Today's Sermon

 

"Service and Justice"

 

1 Peter 4:10
“Each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.”  

Isaiah 1:17
¹⁷  learn to do good;
seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow.

Proverbs 27:17
Iron sharpens iron,
   and one person sharpens the wits of another.

THIS IS HOLY WISDOM, HOLY WORD.  THANKS BE TO GOD.

 Service and Justice 

            Service connects us emotionally to people and their plight.  There is nothing quite like being able to immediately relieve a measure of someone’s suffering, to see in their eyes the instant impact, not only of the good delivered but of the hope that people care. I remember taking a group of teenagers on a fairly standard mission trip, where we try and do God’s work and make notice of where Christ is already at work.  As we worked at one family’s home, one of the girls in our group was visibly shaken on their behalf.  It was not that the scene was beyond repair or the circumstances more dire than others we had seen, but it just landed.  In part because of what she was going through in her own life, she connected to the family’s pain on a visceral level, and wanted to know if we could do more, more. What more could we do?

            When I was a seminary student in Atlanta, my pastoral care course required me to spend a few hours a week visiting patients in a downtown hospital.  Once a week, I would head into the city after lunch, and I would wrap up a sandwich in a paper towel to bring to a man I always met outside the parking garage.  I told myself I wouldn’t put this all on the seminary’s dime, but rather I would sacrifice my portion of the meal plan by eating less on those days.  The man had hepatitis, among other challenges, and while I can’t remember his name, I have an image of his face to this day.  He was nice, seemed like a gentle soul.  Many who lingered around that hospital had to wait all day, 12 hours or more in line at the nearby pharmacy just to get needed medications.  The doses were often so small that they would have to return in just days’ time to repeat the process all over.  I remember thing, “How, is someone like that supposed to work?” 

            One year in my 20s I was living back at home and volunteering at the church. We would regularly take a shift at a local soup kitchen.  One day, a man came through the line, and I was caught off guard because I recognized him as a former high school classmate of mine.  I felt awkward and didn’t want him to feel embarrassed, but before I could decide whether to say something, he told me he recognized me, and with no shame in his voice.  After he was gone, I wondered, how in such a short period of time could we come from the same place, in some ways, and end up on opposite ends of this exchange, where I’m spooning out food (between graduate programs) and he so in need that he found himself a soup kitchen maybe not having graduated.  How does that happen? 

            As followers of Jesus, one of the things the church has gotten right is that we are called to help those in need, directly.  First Peter says, “Each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10).  I love that because not only does it enlist us all in this sacred work, but it recognizes there are various forms in which we can serve others.  We have different gifts and we are simply to employ whatever gifts we have to serve others.  Sometimes people are unable or reluctant to do the stereotypical forms of service, so they think they’re a failure, but there are endless ways to serve.  At the church where my spouse and I served on the pastoral team together, she helped start work in urban gardens, understanding not everyone was cut out for soup kitchens or housing projects.  The ways we can serve is limited only by our creativity and is as varied as the gifts and skills we possess.  You can see here, at this church, and through the various causes in which our members are involved in the community, the variety of ways to serve.  Challenge yourself to do your piece.

            As the stories I’ve shared point out, service not only connects us to people and their pain, but it also prompts us, if we are paying attention, to ask questions about the circumstances that give rise to their pain.  Here is where the spirit invites us to get involved in the also sacred act of justice.  Today we conclude our series working through our Christian Identity Statement, getting clearer about who we are.  The final claim of the statement reads “God calls us to serve those in need, to understand and address the causes of suffering, and to work collaboratively with others to build a more just and compassionate world.”

            The Christian, then, is called not only to serve, but also to work for justice.  As you heard in our second reading, the prophet Isaiah says, “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Is. 1:17).  I could just as easily have quoted that famous passage from Micah, “…what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8) or the prophet Amos, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). 

            The biblical mandates for justice work are all over the place, yet sometimes there is a reluctance in churches to engage in this work.  Mark Sandlin, a pastor, writes, “Unfortunately, most spiritual communities have become much better and much more comfortable at giving people a ‘hand out’ than giving them a ‘hand up,’” in my own words, helping people in their circumstances but not working to change them.[1]  Sandlin argues that this is because service, or charity as he talks about it, is, by some measures, easier.  It’s rarely controversial.  It rarely breeds significant disagreement.  We can agree on feeding people, so let’s just do that.  Sandlin points to how some of the greats, such as Martin Luther King, Dorothea Day, and Gandhi called not just for charity, but for justice.  In an ironic twist, have you noticed what we’ve done with Martin Luther King Day? We’ve made it a day of charity, a day of service, picking up litter.  There are worse things, but this was not the primary thrust of Dr. King’s prophetic work. He wasn’t about trash pick-ups; he was about changing the conditions for sanitation workers.  Had he only engaged in charity, he wouldn’t have been killed. Justice work causes trouble.  Justice work often touches “political hot buttons”[2]and there it is.  I think that’s the real point, especially in these divided days, and none of us like the division.  The fear, I think, is that churches would become partisan hacks, but there is a solution to that.  It’s not giving up on justice; it’s committing not to becoming a partisan hack. 

            Engaging in justice work will likely mean some disagreement, because people tend to have different philosophies about problems, their causes, and their solutions.  Rather than avoid that territory altogether, what about wrestling with competing or varied ideas?  Our discourse has gotten so nasty that we’ve been left to believe we can only bring out the worst in one another.  Our faith defies that as inevitable.  The third scripture passage for today comes from the Proverbs, “Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another” (27:17).  We think if we all just stay away from one another we can remain sharp, when in fact, it is in the engagement that we sharpen one another and give ourselves the best chance at cutting through a problem.  We sharpen one another through engaging here, and as the statement points out, we commit to working with others in the community to build a more just and compassionate world.  This helps us round out our understanding by exposing us to even more perspectives and how others experience what we’re trying to address. True, we won’t always agree.  We won’t always get it right.  We won’t be able to engage on every issue.  We must, however, not avoid simply because it makes us uncomfortable.  The cross, I assure you, was uncomfortable.  Jesus didn’t let controversy deter him from his mission.  

            As Sandlin points out, charity does help, but its help is fleeting, temporary.[3]  Justice has the ability to make a more lasting difference.  Charity is often reactive, while justice is proactive. Charity is reparative, while justice is preventative.  Someone once described charity as love embodied in the moment, while justice is a lasting love enacted for the future.  Charity doesn’t have to be used to distract from addressing larger problems, but it can be. Charity sometimes is employed by those in power to do just enough to keep the status quo tolerable because real justice would change the balance of power.  Charity often focuses on the individual, while justice looks for systemic changes.  Charity seeks to alleviate harm.  Justice seeks to prevent it.  Charity is love made into acts of kindness and relief.  Justice is love made into policy. 

            Have you been watching the Olympics?  I have…but only a little.  It’s hard to ignore it altogether; the athletes are so amazing, their stories compelling, the competition inspiring.  Yet, this time around, I just can’t quite bring myself to watch as I have in the past, and it’s more than the fact it’s all on artificial snow.  It’s an issue that has garnered a surprising diversity of attention.  The Uyghurs, as many of you know, are a group of about 12 million Muslims in an officially autonomous region of northwest China.  They are experiencing what many describe as nothing short of genocide. “Re-education camps” have been established.  People have been tortured, women forcibly sterilized, all done in the name of counterterrorism. 

            I have heard more people than any time in my memory, including those in the sports, say this time, “they’re out” on the Olympics.  They won’t lend their eyes and thus indirectly advertising dollars to something that turns a blind eye to the obvious injustice and suffering of a group for religious and ethnic reasons.  This is not the kind of suffering charity can solve, yet surely our faith in Jesus compels us to consider these, and many other, issues too. 

            We can, and should, continue to feed those who are hungry here, offer them temporary shelter when we can as we have in the past.  It gives us that human to human interaction, offers relief in the moment, and embodies some modest sign of hope.  We should also be willing to advocate for solutions that lead to change their circumstances more permanently. There is a Board of Supervisors meeting this Tuesday to consider a long overdue shelter.  There are countless opportunities to engage on affordable housing.  That’s part of following Christ too.  Otherwise, we would have to ask whether we really want to relieve suffering or merely assuage our own discomfort and guilt?   

            We can, and should, be charitable with what we have to meet someone’s needs, and we have to think about bigger solutions to big problems.  “Go Fund Me” pages are no way to solve the larger problem of people being able to afford medical care.  What if someone doesn’t have friends with means?

            I wondered, when writing this, where that former teenager was from that mission trip all those years ago.  I looked her up on social media and wouldn’t you know her latest post was literally of her talking about the need to step into some uncomfortable territory and start to engage in the work of activism.  Charity, service, is sacred, and it is a pathway into the sacred field of justice.  Let us travel that road, for as Christians, that is where we will find Christ. 

            Amen.

 

[1]https://revmarksandlin.com/2017/03/09/a-call-to-extend-charity-into-justice/

[2]Ibid.

[3]Ibid.