Justice and Mercy 2020

Me: As a community we desire to have an impact in our community and world both a Gospel Voice, boldly proclaiming Jesus epic work of restoration to the world, and a Gospel Presence, boldly living out the implication of Jesus epic work of restoration within the world.

This takes us into spaces of justice and mercy, and each year we take a Sunday to focus on this passion for being a Gospel Presence through acts of Justice and Mercy.

Tonight we are going to be looking at how Justice and Mercy reveals the Gospel in the narrative of Scripture, as well as discovering why do we as humans care about justice at all.

To get there though, I ran across a video from The Bible Project (which is one of my favorite resources filled with podcasts and videos that enter into the themes of the bible) about Justice. So let’s go ahead and take a look.

(Justice video 6 min)

basis for how justice and mercy reveals the Gosp

The natural world is not exactly defined by justice. For example,

Super sad right? If a human does any of those things it isn’t only a bit sad, it is considered wrong and unjust.

You: Why do we care about justice as humans?

God: In the Scriptures, we discover God’s desire for His people to be these transformative agents of justice and mercy and bring them back into the world.

In the first two chapters of the Bible, it is unpacked that humanity was created in the Imago Dei (the image of God). There is so much depth to that concept, but one piece of what that means is that we were created differently and uniquely from the rest of the animal kingdom. We were created to be extensions of the love, strength, and kindness, and leadership of God to the rest of Creation.

But as humanity, we chose to define good and evil on our own terms. Which we each continue to do today… this rebellion led to injustice. Breaking of relationship with God, within ourselves, and with one another.

The desire for self-preservation takes control, and it leads us into looking out for #1 in all kinds of spaces. Which is the root of injustice, this is the way of the world, me over others.

But this wasn’t Gods desire for us, God’s way called humanity to be advocates of justice and mercy.

In fact, in the Old Testament we discover God’s desire for His people to be these transformative agents of justice and mercy and bring them back into the world.

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So as it unpacked in the video, this passage and others gives the OT vision for justice.

OT Vision of Justice

Justice = righteousness ()

mishpat - (Restorative Justice) justice, doing justice, giving people what they are due, sometimes it means punishment but often times it means protection or care.

Taking steps to advocate for the vulnerable, changing social structures to prevent injustice

tzadeqah - (Relational Justice) Ethical standard in relationship, being just or being righteous, a life of right relationships, treating one another as image bearers of God

What should be the out-workings of this restorative justice and relational justice?

They should lead to the caring from the oppressed, the immigrant, vulnerable children, and the marginalized from society. Why because we are image bearers and so are they, and when we are living as image bearers we are displaying the character of the image we bear.

- Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation

“Realize, then, how significant it is that the biblical writers introduce God as “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” (). This is one of the main things He does in the world. He identifies with the powerless. He takes up their cause.”

Loving our marginalized neighbors, stepping into the mess and being redemptive in unredeemed spaces is the call. It is a non-negotiable to the Way of the Creator.

The problems of injustice and deep, rampant and historical. We find them in our backyard and around the globe, they are rooted in family structures, governments, economies, and every system you could imagine. But they are more deeply rooted than we give them credit, they are rooted into our desire to define good and evil on our own terms.

The problem is broken relationships = God, Self, and the rest of Creation

The solution is restorative/redemptive relationships that “reconcile” people with God, self, and the rest of creation.

- God desire was for a day when complete restoration would happen, when all these relational dynamics would find wholeness and completion. The people of Israel were called to have a once every seven-sevens of years (49 years) there was supposed to be a year of Jubilee when all endentured servants were set free, where any property that had to be sold was to be returned to its rightful owner, and the nation experienced a year where restorative and relational justice reigned.

It was a signpost to the day when all things would be made new and justice would forever reign.

This is why it was so interesting when Jesus gave his first sermon in the Temple…

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Imagine being there for that sermon, short, sweet, to the point, and the most controversial sermon imaginable. He was explaining that He is the fulfillment of restorative justice, that He had come to proclaim good news that we could be restored back to our created purpose through Him! He Is the fulfilllment of the relational justice, that we could NOW relate to our Creator once again through His resurrected life.

That is all good news but what impact should that have on our lives?

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We have been given the ministry of reconciliation, a way of life that is not easy or convenient and is costly. That we wouldn’t simply stay on the sidelines but we would choose to take up the causes of those without a voice as our own, and use whatever influence we have been given to be an advocate for justice that is restorative and relational. That we would advocate for those who are image bearers of God regardless of if they follow Jesus or not. Whether they look like us, act like us, or appear worthy.

You don’t have to follow Jesus to be charitable or caring, but for those of us who do follow Jesus we have received power through the Holy Spirit to love and sacrifice beyond our natural ability!

For that kind of love, it must come out a rich abiding in Jesus, that as we draw near to Him in intimacy, within Biblical community, that we would go and draw near to Jesus on the margins and in the darkness, because I guarantee you Jesus is already there.

I dont know what God is calling you into, but I can guarantee if you are a Follower of the Way of Jesus, if you have been adopted into His family, you are called a minister of reconcilation, an agent of peace, an advocate of justice.

You: For us as a community God has given Mosaic a specific vision for how we could mobilize our biblical community to impact the story of Central Florida and the world and this is the spaces of caring for vulnerable children.

This began years ago as Mosaic became a community desiring to care for the fatherless child (the orphan) and we mobilized and fostered and adopted hundreds of children. But we began to realize in the last few years was this was as if we were on a hike and we came to the midpoint of a river and saw kids floating downstream, and we began to pull them out… What we discovered was there are over 5,000 children who are in Foster Care at any given point in time in our area. That is a staggering stat, but we created a ministry for ongoing training and care for adoptive and fostering families.

Now we could continue doing this all day, and we will, but some kids make it past us despite all our efforts and many had passed by before we could pull them out. So we began to send some of us downstream to pull those out who had made it past us… what we learned is that downstream these vulnerable children often end up in human trafficking. Central Florida has the 3rd highest numbers of sex trafficking in the country. Majority of human trafficking victims who are being exploited are under the age of 18. So we began to partner with organizations like Love146, which has the mission of abolishing Child Trafficking, and created a task force to help spread awareness and raise funds.

But then we also realized that this doesn’t the issue at its source, we need to discover why are these kids floating down this metaphorical river, so we have gone upstream and realized that up the river these kids are entering into this vicious cycle because of systemic poverty and homelessness.

Almost half of Central Florida households struggle to cover their basic needs. 47 percent of households in Orange County, about 220,203, struggled to afford child care, housing, food, health care and transportation costs in 2016. So we have begun to partner with organizations who have a proven track record of combating poverty and homelessness and its source so that more children can be raised in secure and stable homes.

The response of our community has been incredible but the need is still staggering, we need to respond as advocates of this restorative justice into these three spaces and allow the Spirit of God to use us in every moment, both big and small.

My friend Allie who has been apart of this community for a few years as well as a fellow Cast Member, and over the last year God has been stirring in her heart where and how she would be involved in the story of justice for vulnerable children, lets take a look at her story.

For some of us, we are being called into foster care and adoption, that was the case for Allie as well as for my family. For others, it is to be apart of a wrap around team to care for adoptive/foster families, for others it is combating child trafficking and building awareness, for others it is volunteering in our community (logging those voluntear hours) with organizations we have partnered with in fighting poverty and homelessness.

Us: We are all called to be advocates of justice, what we each need to do is ask God where are you calling me to join in the fight.

If Mosaic @ WDW disappeared from existence tomorrow, if our community was gone what difference would that make? I believe God has given us impact here at WDW and within our community, but we are just getting started.