Do Justice (Pulpit Swap 2021 - Seth Thomas)

WEEK 1 - 8/1- pulpit swap- Justice- Seth

Title - Do Justice

Verse- Micah 6:6-8, Luke 4:16-19

Theme - Jesus’ ministry is inaugurated and framed by acts doing justice with and for the poor, the captive, the hurting, and the oppressed.

Questions-

Can you have kindness and mercy without justice?

What does justice look like for your neighbor?

Justice is often disruptive. Why do you think Micah counts justice-doing as a part of the “good life?”

Who would Jesus be drawn to do justice with today? Why?

The New Revised Standard Version The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth

(Mt 13:54–58; Mk 6:1–6)

16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

One of my favorite theological writers is James K. A. Smith. He teaches at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and has published a series of books on Christian spiritual formation called Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the King. He has a more synthesized, single volume book, called “You Are What You Love”, which puts his thesis to a point: we are formed by what we love and devote ourselves to.

So, what do you love? Think for a moment and then call out some examples. What do you love? And not just what you think you’re supposed to love, but what keeps your attention? What do you wake up thinking about in the morning? What do you inevitably find yourself doing when you have a moment of downtime or a chance to do what you please?

Any ideas?

These last few weeks, I’ve been out in the woods a bit more, hiking with Stacy and enjoying the beauty of Whatcom County. I would say that I love these evergreen forests we have. And I’m formed by them — I’m shaped by the terrain, my lungs are filled with the air, my ears attuned to the wind in the branches. I love the trees and forests — I’m made more myself by attending to them.

In Smith’s book, he teaches that we are actually made who we are by the things we love. You love coffee — well, you’re habits around coffee drinking form you. They impact your wallet, your attitude, your ability to function in the morning.

Do you love the Sounders or the Seahawks? Well, there are whole cultures of formation surrounding the rituals and liturgies of a soccer match or football game. Our loves form us into fans, in opposition to other fans of other team cultures. We become what we love.

I say all of this because we need to be reminded that what we do, eat, listen to, and ultimately, love, forms our selves. We are also prone to lose our way, to get distracted, and find ourselves down a path of loving things which aren’t good for us, aren’t forming us into the people God made us to be.

This is a bit of what we hear in the Prophet Micah’s text today. The text lays out questions for its listeners — what does it mean to be faithful before God? Is it through burnt offerings? Rivers of oil? Are these the practices that lead to the pleasure and goodness of God’s presence?

In fact, Micah seems to be outlining the historic struggle of God’s people to land on the “right” practices to love and live in God’s way. If you unpack the verses, you can see references to the early practices of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the patriarchs of the Hebrew people. You can hear echoes of the Egypt story and Moses’ call to shepherd the people to the Promised Land. And through these echoes, we see a picture of what the people intended to do to be formed in God’s way and what God actually requires.

Is it all the stuff of these religious rituals that God requires? Are those the things meant to form us? Well, certainly they help. They are a part of finding our way to God, at least for these ancient people. But when it comes down to it, something else is required that transcends these rituals. What God requires is that we take stock of what we truly love and find that what is good is not wrapped in particular rituals, but rather a matter of our hearts being tuned to actions of justice, kindness, and humility.

When I encounter this Micah text, I typically want to rush to the words justice, kindness, and humility — these are the activities of the good way, right? Yes, but today, let’s slow down for a moment and look at the words that precede these principles. Namely: “Do, love, and walk.”

Put Do, Love, and Walk in front of the things we desire and love. It’s clearly not adequate to simply think loving thoughts or pray humble things or hope for acts of justice. In our world, we know how easy “thoughts and prayers” turn into calloused disregard for actually engaging root problems and transforming our world. No, what is called for here is action: doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly. We are asked to move, to engage, to set aside our piety (which is good, but only in part) and to move into the world actively seeking the justice of God.

Some of you may know that I began my Doctoral studies last summer with Portland Seminary. I’m working on a Doctorate of Ministry in Leadership and Spiritual Formation. As I’ve begun this work, it has been clear to me that I need to invest time and energy into putting words around the issue of justice in our nation, specifically regarding racism and white privilege. As we’ve watched the racial unveiling going on in our world, I have wondered at where the church is in advocating and acting for justice. To put a fine point on it, I’ve been frustrated to witness many pastors and leaders shying away from directly confronting racism and white supremacy. It is safer to speak in generalities or to avoid this topic altogether because it ruffles our feathers. And so we stay silent.

I’ve wondered at this, because who is going to speak up for and act out God’s justice if not the church? Is this not our calling? Isn’t it our work to “do justice” by standing up and putting our neck out for others who face systemic injustice, day after day? This, for me, is where the action of doing, loving, and walking, has to take real form.

As we see in our texts today, both Micah and Luke’s reading, God is not interested in spiritual acts which form us to be good followers of ritual. God is interested in setting captives free (hear the action involved?), liberating those in bondage, bringing justice for the oppressed. And both Micah and Jesus, who is using Isaiah’s words, are pointing the finger directly at the religious folks and saying “look, your piety is not enough alone. God is about true freedom and liberation.”

I got into a conversation with a friend on the fourth of July about the phrase, “Liberty and justice for all.” We were remarking on how the words liberty and justice get a lot of individual attention, but what about the word AND and the words FOR ALL? Can we be a liberated, free people if justice is not afforded to some? Can we have liberty without justice? What kind of country would that be? Well, we’re seeing it, in some ways, as we witness the struggles against our individual liberties when it comes to caring for this worldwide pandemic — person liberty actually looks like it’s opposed to justice in a lot of ways these days.

Liberty and justice are achieved ONLY when they are together and they are for all. Do we want people to be free? Yeah! Then all people need to be treated justly. Take that down whatever appropriate road you need to regarding the state of our shared life together — all people require justice in order to be free.

In this conversation, I felt saddened, because I don’t see those two principles linked very well much of the time.

And then, as we step back into our Scripture texts, we see the same force wanting to pull us apart from our pursuit of justice, kindness, humility — we’ll take one or two, but not all three at once, thank you very much. That is why these texts today are so important for us to wrestle with and seek to be formed by, to turn our love and devotion towards what they ask of us.

You’ll hear Janice and Doug share about humility and kindness and how these weave together with justice. I love that we’re using this text for our pulpit swap, because we cannot have one piece without the other two.

My call to us today is to get into the thick of what it means to “do justice.”

Back, for a moment, to the conversation about the church and racial justice in America. In my initial studies, I’ve explored a number of texts through the Scriptures that point God’s people directly into the way of active engagement with the work of liberation and freedom for the oppressed.

In particular, this moment of Jesus standing in the synagogue, which we count as the inauguration of his active ministry, this moment is a direct call of justice in active ways. Jesus doesn’t have to get up and use his own words to tell the people that God requires justice for the hurting and poor. Instead, he uses the words of the respected prophetic tradition of Isaiah to speak truth to the people. The school of the prophet Isaiah taught the people of Israel through prophetic words before, during, and in return from their Babylonian exile. The people are aware of their missing the mark, falling away from being the kind of community of justice God had called them to be. Isaiah can be seen as a text of redefinition of what it means for God’s people to serve and be faithful in a new era. The servant of the Lord, this model that Jesus is living into and defining for his followers, is the one who acts our justice for the poor, captives, blind, and oppressed. The way of justice is to usher in the year of the Lord’s favor, the jubilee, in which debts are forgiven, land returned to its rightful owner, and a great leveling of the social playing field for all people, wealthy and poor.

Do you hear this: Jesus’ first words of public ministry are to call people to justice! To active liberation of those who are in need.

As I look at the questions of racial justice in America, I see that the call for the church is to not shy away or only partially engage in the liberation work. Rather — it is our call to get right into the fight, to stand up and actively engage this struggle with our whole selves, voices, bodies, hands, feet, money, time, prayer, energy — all of it. Actively.

Jesus could have just as easily stood in the synagogue and read from a pastoral Psalm, perhaps reminding us of God’s abiding presence with as we walk through life’s troubles. Perhaps he’d read from Psalm 1, reminding his listeners that those planted in God’s way will grow up like strong trees. This would be a nice reminder that God is faithful and our devotion to God in love is fulfilling.

Yes. Great. But Jesus doesn’t use these words. Rather, Jesus goes straight to the heart of God’s way by pointing our the necessity of liberating action by God’s people. Jesus calls us to the impossible, yet requisite task of actively seeking justice through our deeds, through what we DO in the world.

Here’s where it comes home. Let’s go back to the beginning, where we talked about being formed by what we love.

In light of what we know about how our loves form us (like my love of pizza forms my body to be a bit thicker these days…), in light of this knowledge, and in light of what we’ve heard in these texts, let’s put it together. We are what we love. And we are called, again and again throughout the Scriptures to pursue justice and liberation for all people. We are, therefore, directed, implored, called, asked, required to love justice. To do justice in a way that springs forth from a heart formed to the way of just action and movement into the world.

Do you love justice? Do we love justice?

How do we “do” justice?

I think the way we start is to check our actions and what we love. Is what I love contributing to the justice and freedom of others? Or am I simply still working in that “liberty” part of the American equation? I have the liberty to reflect upon and consider and ruminate on justice. But does what I actually do, how I actually live, contribute to justice for all people, not just myself?

Think about this way: does what I do contribute to justice for you? We may be strangers. But does my action make you more free, does what I do liberate you?

What we do matters. Not just what we believe, not just what we think, but what we actually do. And our actions, our “doing” in the world, it impacts people. As much as I’d like to think my activities only effect me and those close to me, they have much farther reaching implications. So, what does the Lord require of us? That we speak and act and live for justice.

That phrase, liberty and justice, is not our call. In fact, our pursuit of individual liberty is in many cases counter to the work of justice that our faith requires. God requires God’s people to live and act for justice.

In Jesus Christ, we live for justice. In Jesus Christ, we see the one who set all liberty aside and pursued justice with his whole being.

May be go and do likewise.

Amen.