The Long Arc of Justice, Part 2

"The Long Arc of Justice: Part 2"

Sermon, January 22, 2012

Rev. Dr. Craig Strobel

Isaiah 58:1-9

Shout out, do not hold back!
   Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
   to the house of Jacob their sins. 
Yet day after day they seek me
   and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practised righteousness
   and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgements,
   they delight to draw near to God. 
‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
   Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
   and oppress all your workers. 
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
   and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
   will not make your voice heard on high. 
Is such the fast that I choose,
   a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
   and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
   a day acceptable to the Lord?


Is not this the fast that I choose:
   to loose the bonds of injustice,
   to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
   and to break every yoke? 
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
   and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
   the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. 
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
   you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Biblical understanding of justice is rooted in the recognition that God is a God of justice – is a God who is justice. The people of God must therefore be just as God is just. For example:

Psalm 9:8, 16 - He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice.

        The LORD is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands

Psalm 11:7 - For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face.

Psalm 89:14 - Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.

Psalm 103:6 - The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Psalm 106:3  - Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.

Psalm 140:12 - I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.

God is justice. This is fundamental. If you want to get back to the fundamentals of Biblical faith – and there are many who claim to want to do this - justice is fundamental.

Intimately connected with the idea of aligning the inner spiritual reality with the outer physical reality is the notion that the means create the ends. That is, the way we go about doing something determines, in fact, what we get as an outcome. And for this reason Dr. King embraced the practice of nonviolence in the struggle to secure justice. Dr. King was fond of quoting the 18^th Century transcendentalist preacher Theodore Parker: “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

From “Nonviolence and Racial Justice:” “Finally, the method of nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It is this deep faith in the future that causes the nonviolent resister to accept suffering without retaliation. He knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us from the long tradition of our Christian faith. There is something at the very center of our faith which reminds us that Good Friday may reign for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the Easter drums. Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but one day that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name.* So in Montgomery we can walk and never get weary, because we know that there will be a great camp meeting in the promised land of freedom and justice.”

Nonviolence drew its power from the fact that it is rooted in love – and because the Bible affirms that God is love, then nonviolence is rooted in the very nature of God. Violence is the antithesis of God, and could not be adopted in order to secure justice, which also reflects the nature of God.

(from ”Where Do We Go from Here?”): “Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.”

There is much that we can learn concerning the Biblical and Christian understanding of justice from Dr. King. And even as much as I have stressed the idea that justice involves adjusting the outer material circumstances of life to more accurately reflect the inner spiritual reality – there is also a need to be maladjusted to some things. I quote from his 1957 address, "The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation's Chief Moral Dilemma:”

“There are certain technical words in the vocabulary of every academic discipline which tend to become stereotypes and cliches. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." This word is the ringing cry of the new child psychology. Now in a sense all of us must live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophemic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that you too ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob-rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence. I call upon you to be maladjusted. The challenge to you is to be maladjusted--as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream;" as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, in words lifted to cosmic proportions, "All men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." As maladjusted as Jesus who dared to dream a dream of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment.”

Dr. King closed his address "The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation's Chief Moral Dilemma," with these words, and I close with them this morning:

In closing let me urge each of you to keep faith in the future. Let us realize that as we struggle for righteousness we do not struggle alone, but God struggles with us. The God that we worship is not some Aristotelian unmoved mover who contemplates merely upon himself; He is not merely a self-knowing God, but an other loving God. He is working through history for the establishment of his kingdom. … This is our hope. One day, by the grace of God, we will be able to sing, "the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!