Justice & Justification

Justice & Justification by Faith
Today is the last Sunday in Lent as we recognize Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. Palm Sunday begins Holy Week with loud shouts of Hosanna and heralds of Jesus as a king and leads us through Maundy Thursday as Jesus shares his last supper with the disciples and prays at Gethsemane where he is arrested and brought to trial and we remember the outcome of that trial on Good Friday as we remember Jesus’ death by crucifixion on a cross. Of course we know what happens on Easter morning as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, but that’s getting a little ahead of everything because we’re only at the beginning of the week…We’re here on Palm Sunday basking in the glow of the palm branches and shouts of Hosanna!
This is the last Sunday in Lent and as we have been on this journey together, we have been making the journey from hurt to healing. This journey has been one that has confronted those places in ourselves and in our lives where we have been hurt and experienced pain and it has also confronted where we have hurt others. And the truth is that we are often both victim and offender…Along this journey, we have explored places of shame—what those who are sinned against feel when they have been wronged; guilt—what those who are offenders feel when they know that they have done something wrong and feel bad about it; anger—which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but left to fester it becomes rage and causes us to lash out in unhelpful & destructive ways; resistance—how we declare that we are individuals of sacred worth and expect to be treated as such; repentance for the times when we treat others as less than individuals of sacred worth and we seek to go a whole new direction; forgiving-ness when we offer forgiveness to those who have hurt or wronged us; forgiven-ness when we seek to be forgiven…and now this is probably the week that everyone has been waiting for…justice and justification by faith! Okay, maybe some have?
The truth of God is that God hears from both the sinned against crying for justice and from the sinners crying for justification…God’s grace is extended to all people—both in the form of justice & in the form of justification.
Let’s start with justice…The prophet Micah says in verse 8 that we are required to do justice, so if this is a requirement from God then clearly we all know what it means to do justice, right? Well, most are probably familiar with the justice system—the system that we have to provide punishment to those who have done wrong…And most people would say that they want justice and for the most part it’s probably very true…but the last time you got pulled over for speeding were you looking for justice or were you hoping you’d get let off the hook? Biblical justice has more to do with the well being of the victims than it does with the offender. Throughout the laws it is made clear that when a wrong is done, both God & victim are wronged together.
In Micah 6:8, the word that is used for justice is the Hebrew word “mishpat” which is God’s action in a compassionate & merciful manner, not necessarily human fairness or even-handedness. As the verse continues, we are to love kindness. The word for kindness is hesed which is translated to mean mercy, steadfast love…Put those two words and concepts together and really you get what we understand to be grace. Walter Brueggemann says that “God’s justice is God’s grace and fairness that restore human dignity, human rights, and civil rights.” Justice is more about equity than equality—it is unjust for anyone not to have access to education, but it that does not mean that everyone should get into Harvard.
When we look at Jesus’ life from the very beginning we see justice from the start. In the magnifcat, as Mary sings after being told that she is pregnant—Mary declares that the lowly have been lifted up and the hungry are filled. Her song is a declaration of God’s justice…The Messiah that had been longed for was one to bring God’s justice. What was assumed was that God’s justice meant that the Messiah would overthrow all the political powers and raise God’s people up into power again…Which is precisely what Jesus did…just not in the way that everyone expected. Jesus defied everyone’s expectations and yet met them all at the same time…The Messiah that came overthrew all the unjust systems and proclaimed the kingdom of God is at hand…God’s justice was nearby…God’s grace was available to all people…And God’s people were raised up into power, just not the power that was expected…It wasn’t power in the sense that we were raised up to rule over others, but instead raised up to serve others.
The parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel according to Luke…It’s one that is probably familiar to most people. It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan—the story of the person who was robbed & beaten and left for dead…In this story, there are 2 people who walk past this half dead man—a priest & a Levite…Both were men who worked in the temple and were considered to be just a little bit holier than everyone else—just a little bit closer to God. Well, we would expect that these men were the ones who helped the half dead man, but in the story that’s not what happens…Now, we can give all kinds of reasons and excuses to these men as to why they didn’t stop and help…It’s very true that touching a person that was as close to death as this man was would make them unclean and if they were going to the temple to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people they needed to be clean and they needed not to come in contact with anyone who was unclean…It’s a perfectly valid excuse and a great one at that…I mean it’s okay to let one person die if it means that the business of the temple goes on, right? The arguments can be made and they can be made with success, and yet at the end of them…if the Samaritan had not come along, this man would be dead. The question that Jesus is answering in this parable is “Who is my neighbor?” Who is the neighbor? Well, Jesus implies that the one who showed mercy was the one who was the neighbor to the one who fell into the hands of the robbers. Jesus says go and do likewise. We are told to be good neighbors…And we are to be good neighbors to the victims. To provide opportunities of justice and restoration. In what we understand justice to be in our society today, the Samaritan may have tried to chase down the robbers or find a soldier in order to get justice, because someone needed to be punished for what happened…instead what he does is provide care and healing for the victim. He put him up in a hotel, gave him medical attention, and took care of all of his needs. Jesus is telling us that as children of God, we should work at restoring the victim rather than forgiving the robber. If there were no victim in this parable, there would no need to answer the question, who is my neighbor?
In helping to provide justice to one, we provide justice for all. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” By seeking to restore the sacred worth of one who has been wounded or hurt, we restore the sacred with for all people.
In the movie Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood plays a man names Walt Kowalski. Walt is a man who has just lost his wife and has watched his world change. His neighborhood looks different, his city is changing, everything is changing around him and he tries to cling to what he knows to be the same while he realizes that he’s just grasping at straws. Walt’s prized possession is his 1972 Gran Torino. His neighbor, Tao is forced into trying to steal the car in order to be initiated into a gang. Tao doesn’t want to do either, but his life and the life of his family is threatened should he refuse. The robbery goes bad and Tao does not steal the car but succeeds in angering his neighbor Walt. The gang challenges Tao again and the fight literally rolls over into Walt’s front yard where he leads everyone away at gunpoint. The neighborhood heralds Walt as a hero, but Tao & his family know that Tao needs to make amends for what he has done. Here is the conversation that they have with Walt on how this will happen. (Clip.) Walt asks, why am I getting treated like the bad guy here? When really what they are trying to do is to restore the dignity to Walt—they are giving him back what Tao took from him. This is what justice should seek to do, restore the dignity, the sacred worth that was taken away.
Jesus’ death was caused by the injustice of the world. Jesus was like the Samaritan—he healed people on the Sabbath, he taught new laws, he broke dietary laws, and preached against legalism…He was a threat to every establishment…Jesus’ death came at the hands of the unjust and at that, there is no one who escapes that blame. The crowd that cried “Crucify him” was full of all people and not one particular ethnic group, religious group, or type of person. Every time we ignore or disobey what Jesus taught, we cry crucify him right alongside the crowd.
What Jesus did through his life, death, and resurrection leads to our justification. Where we understand and realize that Jesus did for us what we couldn’t possibly do on our own…salvation. Andrew Sung Park says in his book From Hurt to Healing, “Salvation is not something we can put into our pocket as a possession. Nor does salvation mean securing a ticket to paradise or heaven. Salvation is the restoration of a loving relationship with God and neighbors…Salvation brings about true fellowship with God and others.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God and God cannot deny that we are indeed God’s creation. Faith affirms that we are God’s no matter what happens to us and God embraces us unconditionally. That’s grace and our acceptance of that is faith. But this is not cheap or easy grace. The grace that God gives is absolutely free, that’s the very nature of what grace is. Justification is our entry into this restoring relationship with God. Our justification by faith is deeply connected with accountability. That means that we are encouraged and expected to repent—to turn completely around from what we have been doing and follow what God requires of us—to do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with our God…To love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbor as we love ourselves…
Just as Jesus’ death shows justice, it also shows justification. Jesus’ death was not to appease some angry God or heal God’s pride, but instead it was to redeem humanity. It was something that we could not seem to do on our own and God did it for us. That’s what we understand in justification—it is something that we can’t possibly do on our own, but something that we trust in from God and only God.
Jesus’ death is for both victims and offenders… Park sums it up this way, “To offenders, Jesus’ death points to the suffering of the oppressed and victims, calling the offenders to repentances…For the wounded, Jesus’ crucifixion signifies God’s woundedness with them. It shows God’s love for both the oppressed and the oppressors. To the oppressed, it shows God’s solidarity with their suffering. To oppressors, it demonstrates God’s love in calling them to repent of their sins and thus reclaim their humanity.” God wants to forgive our sins if we repent of them…if we don’t repent, meaning that we do things in the opposite of how we have been doing them, then God’s forgiveness through the crucifixion really doesn’t mean much…Justification by faith happens when the sinners or oppressors accept the fact that Jesus died on the cross because of their sin and that Jesus challenges them to be the people that God created them to be.
Our Lenten journey from hurt to healing has been created in order to create time and space to experience God’s love and grace for yourself. I know in talking with many of you that this has not been an easy journey and has been difficult and challenging. But I also hope that you have been able to feel God’s justice and justification at the same time—that you know that you have not made this journey alone, but have made it with God. And as Holy Week begins, we remember the final days of Jesus’ life before everything changed. Not just Jesus’ life, but the whole world…What happened on Easter morning didn’t just change the disciples, but it forever changed the fabric of humanity…As we grow ever closer to Easter, keep the ending in your sight as we take the final steps of this journey together.