"FINDING JUSTICE, LIVING THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD"
Texts: Amos 5:21-24; Matthew 5:6, 6:33

Today we consider the second of the seven virtues, Justice. It is a form of holiness, what the Bible calls the Righteousness of God. John Wesley called it "social holiness," one of "holy practices" of the Christian life. So the title of today’s sermon, "Finding Justice, Living the Righteousness of God."

The great Hebrew word for righteousness is tsedakah. It includes personal righteousness and social justice. Joseph was called in Hebrew tradition a Tsaddik, a righteous or just person, the highest praise one could get. He told the truth, he kept promises, he forgave his brothers who had sold him into slavery. He helped Egypt prepare for and survive a great famine and helped feed starving families from surrounding countries who came for bread.

I

The virtue of justice is a common grace. The passion for justice has been given to all peoples. Moral philosopher Daniel Maguire calls justice, "The permanent passion of public life...the cornerstone of human togetherness."¹ It is the art of living in community, the ongoing negotiation of competing goods so that the common good is served.

We learn it early. Children have a keen sense of fairness and justice, especially as it applies to them. Cherrie’s parents had an ingenious way of teaching fairness when she was growing up with her three siblings. When a piece of cake was to be divided between two of them, one got to cut the piece in half and the other got to choose first which half they wanted. This made for careful cutting!

Plato and Aristotle pondered the meaning of justice and defined it as "to every man his due," that is, to each his or her own according to their merits. This is individual justice. But true justice must go further. It must include others and head toward social justice. So Maguire writes:

So justice begins with "to each his or her own according to his or her own merits" and then adds "and to each according to his or her own need." A just society seeks to meet the essential needs of all its citizens. Most people want to stop at individual justice, but as Maguire says, "In Hebrew and Christian thought meeting essential needs is the soul of justice." Essential needs, Maguire says, are those without which life, dignity, or hope could not endure.

Here’s an imaginative thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Rawls: If you could live in any nation in any century of history, what nation would you choose, provided you could not choose where in that society you were born in terms of race, class and ability? First-century Rome, twelfth-century China, nineteenth-century England, twenty-first-century America? The more just a society, the less it matters where in a society you are born.

II

In the Bible the foundation of justice is in the nature and character of God, the Righteousness of God. This righteousness includes personal righteousness and social justice.

In the Torah God called Israel to be a nation of justice and compassion. This was what it meant to be holy people. Justice meant fairness in the courts and marketplace. There were to be "just" measures of flour and oil, and judges were to judge with equity, favoring none, taking no bribes.

But God was also a God of compassion, the One who had heard their cries and delivered them from bondage in Egypt. So now they were to look out for and protect the weakest and most vulnerable in their midst. Three were always mentioned: widows, orphans and strangers (or immigrants). A just king and just nation were to care for the poor.

The famous prophets of ancient Israel arose in a time of great social inequity. Archeologists have uncovered a society with scandalous gaps between rich and poor. The nation was not following Torah. Justice and compassion were in short supply.

So the prophet Amos challenged the Northern Kingdom of Israel with these charges: You "sell the righteous for silver and the needs of the poor for a pair of shoes." You "trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside from the way of the afflicted" (Amos 2:6-7). "Woe to those," he said, "who are at ease in Zion," who "lie upon beds of ivory... and drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but grieve not for the ruin of Joseph" (Amos 6:1-6). Does this sound like our nation today?

The high worship of God, the prophets said, means nothing when disconnected from personal and social righteousness. So Amos delivered this word from Yahwah:

I hate, I despise your feasts,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies....
Your burnt offerings I will not accept....
Take away from me the noise of your songs.
But let justice roll down like waters
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

What would God’s prophet say today looking at justice in Jena, Louisiana, or the class and race divisions in New Orleans, laid bare by Katrina, or the callousness of politics in Washington, D.C., or at our fair city of Charlotte, blessed with extraordinary affluence but divided by race and class and riven with inequity? When we dam up the flowing waters of God’s justice a society begins to wither and die, the earth itself begins to wither and die, we begin to wither and die.

III

And what about Jesus of Nazareth, the one we follow as Lord? I grew up with almost no association of Jesus and justice. As Southern Baptists we focused on personal righteousness and virtually ignored social justice.

Our Jesus was not Jewish enough, not Jesus enough. We saw only part of him. Jesus was a prophet of justice and compassion. To use the words of Obery Hendricks, "Jesus treated the people and their needs as holy."³ He did so as he healed their bodies, their minds, their spirits. He did so as he taught the justice of the kingdom of God. God had "anointed" him, he claimed, with a boldness, some called blasphemy,

to preach good news to the poor
to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind
to set at liberty the oppressed.
Luke 4:18-19

This is more than a revival meeting or a book club; this is social transformation.

We have suffered a profound mis-reading and mis-hearing of Jesus’ message due in part to inadequate translation. When Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness," we hear "personal righteousness" and miss the claims and call of social justice. So when we hear Jesus say, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteous, for they shall be filled," we should hear "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness." And when we hear, "Unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven," we should hear, "Unless your righteousness and justice exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees." And when you hear him say: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you as well," we should hear, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its justice and righteousness."

When Jesus turned over the tables in the temple he quoted the prophet Jeremiah as he said, "My house shall be called a house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves." Here are the words of Jeremiah to the Southern Kingdom of Israel just before Jerusalem and temple fell to the Babylonians:

When Jesus mounted this charge in the temple the Gospel of Luke records that the people "hung on his words" while the religious leaders sought to kill him (Luke 19:47-48). Justice is never easy, but nothing worth accomplishing is ever easy. But with God it is a holy possibility. To paraphrase David Pomeranz:

It’s in everyone of us
to be just
Find your heart
Open up both your eyes.

It’s in everyone of us to be just because God has made us to be just. And God’s righteousness is a river, flowing from the throne of God into our minds and hearts and into our history. Justice is more than a theory of justice, more than a blindfolded woman with a set of scales in her hand. It is water, the flowing river of God’s righteousness and justice. It is a mighty river. It is greater than the puny fire hoses policemen aimed at black children marching for civil rights. It topples tyrants and lifts up those crushed by the weight of injustice. And God wants it to flow in us, through us.

The river of God’s justice flows in simple acts of compassion toward those who are in need, in civil rights legislation that overturns legalized injustice, in friendship with schools and neighborhoods whose needs are great because we believe, with Jesus, that people’s needs are holy. It turns to protest in face of great injustice.

It flows in organizations like HELP which promotes grass-roots democratic change, in the care of the earth which is long-term justice work, in days like our Saturday of Service where we go from this place all over Charlotte in mission together.

It flows in the way you do your jobs, whatever they are, with a special eye to the weakest among us.

So I want to end this sermon in celebration and in blessing of you here today who do the work of justice. As I call out the group or the action you are involved in I want you to stand. Don’t be timid. We’re going to bless you this day.

1) We have a new Justice Maker ministry. If you’ve been part of its early work please stand.

2) EarthKeepers stand.

3) Board of Missions stand.

4) All who have participated in some mission trip, or mission action.

5) Those involved in HELP, Room In the Inn, Urban Ministry Center, RAIN, Sedgefield Middle School, Habitat for Humanity, Friendship Trays.

6) Those whose volunteer work serves the poor and most vulnerable.

7) You who shape your jobs, your vocation so you serve the cause of those who have less. Teachers, journalists, physicians, medical personnel, counselors.

8) You who are involved in the politics of justice and compassion, whether Democrat, Republican, or independent.

9) You who in your daily life stand up for people at school, work, anywhere, who need someone to stand up for them, stand up.

10) Any others who do justice and show mercy in ways I’ve not mentioned.

Now I want you all to stand. Turn to the center aisle facing the other half of the congregation. I want us to say to one another the words of blessing we say to everyone baptized in our church: We rejoice with you, we will pray for you, and we will walk with you in the way of Jesus.

O.K., you on the pulpit side say to the ones on the lectern side:

We rejoice with you
We will pray for you
And we will walk with you
in the way of Jesus
And now to those on the lectern side repeat after me
We rejoice with you
We will pray for you
And we will walk with you
in the way of Jesus

Hear the words of Jesus: Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness, for you shall be filled.