God's Call: Do Justice

Sermon, 1/24/10. The twin biblical pillars of our discipleship call are love and justice. How often is the second pillar neglected -- in our walk as well as our talk! How difficult it is to move ourselves beyond charity -- ministry "to" and "for" -- to social justice -- ministry "with" and "among" ...

 

 

‘C’   /   Epiphany 4  /   1-24-10   /   Celebration of Worship, Bethesda Presbyterian

 

Scripture    Luke 4:14-21

 

God’s Call: Do Justice

 

Patients in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia are widely known for being able to recite one thing during a Communion service: the Lord’s Prayer.

 

If ever such a fate should befall me, I will probably be able to recall Jesus’ words today from the prophet Isaiah more readily than I would even the words Jesus taught us to pray.

 

The reason is simple. The congregation I last served has concluded each Sunday service for over a decade by saying – in unison – these prophetic words.

 

Words I had brought with me from the profoundly interracial congregation I staffed during seminary several years before that. A congregation that probably still ends Worship to this day using these words it calls its “Parish Purpose”:

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, anointing me to preach Good News to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, the receiving of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Jubilee” – also known as “the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

As these two Presbyterian congregations – one in Michigan, one in California – prepare each and every Sunday at Worship’s end to be about, as our liturgy has it, “Following God’s Word into the World”, they make these words their own. It’s Jesus’ inaugural address, if you will – or at least his State of the Israel Nation – announcing the focus of his ministry to the world. Words he then appended with a single telltale line, as he sat down and all his home folks fixed – one version puts it fastened – their gaze upon him. Words we find in one single line: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

This scripture: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, anointing me …”

 

Stop. Just who is the “me”, here?

 

Is Jesus speaking of himself? Traditional theology has often held it to be so.

 

But why, then, would Jesus then add, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your … hearing?”

 

Is it me – Jesus – whom you have fixed your eyes upon – is that what is fulfilled? Or is it the words you are participating in through the act of hearing them?

 

I wonder how many of us Christians treat Jesus like the Zen Buddhist students of old who fix their eyes on their master pointing to the moon while he exclaims, “Look at the moon! Look at the moon!” And they gaze upon the master’s finger, nod, and say, “Yes, yes: Nice moon! Nice moon!”

 

I think Jesus knows how that Zen Buddhist master must have felt. As the next verse beyond our scriputre today puts it, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came out of his mouth.”

 

“Yes, yes: Nice moon! Nice moon!”

 

Perhaps our Presbyterian forebear John Calvin was correct when he cautioned us about looking at the spectacles of faith rather than looking through them.

 

Perhaps we just don’t hear the words of the message for ourselves, because we are so enthralled by the messenger who brings them.

 

But it’s our hearing that’s the focus here. It’s God calling – and we doing the listening. We … are the “me”.

 

 

Let it be known that it is no accident that Jesus reads from the Isaiah scripture at the beginning of his earthly ministry. For these powerful yet spare words are by no means anomalous among the whole of scripture’s call to us.

 

For Isaiah – Jesus – present to us in stark relief one of the two major biblical calls for Christians daily seeking to be true to their baptisms – baptisms we are about to renew today for eight new members. One of those calls, of course, is the call to love. The other is a call we seldom wish to discuss, much less hear, for fear of being misunderstood or creating discomfort: the call to do justice.

 

Justice. Righteousness. We fix our eyes and train our ears not upon Jesus, but upon his words today – words we hear in similar form roughly two thousand times over the course of our scriptures.

 

The great Hebrew scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann sums up the wisdom of the ancients about justice in this way: It’s “finding out what belongs to whom and giving it back,” is how he aptly sums up the witness of these ancients. I also like to put it in biblical terms: Justice is recognizing that what’s good for the least of these – within and among us – is good for the whole.

 

And yet, as a matter of God’s call to us – as a matter of it being fulfilled in our hearing – the best quick-yet-comprehensive description of justice I have encountered comes from the grand old man of Latin American liberation theology, Gustavo Gutierrez.

 

A Catholic priest who has lived his entire ministry in a Lima, Peru favela – the poorer cousin of what we might call a barrio – Gutierrez describes three deepening levels of remembering our baptism, also known as our Christian discipleship, in these words:

 

  Por los pobres

  Con los pobres

  Como los pobres

 

For the poor … With the poor … As, or like, the poor. “The poor” encompassing more than a lack of material possessions – granted. But certainly, “the poor” encompassing no less than this lack.

 

To be for the poor, as Gutierrez puts it, is a good thing. It’s the very definition of charity: to give to or act on behalf of those who have a whole lot less.

 

To be with the poor … well, that’s a different story. This descent deeper into our discipleship earth moves us beyond the topsoil of charity and into the bedrock of justice. “With” is a term of accompaniment – becoming a companero, as Spanish-speakers call it: one who breaks bread with someone else. “With” joins love and hope among the Holy Trinity of four-letter words of our faith – as the word that perhaps best describes our discipleship experience in both love and justice terms.

 

And to become as, or like, the poor? This is a place where so few of us are called. If you think you hear this call, contact your local pastor immediately. (I may even suggest a place you might seek some further assistance.)

 

 

Then again: When was there a time in your life you felt materially or spiritually poor? If there has been such a time, you certainly know a little of what it’s like to be like the poor.

 

And if someone stood with you during such a time, you know what it means to be with the poor, as well.

 

And if some others gave you a hand or a hand-out during that time, you know what it means to be for the poor.

 

The three stages of our discipleship call: Each of us knows what it’s like to be on the recipient end! Each of us personally knows what Jesus means when he speaks of “the receiving of sight to the blind.”

 

Which makes it all the easier for us to realize the qualitative difference between giving something to or for an impoverished individual – charity – and that sustainable discipleship place of giving something of ourselves with and among that individual – justice. Of investing ourselves not only that we may stand for something, but that we might stand with someone.

 

For at the end of the day, it’s not what we believe that really matters that much. It’s with whom we make our gospel beds:

 

  The poor.

  The captives.

  The blind.

  The oppressed – those pressed down, or made poor.

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … anointing me” to be not only for, but with these people, Isaiah once proclaimed. To be about the business of doing justice.

 

These words are important enough that Jesus made them the inaugural address of his call to discipleship.

 

A call that is fulfilled no more – and no less – than in our hearing it into reality.

 

And whoever has ears to hear … let them hear.

 

U  U  U

 

Benediction …

 

God comes for us all. That, we need to know first. “If God is for us … who can be against us?”

 

God is with us all, in the very name of Jesus: Immanuel, “God with us.”

 

God is as a few of us, as well – in the two times (and there are only two)

Jesus draws an equal mark between himself and someone else:

 

·        “As you welcome the children, you welcome me.”

 

·        “As you did it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it unto me.”

 

If God’s deepest discipleship commitment is made to the children in particular, and to the least of these in general … then what about our discipleship commitment?

 

How can we at least stand with the least of these … that we might be about justice in this world?

 

Go out into the world in doing the justice that makes for peace – to love and serve our servant Lord.