Bible Text:

“Happy are those who observe justice…”            (Psalm 106:3)                          

Many themes dominate the Scriptures. There are things we see often. One theme is that of the Kingdom of God. We are often reminded that we are Kingdom people. A second dominating theme is the one of money and possessions. There is more in the Scripture about money and possessions than we realize. A third theme is grace and forgiveness, in both the Old and New Testaments. 

However, one major theme sometimes overlooked is the theme of justice. We tend to neglect or forget or discount this theme. In the prophet Amos we read, “Let justice roll down like mighty waters.” In the prophet Micah we read, “What does the Lord require of you but that you do justice.” Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the right [justice] to prevail, for they shall be satisfied.” The Psalm text for this morning says, “Happy are those who observe justice.” 

In June of 1963 Martin Luther King wrote these words from his prison cell in Birmingham, Alabama, “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men [and women] willing to be co-workers with God… We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

 There is no denying that justice is a major theme of discipleship. But how do we know what is right? How do you know what is really just? What priorities truly bring peace or fairness or shalom? There the controversy builds. Opinions differ radically.

What is right or just in the Holy Land right now? TV news shows are filled with dialogue and differing opinions. What is right or just in relation to the one Islamic man who may have been slated for the 9/11 suicide mission that crashed in Pennsylvania? What is right or just in relation to the issue of capital punishment? What is right or just in relation to a living wage in the city of Pittsburgh or in Allegheny Country? 

If Martin Luther King was right (“the time is always ripe to do what is right”), how do we know what is right and just? I know this much: justice will never be found in purely human wisdom. Human wisdom will not arrive at a satisfactory answer to that question. Unless we are willing to look at justice through new eyes, there will never be a clear answer. 

Two weeks ago Eric Park preached a sermon here entitled “Living Eucharistically in a Fast Food World.” Many of you were here. Eric used the term, “counter-cultural.” It is not a particularly popular term, but it is descriptive. This past Thursday morning Leonard Sweet said that most Christians have to be a little bit nuts (nuts is an anagram for Never Underestimate the Spirit). Being nuts is not especially popular either. 

I read about a minister who preached an entire sermon one Sunday morning on using a peanut as his primary point of reference. When the service was over and people were leaving the church, one person came past him and said, “Pastor, I never realized I could learn so much from a nut.”

 The fact is that justice through God’s eyes is counter-cultural and a bit nuts.

 In the 1960s Paul Tillich wrote a little book called Love, Power and Justice. He said that God is a God of “creative justice.” This is a justice that far exceeds any conventional wisdom. This is a justice that exceeds the boundaries of human thought. What does that mean? What might that kind of justice look like?

 I want to suggest one kind of answer to you today. I just finished reading a fascinating book that was published in 1999. It is a book by Episcopal Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Tutu spoke at Mt. Union College a few weeks ago. My sister put me onto this book. She read it, she was enthusiastic about it, I bought it, and I read it.[i]

 The book is the story of the first years of post-apartheid South Africa after 1990. When apartheid was finally abolished, what was to become of those who had perpetrated the awful crimes upon native South Africans? 

Some people wanted Nuremberg-type trials. However, that was quickly vetoed. Some suggested that it should be a time of national amnesty. No one would accept that either.

 The end result was something called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It was a commission which would try to understand what happened, but without vengeance. It was a commission which would try to exercise reparations without retaliation. The TRC found a way to provide amnesty to those who would tell the truth—the truth about their moral failure, about how wrong they had been. It was a way toward healing that included the Christian principle of forgiveness and grace. However, that healing also asked for honesty and confession of terrible wrongs that had been done.

 In a very real sense, “the right time had fully come” for the TRC. Bishop Tutu chaired the commission. Nelson Mandela, another Christian, was president of the country at the time. Tutu writes these words. 

Our country was indeed on the verge of a catastrophe which could have seen us overwhelmed by the kind of carnage and unrest that have characterized places such as Bosnia, Kosovo, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. We should have all been filled to overflowing with immense gratitude that things turned out differently. We have been blessed to have as president someone who has become an international icon of forgiveness and reconciliation and that so many in our land have emulated their president. One has longed so eagerly and so desperately for a like generosity of spirit to have been evoked in the white community by the magnanimity of those in the black community who, despite the untold suffering inflicted so unnecessarily on them, have been ready to forgive their tormentors. (Pg. 164) 

And then Tutu adds these very important words. 

It is ultimately in our best interest that we become forgiving, repentant, reconciling, and reconciled people, because without forgiveness, without reconciliation, we have no future. (Pg. 165)

Something radically extraordinary happened in South Africa in the 1990s. There was confession, forgiveness, restoration, and healing. It was not a trial or a court, but it was a Christian justice process. What happened was a radical form of healing justice. 

I began to wonder what about the Holy Land? What if this began to happen in that awful, hate-filled conflict right now? Bishop Tutu writes,

 I hope that philosophers, theologians and thinkers within the Jewish community will re-open this issue and consider whether it is possible to come to a different conclusion for the sake of the world. (Pg. 278)

 What if Ariel Sharon went to the West Bank and apologized for Jewish settlements among the Palestinians? What if Yassar Arafat, speaking for the best of Islam, apologized for years of terrorism against the Jewish State? What if Israel began to understand that suicide bombings come out of a desperate sense of futility regarding the future? What if Palestinians begin to understand the Jewish need for a nation, a country, and a place? There is no future without forgiveness.

Christians are charged with keeping the flame of hope alive in the world.

 I came across a story about two servicemen who were standing in front of the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC. One of them said, “Have you forgiven those who held you prisoner of war?” Replied the other, “I will never forgive them.” The first then said, “Then it seems they still have you in prison, don’t they?”

There is no future without forgiveness. There is no justice without confession, grace, and reconciliation. 

Bishop Tutu even dares to make this statement about the United States.

 It may be, for instance, that race relations in the United States will not improve significantly until Native Americans and African-Americans get the opportunity to tell their stories and reveal the pain that sits in the pit of their stomach as a painful legacy of dispossession and slavery. We saw in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how the act of telling one’s story has a cathartic, healing effect. (Pg. 279) 

Are the issues simple? Of course not. Our solutions are always imperfect at best. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not bring in the Kingdom in South Africa. But what might happen if justice rolled down like waters from the followers of Jesus? What might happen if we passionately adhered to Micah’s call to do justice? What might happen if we hungered and thirsted to see the right prevail? What might happen if we believed that the time was ripe to do what is right? 

Can you and I model God’s creative, loving, forgiving justice at every point? Can you be Kingdom people who model Kingdom living?

A little girl was coming home from church with her parents. “Mommy,” she said, “the preacher said that God is bigger than we are.”

 “Yes, honey, that’s true,” came the reply.

 “He also said that God lives within us.”

 “Yes,” said the mother, “that’s true as well.

Replied the daughter, “Well, if God is bigger than us and God lives in us, wouldn’t God show through?” 

Will the God of righteousness and justice show through you and me? Will justice reign because we share God’s passion for shalom? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst to see the right prevail, for they shall be satisfied.