Justice in a Messy World

Justice

About twenty or so years ago, when Fiona was just my girlfriend, I remember taking down to Redhead Beach on a date. I bought a hot BBQ chicken as the centre piece of my picnic lunch. When we got to the car park, we decided it was a bit early for lunch, so we went for a walk along the beach before we would eat. So we locked everything in the car, and went for a lovely walk.

We come back to the car, and… “Oh no!” Someone’s broken into the car.

And whoever it was has taken off with my hot BBQ chicken. How dare they!!

Actually, the also took Fiona’s purse - but I was really looking forward to that chicken!

I wanted justice.

I wanted that thief to have to pay.

The reality however, we figured that I was actually the foolish one. You see, I had the bright idea that because I had a hot chicken in the car, I should leave the window slightly ajar. But it turns out, my slightly ajar, was actually enough to undo the lock.

I was still mad at the thief, but suddenly I had to admit that I was also to blame.

This little incident can start to identify a problem that we have.

You see, we all long for justice. But quite often we don’t get a clear cut case. Now in the case of my thief, certainly the thief is in the wrong, but my foolish action does change the situation.

Some time back, I remember reading a study that looked at the perception of sentences handed down to convicted criminals. The study first surveyed people with just the main facts of the case. A significant majority felt the judge was too lenient in the sentences handed down. But the study went further.

It then took the time and looked at all of the details that the judge considered in handing down the sentence. Interestingly, the majority surveyed actually changed their minds and felt the sentence was reasonable.

We all long for justice, but justice in a messy world - well… it’s complicated!

Last week I considered the idea of how we manage ourselves in a messy world.

Today I’m going to continue this idea that we’re in a messy world, but I want to focus in on the idea of: where does justice fit in a messy world?

What do we do when our longing for justice puts us in a bit of a conundrum.

Take abortion. I will declare that all life is precious, including the life of the baby still in the mother’s womb, and therefore I will oppose the killing of this unborn child.

But in our messy world, a girl becomes pregnant through rape. We can argue that God will redeem this situation into something beautiful, but you can see that our clear ethic has just become messy.

We will also rightly argue that domestic abuse is always wrong. And it is. But how do we treat that man who for his entire life has only ever known abuse… who has never seen how to treat people properly.

I’m not excusing the abuser - but you can see how the messed up world has made things messy.

Well, as we try to explore the idea of justice in a messy world, let’s look at a story about David tucked in towards the end of 2 Samuel.

2 Samuel

Well, I’ve been looking at David for near on two months now. In this time I’ve explored how David has looked at things in quite a different way to the way the world looks at things.

His approach to personal threats sometimes just seem weird. The big difference is that while most people look at things from the perspective of “How can I take control”, David instead looks at it from God’s perspective: “How can God be given the reigns.”

It’s not that David is perfect. The last few weeks have blown any such ideas out of the water. David messes up big time, but when he does, he has the wherewithal to humble himself before God - something which too many other people fail to do.

Well, last week I looked at a particularly messy situation. I looked at how the earlier situation where David clearly broke the sixth, seventh and tenth commandments, mudied the waters when his sons start to go off the rails.

I took us up to chapter 18, but had we continued in chapter 19 and 20 we would have seen that same mess continue. It involves a whole bunch of political instability and a pretty gruesome murder as well.

Now as we come to chapter 21, it’s almost as if the author of 2 Samuel is starting to wrap things up. One commentator I read described chapters 21 to 24 as the epilogue of 2 Samuel.

What we’re going to see in this epilogue, (if that’s what you want to call it), is that things remain messed up, but from within this mess, we find hope.

But this morning, we’re going to specifically look at the first fourteen verses of chapter 21. So let’s do that now.

The Gibeonite problem

Chapter 21 starts with the words “during the reign of David”. This means that the events where about to read about might not necessarily have happened after the events of the preceding chapters. All we know is that it happened some time while David was king.

What we do know is that there has been a famine for three years. Three years would be tough because anything you’ve stored up is either completely run out or running very low. They’ve got nothing to eat.

Well, in verse 1, David seeks out the Lord, and God answers.

It’s got to do with Saul’s sinful action against the Gibeonites.

Now, we’re about to be reminded what this is all about, but before I look at that, this raises an interesting idea.

Linking sin and events

If God is linking a specific event to a specific sin, is it reasonable for us to do likewise?

For example, in recent times, various large bush fires or hurricanes were linked to a specific judgement of God resulting from sinful public policies. Despite something similar happening here, I am very wary of doing the same today. I believe we are generally overstepping our knowledge when we do.

But in this time, it is made clear to David from the Lord that the two events are linked.

What is clear in this - is that God cares about justice?

Gibeonites deception

So what exactly did happen? Well, thankfully, the author of 2 Samuel actually reminds us, but you can read for yourself the first part of the backstory in Joshua 9.

So let’s do a quick recap now…

Israel were just coming into the promised land, and as a result of God’s divine judgement, the inhabitants of the land were being rid from the land (something which I know goes against our modern sensibilities, but something I’ll address on another day). Well, there was one particular nation called the Gibeonites who realised what was happening and decided to trick the Israelites. They pretended to be travellers from a faraway land, and on the basis that they weren’t local, they made a treaty with Israel to spare them.

But this treaty made a mess in itself.

On one hand, God wanted Israel to remove them.

But on the other, making an oath is very serious and should never be broken. But the oath goes against what God wants.

Compromise

So now they are doing wrong no matter what they do.

Well, in just this event we start to see how our messed up world means at times, compromise is necessary. So for a few hundred years, the Gibeonites were allowed to live, but in service to Israel.

Compromise is not the ideal, but in messy situations, compromise is sometimes necessary.

Saul makes it worse

Fast forward to the time of King Saul, and here in 2 Samuel 21 we find out something that we didn’t actually know back in the narrative of Saul’s life.

You see, for all of Saul’s flaws, he was certainly zealous for Israel. Sometimes that zealous nature took him too far.

He saw the compromise made with the Gibeonites and he didn’t like it. The Gibeonites were a constant reminder of Israels mistake. And so in his zeal, he wiped out much of the remaining Gibeonites. But here we see the big problem. King Saul broke an oath - and in the eyes of God, this is serious.

So last week we might have had a messy situation, but here we have another.

God’s plan had been averted due to a foolish oath, but then a foolish but zealous act neglects the oath.

David’s problem now

Effectively, we now have God saying to David - An injustice has been done, and something needs to be done about it.

So what does David do? How do you bring about justice when this mess from the past gets thrown in your face?

We might first start with: that’s not fair!! Why has God done this to David?

But you know what… that’s not always our question to answer. Sometimes the mess from the past, even if we haven’t really had much to do with it, comes our way, and when it does, the question of justice is still relevant.

Finding justice

Well as we look at how David goes about finding justice, it is interesting to note that the Lord neither condemns nor condones what David does. A fact I’m come back to shortly.

But in verse 3, David makes a good start by actually talking and listening the the surviving Gibeonites.

“What shall I do for you? How shall I make atonement so that you will bless the Lord’s inheritance?” he asks.

Curiously they start by acknowledging that they do not have any right to demand anything. But David prods further - not asking for a demand, but for a request.

Well, it turns out, they want justice. Saul killed their people. They want seven of Saul’s male decendants to also be killed.

Sins of the father?

This raises a few questions. It might raise the question of capital punishment, but we should be careful not to use Old Testament example to shape debates in our current age.

A bigger question however, is whether it’s fair to punish children for the sins of their father. Actually, the answer might be a clear cut no given that in Ezekiel 18:20, God actually says children shouldn’t be punished for the sin of their father.

Well, I don’t know if it’s fully a satisfactory answer, but it is worth remembering that this plan certainly doesn’t come with any explicit approval from God.

The execution

So, let’s come back to the action. We have David wanting to find justice in the mess, and so he agrees to execute seven of Saul’s sons - although it clearly tells us that it doesn’t involve Mephibosheth, which is the character I discussed a few weeks back when I looked at 2 Samuel 9.

In the end, I think you would have to say it was not an ideal solution, but this is what we are seeing - there often is no ideal solution in the mess.

Now you could argue, as some have, that this was actually politically expedient of David to do this, after all, he is getting rid of potential threats to his kingdom. But I think such a judgement fails to understand who David is. And besides… what we’re about to see also suggests such an idea is not right.

But in verse 9, the seven sons are handed over to the Gibeonites, and the execution is carried out.

Kindness

Now, if this account ended at verse 9, we might be left to think that justice has been done. It might have been a messy situation, but we just come up with a solution, and that is that.

But something extraordinary happens in verse 10 and I’m going to argue that it should completely shift our way of thinking about justice in a messy situation.

Because, if we are going to treat these messy situations in a God honouring way, it should not be about a simple compromise and then away we go. Rather seeking justice in a messy situation actually can do something amazing.

Now you could imagine that if you were the mother of one of the men executed, you would be devastated. You might even be angry.

But one of these mothers, Rizpah, (who was actually the granddaughter of Saul), showed her grief in quite a different way.

What she did was to go where the bodies were hanging. On a nearby rock, she then spread out some sackcloth - a symbol of grief. And from the time of the execution, to the time that the rains finally came, she stayed with that sackcloth, ready to protect those bodies. She did not let birds or wild animals touch them.

In some ways, it can seem a strange action to take. After all, why not just take the bodies down and give them a good burial?

The Bible actually doesn’t tell us what her thinking was. Perhaps she was trying to make some sort of statement. Almost like a mini, almost silent, protest.

In some ways, however, the ambiguity of what she is doing, makes a statement in itself.

In a messed up sort of way it is saying - the world’s a mess, but we can’t ignore it… these bodies need to be cared for.

Keeping the bodies on display could possibly be described as perverse. But in this perverse way, she shows she cares.

And here we start to see the Christian way of understanding justice in the mess. Sure we might at times need a little compromise, but that compromise must always keep the central element of God - love!

As David is told what Rizpah is doing, he begins to understand this.

David shows his solidarity with what Rizpah is doing.

For his part, he goes and collects the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan. We’d previously been told that they had been kept by the citizens of Jabesh Gilead.

He presents them to Rizpah. In doing so he is saying - yes, this is messed up, but I too care.

Verse 14 then tells us that the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan were buried in the proper way. He showed the respect, that in all reason, they probably didn’t deserve, but that they get because of God’s great love.

It is interesting to note that it is only after this beautiful act at the end that God actually answers the prayer of the land, and breaks the three year drought.

Why I say it is interesting, is because a quick read of this passage might suggest that it was the sacrifice of the seven sons that appeased God. However, God’s looking for something more in a mess. Maybe the compromise was necessary, but what God really wants, is a whole lot of love injected into the situation.

Justice v Love

You see, here’s the thing. We often pit justice up against love. You see, from love, we might readily find mercy, and mercy seems to be at odds with justice.

Mercy says that you won’t get punished for something you deserve. Which goes against the very principal of justice. And this is what makes us stumble. Do we go for love? Or do we go for mercy?

When we look through God’s eyes however, we find it is a false dichtomoy.

We need to right the wrongs, but this doesn’t mean we keep out love.

The classic case is the disciplining of a child. Justice says the naughty child should be in trouble. But this can and should be done in love. This isn’t about going soft. But you can empathise with the child upset with their punishment.

That person who has wronged you… it will get messy. Navigating a path forward will take great discernment and probably a few compromises - but you can love them because they are someone made in the image of God.

Christ atonement

It can be hard to understand, but it makes sense when we see what this picture ultimately points to.

You see, this episode is not ideal. Should the executions have taken place? That’s something that can be argued.

But God orchestrated a later event that can be the ideal solution to the most messiest of all situations.

You see, the Gibeonites were seeking atonement.

Atonement is actually the very thing that all of humanity needs. Atonement is the process of putting together thing that was broken - in our situation, the relationship we have with God.

Atonement requires justice. Justice means an appropriate punishment - and this means death.

But death naturally is the final separator, so how can this bring the atonement - the bringing back together?

Well, just as this account has a body hung, we find the central element to our Christian teaching - the cross.

The cross brings the judgement that is needed.

But what makes this ideal is that Christ was able to break through the bonds of death.

And so in the cross we get both justice and love.

And so we get the paradox of the Christian life. The sacrificial living - which bring abundant life.

Conclusion

The cross ultimately is our big guide to understanding justice in a messy situation.

While the specifics of any situation will vary, and I don’t want to pretend that it is ever easy… But we understand how love must never be taken out of our quest for justice.

Can I suggest that with this idea, if you have a hot head, that’s not the time to seek justice. Because when things are running hot, it’s hard to keep the love.

Before you try seeking justice - look at the person in the way God would. Look at them as a person made in the image of God, someone who God deeply loves.

This is so much easier with time to reflect in God’s word.

And even if whatever you need to do might cause harm to another - show them that they matter. Love them. Care for them.

Justice in a messy situation is not easy. It does not have the nice clean cut parameters that our ethics normally have.

But with love, we can begin to find a solution that will be honouring to God.

Let me pray...