Called to do Justice

Isaiah 42: 1- 9: Called to do Justice

North Decatur Presbyterian Church, Decatur, GA

January 12, 2014

Would you mind repeating this phrase? Here is your servant.

Let’s say it together: Here is your servant.  

I’m going to have us say this together several times in this sermon.  And as you say it, put one hand on your heart. and extending another hand outward toward others.

Let’s try it,(hands): Here is your servant.

On this day in which we remember the baptism of Jesus, and are called to renew our own baptismal promises:

My hope, through this liturgy, the sermon, the music, is that we leave here with a renewed sense that we are called to serve boldly in this world.

I love this Isaiah passage: Strong statements, speaking of God’s Servant.

God’s servant will bring forth Justice to the nations”

God’s servant will faithfully bring forth justice”

God’s servant will not grow faint or be crushed until Justice has been established”

The task of the servant is clear: To bring about Justice on earth. on earth.

Let’s say our phrase again: “Here is your servant”

Undeniably, again and again, scripture attests to a God who loves Justice.  

Let justice roll down like waters  

What does the Lord require, but to do justice!

Isaiah says: The task of the God’s servant is to bring forth justice.

Say it with me: Here is your servant..

Now, Isaiah said this about God’s servant thousands of years ago.  Here we are in the 21st century.  Certainly, most of the issues of injustice have been resolved, right?

Of course i’m kidding.  

What are some of the issues of injustice we concern ourselves with?

(share….)

Now I’d like to do two things.

First, speak to some of the ways in which we may be hindered to fulfil our role as God’s servants:

our own blindness, and our our sense of feeling helpless or weary in the face of injustices.

And then, share stories about ways in which people have overcome some of these conditions in order to fight for justice.  

Isaiah says one of the foremost tasks of the the servant of God’s is to give sight to the blind

A servant must be able to see the injustices in the world…

The challenge is that so often we do not see:

...In many ways we are simply blind!

psychologists may call this denial.

Instead of being open to the way things actually are, we are convinced things are a certain way and it is very hard to convince us otherwise.  

Take for example economic inequality.

Most of us would agree this is a justice issue, right?

And it’s amazing how our society can continue to perpetuate or even exacerbate the so called wealth gap.

Social programs are being cut...no action is being taken on living wage issues

while at the same time

The biggest firms on wall street set aside $91 Billion in bonuses at the end of 2013, to add to the already incredibly high salaries.

Why?

Impoverished communities are easily demonized as dangerous places filled with bad people who are unwilling to work, or who work low wage jobs because they dropped out of school... why should social programs be funded to help them, why should wages be raised?

Contrast this with images in which the wealthy are lauded as being of reputable and upstanding character, and hard working.

Wealthy people are publicized all over as people to emulate.

And so programs are cut, working class wages remain flat, and bonuses are doled out.  

Public sentiment remains neutral, So often we fail to see the connections.

Regardless of where we fall on the issue we can all agree that we don’t want children going hungry, we don’t want people to live in poverty, Can we ask God for vision to see how to bring justice to these issues that so often divide?

Another more literal example of not seeing: the reality of climate change.

A huge justice issue because the poorest populations who are contributing the least to global warming will be the ones who suffer most as a result of global warming.  

One of my favorite podcasts is Living on Earth.

A recent show featured an interview with Bill Ruckelshaus--the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who oversaw the initial implementation of the Clean Water Act. The EPA was formed in the early 70s because there was a public outcry about all the environmental degradation: “rivers caught fire and fish washed up dead by the thousands; cities were so fogged by pollution people had trouble seeing one another.”

When asked about the environmental problems of today, problems Mr. Ruckelshaus says are much more severe, Ruckelshaus admits that there is not as much public concern as there was then.  

His explanation:  

We don't see the same kinds of visible pollution problems today that we did.

We don't have flammable rivers anymore and we don't have smog that’s so awful that you can’t even see one another.

Problems today; they tend to be more invisible.

So often We don’t see.

Isaiah says: God’s servant is to bring sight to the blind

Can you say it again: Here is your servant.

God’s servant is also one who brings out prisoners from the dungeon…

One of my biggest problems with being the servant I think I am called to be is my own sense of complacency: feeling okay about where I am, what I’m doing, and what’s going on.  

This complacency comes from two major factors:

First, what psychology calls role theory…

where we tend to act in a way other people expect.

I’m the son of Jim and Anne Topple, I’m a Presbyterian minister, I’m a father, I’m a white male…. I’m supposed to act a certain way; and in ways more powerful than I can understand I am imprisoned by these expectations...

to further illustrate role theory:

Some of you may have heard of the so-called prison experiment conducted at Stanford by professor Zimbardo.  

regular students were divided  into two sets: some were the guards and the

others were the prisoners; they started acting out roles as people expected.

The planned two-week investigation had to be ended after only six days because the guards became sadistic and the prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.

Each student, as he acted as a guard or a prisoner, the action itself was pounding in the idea.

IN other words:

What you think may change what you do,

but perhaps even more important, what you do will change what you think.

We are both set free and imprisoned by our actions and our inaction.  

God’s servant is called to bring for the prisoner from the dungeon.

The second factor leading to my sense of complacency or inaction comes from my own sense of inadequacy...who am I to do something?  

I get trapped into thinking my efforts wouldn’t really matter, or overwhelmed by a sense that I can’t do enough, paralyzed by anger, fear, or frustration.  

So I’ll sometimes pass the buck, saying it’s someone else’s job,

or make up excuses as to why I can’t engage.  

When really, more likely I feel powerless in the face of so many challenges.

the late Nobel Price laureate, Wangiri Maathi nobel 2004,

Told a story to help one overcome any sense of inadequacy or what she calls a sense of awkwardness.

It’s the the story of a hummingbird:  

Maathi said:

We are constantly being bombarded by problems that we face

and sometimes we can get completely awkward.

The story of the hummingbird is about this huge forest being consumed by a fire.

All the animals in the forest come out

and they are transfixed as they watch their forest burning

and they feel very awkward, very powerless, except this little hummingbird.

It says ‘I’m going to do something about the fire.’

So it flies to the nearest stream, takes a drop of water and puts it on the fire.

It goes up and down, up and down, picking up water and putting it on the fire as fast as it can.

In the meantime all the other animals, much bigger animals,

like the elephant, with the big trunk, who could bring much more water.

They are standing there helpless, and they are saying to the hummingbird,

‘what do you think you can do? You’re too little. This fire is too big.

Your wings are too little, and you’re beak so small,

you can only bring a small drop of water at a time.’

But as they continue to discourage it,

it turns to them without wasting any time and tells them,

‘I’m doing the best I can.’

And that to me is what all of us should do. We should always feel like a hummingbird, concludes Maathi.

I like to think the story ends with the other animals finally joining the hummingbird in the struggle to put out the fire.    

So often, we find that justice workers begin their efforts surrounded by just a few or even alone, but in time, many people join in the struggle.  

One fighting hummingbird is another nobel laureate, Liberian Leymah Gbowee:

Ms. Gbowee, a trauma specialist, was caught in the raging fires of war in her country, Liberia...but, she grew weary of treating war victims, so she decided she was going to work to bring an end to war.  

Gbowee used the anger, frustration and sadness she had experienced and transformed it into energy for peace.

In 2002, she mobilized a network of over 2,000 women in 15 provinces, from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, to protest against the war and the violence in the region.

Gbowee's work inspired many women to engage in a non-violent struggle against war and violence and for women's rights.” (Nobel Prize Website)

When asked where she got her strength to stand up and make a difference....

Gbowee pointed to her faith:    

“I didn't get there by myself... or anything I did as an individual,

but it was by the grace and mercy of God....

He has held my hands.

In the most difficult of times, he has been there.

They have this song, she says:

"Order my steps in your ways, dear Lord,"

and every day as I wake up, that is my prayer, because there's no way that anyone can take this journey as a peacebuilder, as an agent of change in your community,

without having a sense of faith....

As I continue this journey in this life, I remind myself:

All that I am, all that I hope to be, is because of God.” (as quoted in Wikipedia article)

When thinking about being God’s servant, I’m reminded of the words of Archbishop Romero,  

It helps to take the long view.

fighting for justice takes time, effort; despite its urgency, it cannot be hurried.

Bringing about justice comes through organizing and community movements - we’re not in it alone, others are with us, we are with others.

Working in community requires patience and can be so very tiring.

Isaiah says:  God’s servant will not grow faint or be crushed…

Say it with me: here is your servant.  

we must lift one another up in this vital work.  

A friend of mine, Andrew Black, is an aid to US Senator Martin Heinrich.

After I’d been working with my small congregation for a few years in Santa Fe, I was surprised how easy it was for me to get justice workers to come to the church to give talks:

social workers addressing domestic violence, immigrant rights activist, worker justice advocates.

We were such a small group of people.

Why would they so readily come and speak to our small group, for no pay, on a Sunday morning?  I asked my friend Andrew this question.  

He said because church is one of the few places where communities who seek to do justice in this world consistently gather.

Churches are where people are called by a god who loves justice.

Churches are where communities are formed,

and through baptism, transformed and empowered to live into God’s vision for justice by fighting that good fight!  

Yet, We live in a time when it is hard to have faith in the power of a small community of believers. Has there been a time in history when ordinary Americans have felt more powerless, more disillusioned with government, or less capable of slamming the brakes on [fill in the blank] injustice in the world?" The problems are great...it’s a long hard road

But you know what: If it’s not us, then who?
If not here, where? If not now, When?

It's high time for us to take matters into our own hands.

It’s high time for us to take matters into our own hands!  

(adapted from Madelin Ostrander’s article "The YES! Breakthrough 15", Yes! Magazine, p. 17 ff, Winter 2012).   

Our own hands...

One Saturday morning, a kids show on a christian channel turns up on our tv screen.  

There, a smiling woman sings enthusiastically with green furry puppets:

“What’s in your hands…what’s in your hands

Use it for God! Use it for God

What’s in your hands…what’s in your hands,

Use it for Good!   Use it for Good”

What are the gifts God has given you?  

If we made a list of all the gifts found in this room, it would cover the sanctuary walls.

Author Margaret Wheatley in Turning to One Another,

a book on hope and community, writes

"In a crisis, the space is wide open for contribution...People have a deep desire to help, so they perform miracles. We discover capacities we didn't know we had.

(quoted by Madelin Ostrander, Yes! Magazine, "The YES! Breakthrough 15", p. 17 ff, Winter 2012.   

Children of God, as we remember the gift of our own baptisms, and our calling to use the gifts we’ve been given to make of this old world, a brand new world.

Let us say it one more time: God’s servant brings justice to the world.

“here is your servant.”Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Walter Earl Fluker's sermon - Valley Calls

For MLK, Jr Day and along our theme of "Justice, A Biblical Perspective,"  I preached a slightly edited version of Dr. Fluker's sermon, Valley Calls, preached at Duke Divinity School in 2010, which you can hear preached my him here.  The congregation really appreciated hearing his voice, which I made every effort to honor (including purchasing the original one published in the journal: The African American Pulpit).  

Justice; Isaiah 42:1-9

Que corra la justicia; Let Justice Roll, part 1: “An exploration of Justice”
Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-35; Matthew 3:13-17
Westminister Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe
Chester Craig Topple

Webster’s Dictionary defines Justice: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
(1) : the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action
(2) : conformity to this principle or ideal

I’ve never done that before; Started off a sermon with a dictionary definition.
The dictionary can say what it wants...what do you say? Turn to someone near you and give them a one word synonym for the word Justice.  Justicia.  Que quiere decir en una palabra?

What were some of the words you heard someone share with you?

Getting our heads and hearts around the biblical and Christian ethical understanding of justice will be our focus for the next several weeks. Today we’ll just explore the idea that gets thrown around a lot in a variety of contexts.  Next week, in honor of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, we will explore his and other African Americans’ understanding of justice. And the week after, we will look at justice from through a Latin American lens.  

I love this Isaiah passage read today: Strong statements, speaking of God’s Servant:
“He will bring forth Justice to the nations”
“He will faithfully bring forth justice”
“He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established Justice”

In the midst of mud slinging debates in Washington, an ever exploited natural environment, and the horrible tragic shootings in Arizona, it seems that there is much justice yet to be established.

But what does justice look like?  Can you envision a just world?  What would it look like?  
Would everyone have the same amount of stuff? Or in the very least, would everyone have the same amount of opportunity to get stuff? Is a just world one in which everyone is free?  
But free from what, and free for what?  Free from laws to do as I please, as long as I don’t hurt anyone?  

Dave Anderson, a good lawyer in this community, gave me a book several months ago written by Michael Sandel, whose title is Justice:  Subheading: What is the right thing to do?
Lawyers are constantly pondering that question.  Justice is about doing the right thing.  
The word for right as in upright in Spanish is, Justo. What is the right thing to do?

“Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that your child needs to survive if you couldn’t pay for it? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? How much is one human life worth?”  (from Sandel’s website)

Christians may turn to the bible for answers, and it’s interesting to see how interpretations are made by those asking what is the just thing to do. I received a letter recently from a local pastor inviting me to defend the bible and defend the American way of life by speaking out at the upcoming legislative session against any acts that may give more rights to same-sex couples.
Is this the kind of justice that is to be established?


Now, in a secular society, the laws should be neutral, right? Often there is worry about any kind of virtue--or high moral standards--entering into law.  Immanuel Kant, an 18th century Christian Philosopher, said “the principles of justice that define our rights should not rest on any particular conception of virtue, or of the best way to live. Instead, a just society respects each person's freedom to choose his or her own conception of the good life.” (Sandel, Justice, 9)

But Aristotle, who lived before Jesus, had another way of understanding Justice.  He believed:  “justice means giving people what they deserve.  And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward. Aristotle maintains that we can't figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life.  For him, law can't be neutral on questions of the good life.”  (Sandel, Justice, 9)

How do these two prominent ways of thinking about a just society hit home for you?  Just as these two perspectives can lead us to go back and forth about what is right, we, in our US society show our fickleness in so many ways.  We get upset about bailouts to bankers who took bonuses on taxpayer money, after they were the ones who got us in a financial mess to begin with. We say they are greedy.  But, we applaud those in society who make a lot of money.  
We say they are successful; we assume they are good, hardworking, honest people.

Why do we reward soldiers who have been physically injured in combat with purple hearts, while we frequently chastise or belittle soldiers who have been psychologically injured, which is often a more severe and long lasting injury?

Each and every day I, all of us I imagine, are faced with decisions...ethical, moral decisions.
And we are supposed to respond, hopefully in the right way.  We may even attempt to remind ourselves to respond in the right way by asking a helpful question: What would Jesus do? WWJD? Trasie gave Bruce some bracelets recently, inserting his name for Jesus’.  I’m sure Bruce will be distributing these bracelets to many of us soon.    

Many of you have met the man who has spent several nights sleeping under our front portal this past fall and winter: Manuel Carrillo. He is 73 years old, likes the bottle, and was significantly injured after he was hit by a car on St Francis in front of burger king about a year ago.  What is the right thing for our church to do? or for me as an individual? Well, we support the shelter, and this is a very reasonable place for Manuel to stay, instead of here.  But, for his own reasons, he doesn’t want to stay there; he wants to stay here.  He is exercising his individual freedom. Plus, many of us have given him food, brought him blankets, cleaned up after him; and shown him courtesy.  Recently, someone I didn’t know stopped by the church to inquire about Manuel. This person had been trying to help him, and said to me, is this the best the house of the Lord can do? Pointing to Manuel who was sleeping on one of the benches; and at the same time pointing a finger at me....  I got defensive...and stood up for us….  
But, the question is still a good one...What is the best that the house of the Lord can do?
An issue of Justice.

Isaiah says that the servant, who for us Christians is Jesus, will establish justice on earth.  
And this is associated with his teachings. (Feasting on the Word, John H. Hayes, p. 223)
The Psalmist says: God leads the humble in what is right and teaches them the way.  

For you and for me, the hands and feet of Christ, our calling is to carry on with the same mission of the servant: to bring about justice on the earth. No ifs ands or buts; we are called by the one in whom God was well pleased, to be on the path of the way.  And we aren’t supposed to grow faint in the process! You hear this soon to be installed/ ordained officers!?

But this is an overwhelming task.  A tiresome burden....And we still do not get a clear picture of what the establishment of justice looks like. Isaiah says: sight to the blind, bringing out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in the darkness. Something about an ability to see.  But not necessarily a literal physical ability to see, but a spiritual vision. To unveil, uncover works of injustice, and to bring out of those situations both victims and perpetrators of these injustices who live in the darkness; in the shadows.  To see and then show how to live by the way that is lit by righteousness. The way that is just.  The way of justice. It is to be carried out, not with violence or the use of overriding strength or proving who’s right and who’s wrong, but through humility, passivity, reserve, and endurance.” (Feasting on the Word, John H. Hayes, p. 223)

Bringing out, not only individuals who are trapped in dark places, but also the society as a whole.  As I was preparing for this sermon, I came across a speech Robert Kennedy gave at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968, (go jayhawks). He delivered it as he sought a nomination, less than three months before he was assassinated. In the speech, Kennedy spoke of the Vietnam war, riots in US cities, racial inequality, and places where he had witnessed extreme poverty on US soil.  From these explicit matters of justice he suggested that Americans had come to value the wrong things. “Even if we act to erase material poverty,” Kennedy said, “there is another greater task…For too long,” spoke Kennedy, “we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values to the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product...counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts...the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
(http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/RFK/RFKSpeech68Mar18UKansas.htm and Sandel, Justice, 262)

Have things changed much?  It’s easy to complain about all the wrong that seems to be going on all around us; but The servant will faithfully bring forth justice..Prisoners out of the dungeons; The servant will not grow faint...The servant will not be crushed until justice has been established on earth.  ON EARTH.  Brothers and sisters.  It is an age old debate: What is Justice?  What is the right thing to do? It gets so complicated, but at the same time, it can be so simple:  

When I was a student at Georgia Tech, I waited tables at a sports bar in the CNN Center in down town Atlanta.  It was a lousy job, and didn’t do much to help my wallet or my self esteem, but I did it anyway.  I was quite in tune with my Christian faith even for a 22 year old; I knew that God wanted Christians to reach out to those on the margins.  Every time I went to work, I parked down in a dark dripping parking garage that never seemed to have enough cars parked in it for me to feel particularly good about the security of my car...fortunately, my car wasn’t at the top of any car jacker’s list. To get to and from my car, I took a short cut, hopping up a 5 foot retaining wall, then scaling a steep dirt bank which collected trash and debris from the bridge I had to cross outside of the CNN center.  Under this bridge lived two men.  I don’t remember their names.  They were 50, 60 years old?  They had a good supply of blankets and tattered clothes; a radio and a small box. There was just enough space for everything. That was their home; probably had been for some time. After I met them, whenever I got off my shift, I would try to bring them some food from the restaurant, and we would hang out a bit while they ate or smoked whatever kind of cheap weed they had found that day. Rarely was there much traffic, so we didn’t feel hurried or silenced.  When the semester ended before summer break, I decided to quit that lousy job.  With a box of food in hand, I went to visit my homeless friends on my last day after work.  When I told them I wouldn’t see them as much anymore they said:
“You know, Chester, we never know how life is going to steer us.  We know you’re a student and you’re probably going to end up with a high paying job and be someone important.  But, just in case things don’t work out, and you end up down on your luck and ain’t got no where to go, you can always come here and stay with us...”

Justice. May we always seek to do the right thing...

Let us pray a prayer re-committing ourselves to doing the right thing, using the ancient words of St. Francis of Assissi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.