The Justice of God
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This week, I decided to write something a bit different than normal. Different and Ill warn you upfront, angry.
In light of all the injustice surrounding the case of George Floyd, I felt it high time to talk about the topic of the Justice of God. I must admit that this is a topic I have not dealt with much since becoming the pastor of MEMC, and that is somewhat on purpose. This is because God’s Justice is a topic that I have found is often hammered on the most by people who likely would come out on the receiving side of it were it to visit their lives. We are often so quick to perceive the injustices that happen to us and prescribe divine damnation on its cause, that we miss the hundreds of things inherent in our day to day lives that cause that same level of suffering in others. As such, by my figuring, it made more sense to address those other issues first, and then come back to the topic of Justice when it would make sense in a bit of a larger sense.
Then the events of Minneapolis happened. So, this week lets talk about the Justice of God.
“Looking at his disciples, he [Jesus] said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
In the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Luke, we find this passage. This is not an insignificant thing. The Sermon on the Mount makes up the heart of Jesus’ teachings that we find in scripture, so that this is how he chooses to begin it is a fact that should not be lost on us, even for a moment.
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” Jesus begins. “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.”
This is not the first time we read words like this in the Bible. There are hundreds of other examples that read just like it. Isaiah 58:7 “Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” Or Proverbs 17:5, “Whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker; whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished.”
Time and again throughout scripture we are confronted with these same messages. Messages that all work together to spell out a single truth about the nature of how we should relate to each other, and how we ought to think of justice in turn. A truth that is the key to understanding the nature of the Justice of God.
‘We are to care for those who need our care most,’ the Bible teaches us, ‘for it is their well being that interests God greatly.’
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Jesus continues on in the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.”
‘We are to care for those who need our care most, for it is those people God is greatly interested in.’ That does not seem like a difficult thing to comprehend. Yet it is a problem we have been dealing with almost since time began. In the beginning of the Bible we read when creation was done, God said it was good. But as we progress only a few chapters more, unfortunately, we learn of sin, a blanket term for all the ways that creation is now less than it should be. We learn that one of the main ways this sin impacts us human beings is that all of our relationships, those between us and one another, us and God, and us and creation, are now often twisted from what they could be. Far from being about caring for the other, now all too easily our relationships become only about ourselves and how we can use everyone else to rise to ever greater heights. And so it was that in a world shot through with sin, injustice is inevitably born.
“Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.” Jesus keeps on preaching. “For that [all the terror that you who are down and out now experience daily], is how their ancestors treated the prophets.”
‘As a result of sin, injustice abounds,’ we learn in the first three chapters of the Bible. For it is as a result of sin, that inequality exists. It is as a result of sin that people are stepped on and kept down. It is as a result of sin that there are the poor, while many of those who are rich live isolated and in comfort, doing nothing to help. It is as the result of sin, that people are left starving, while others waste what they please, even knowing what that waste means to those around them.
And, it is a result of sin, that the family of a black man are now left to cry themselves to sleep at the senseless murder of their son, brother, and father. A senseless murder that we as a people want to say with everything we are, ‘we couldn’t have seen it coming,’ even though we are robbed of that blessed ignorance by the fact this has happened before time after painful time again.
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received all your comfort.” Jesus continues, and as his followers, pray our hands, in agreement, are clenched fists alongside his. “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.”
And as we read on in scripture we learn that it is to this sin, to this injustice, that our God, is the answer. For our God was not willing to let sin simply destroy that which he said was good. If there is injustice in the world threatening to tear his good creation apart, threatening to oppress the poor, threatening to cause others to hunger, threatening to bring tears to more families like how it has this week, than it is our God, we read, who will be its answer. Who will be the Justice to meet it with a force so terrible as to rend it and all those complicit in propping it up, into the ground.
“Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.” Our Lord tells those who own the boot on the throats of a people who have been calling out for justice for so long. ”Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestor’s treated the false prophets.”
Our God is a god who wants nothing more than to set the brokenness of this world to right. Our God is a god who meets those who would oppress, starve and maim his precious children head on. Our God is a god whose justice is the great comfort of all those who have no other comforts for our God is a god who is always victorious in the end.
“Care for those who need your care, for it is for these people that God shows great interest,” is what the Bible teaches us about how to live for those in need. This is how we as the church are to be people of justice, just as our God is of justice as well. For if we live in this way, how can we ever be content in the thought that our job is done while people starve when they don’t need to. When people are left destitute when they don’t have to be. Or when things like what happened to George Floyd and the countless others are left unaddressed even though we know if left as is it will happen again. Even though we are Canadian and as such his story does not impact us directly, there are countless instances of this same injustice in our backyard as well.
And so in light of this, and all that has happened, we are now, as a church, left with a decision we need to make. Will we meet these injustices head on, not letting them slip as we have countless times before when something else comes our way? Or will we find ourselves needing to admit that when we read this passage from the book of Luke, it is while pointing squarely at us that Jesus says, “woe.”
Care for those who need your care, for it is for these people that God shows great interest. This is how we the church are to be people of Justice.
