as Christians, we are called to lives of piety. On our journey of faith we are able to move beyond piety. That piety causes us move first into charitable acts and the natural progression is into acts of justice. One of my friends said, “Justice is scary.” Peter Storey agrees. When we are afraid, he said we need to stand with the poor as the means of overcoming our fears. He said that it is only through exposure to the oppressed, the least, the suffering and the poor that we can cast out our fear. We need to look in their eyes and hear their story. Only then can we give our fear over to God. How are we to move from lives of piety to charity to justice?

I can tell you that I’ve been talking a lot to God about it. God hasn’t been accepting my comments such as “Those problems are too big, too complicated, I can’t solve them.” “What can I do, I am just one person?” .

There is a story about John Wesley. I don’t know if it is true or not. The churches in England were only for the rich. You had to have fine clothes and be clean to attend in the 1700’s. To make sure that the poor could not ruin their fine places of worship the churches were built up high in a rectangle without any steps to enter them. You could only get into them from a carriage. It is said that John Wesley had steps put in those churches and the poor could enter to worship God. A seemingly small thing perhaps to you and me but what an enormous step for the poor.

The Psalms say, justice rectifies gross social inequities of the disadvantaged and puts an end to the conditions that produce the injustice. What am I going to do to lead a life worthy of the Lord? What are you doing? Well, I remember the words of Paul: We have the hope of the gospel as the motivation for the faith and love that find their expression in the pursuit of justice. Paul was writing that letter to me. I think he was writing to all of us.