Parables of Justice: Humility over Hubris

In her article in the Covenant Quarterly (February 2007) Just Churches in an Unjust World: A Pastor's Reflection, M. Karen Lichlyter-Klein acknowledges that a well-found fear for the Christian working for justice is the

danger of thinking that somehow I have figured out what God's
justice is all about, and that I have somehow magically arrived
at a conclusion of my faith . . . And if for a moment, I come to
believe that I have finally unlocked the mysteries of God's
identity, I fear the sin of hubris might be my legacy" (25).

As I seek to be a faithful pastor helping the church enact God's justice - grounded in the revelation and activity of Jesus Christ, I am cognizant of the fact that I am often woefully inadequate to the task. Justice is just so, well - messy, intricate, and complex. Not only must I confront the inadequate definitions offered by secular political theories, whether liberal or conservative, but also my own brokenness reflected in my failure to see the ways in which I participate in injustice and in my failure to change when I do see it. None of this is meant to absolve myself from heeding Jesus' invitation to enact His kingdom but it does re-frame the project of justice as a whole to include my continued need for repentance and perpetual need to be reminded that this is not my kingdom, my cause, my project or my issue but His. Both needs, in other words, require that I return to the Scriptures and prayer as I seek to divest myself of the self-righteousness that Pastor Lichlyter-Klein so rightfully fears. And when I return their - looking, listening, pondering, I am reminded that Jesus's own teachings acknowledge my surprise, wonderment, even bafflement at what such kingdom justice looks like. In one parable, Jesus tells of a landowner who goes out into the marketplace three times rounding up workers to labor in his vineyard at 9 am, noon, and 5 pm (Matt. 20:1-16). When night falls, he asks the manager to call the workers in, beginning with the last group hired, and instructs him to pay them all the same wage. Needless to say, and I would agree with them, the earlier workers feel slighted stating, "These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat." They are incensed to put it mildly and I can't blame them. But as the narrative continues the landowner responds, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?" This isn't a place for a sermon, despite my willingness to give it. But as I reflect upon this text I am struck by the deep grumbling in myself that agrees with the 9 am workers. Their complaint makes good sense and hardly reflects wickedness or selfishness. What it does reflect, however, is that they don't understand what true justice looks like - justice that is grounded not in equality, or rights but in God's deep generosity. And however we might wish to think about the implications of such a text in a civil society which defines justice precisely as equality, a significant meaning of this text is that it forcefully points out the inadequacies of our understandings, definitions, paradigms, and programs for justice. I believe that as we acknowledge this lack, we once again become followers of Jesus - followers of the one who came to teach us who God is and who redeems us from ourselves. Being a follower means that to understand truly what justice is - we must begin by listening and watching the One who knows - the One who confronts our grumbling and says that justice is being generous.

The Divine Vocation of Irrelevance

“Why are you doing this?” I was asked by someone who was homeless as he sat down for me to wash his feet. It’s a good question. Despite the significance of Maundy Thursday in the Church calendar, what did I hope to accomplish? How does such an act work to end the burdensome issues of our city and world? The act of foot-washing placed against the background of such crushing need and dire circumstances seems well – just so irrelevant. And yet I recently reread a favorite book on Christian ministry that calls pastors to just such a vocation – irrelevance. Henri Nouwen points out that our fast paced and technologically savvy world appears to want to leave pastors behind for more competent professionals – doctors, lawyers, psychotherapist, etc. Yet, despite all this secular wonderment, success, and competence, he argues, people continue in great numbers to feel cut off from one another and God - unloved, and unknown. So many people long for success, acknowledgement and fame, because this is how one supposedly finds meaning, how one finds love in the world. In response he declares,

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love. The great message that we have to carry, as minister’s of God’s Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because he has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.

This is a good reminder as I seek to engage the wider Santa Barbara community. O how I long to be seen as helpful, successful, and respectable. But in the end, Jesus knows better. He gives me a basin, soap and towel, and asks me touch the body of one who is considered a failure in society. He asks me to listen to his stories and share my own. He measures success not by numbers served, dollars given or applause received – but by the giving and receiving of love.

Recently, I have been thinking more and more about my task in this position that the church has been so gracious to ask me to fill. Don and I have been working on an affiliation policy to help guide the church and staff members in ways that are best in keeping with following Jesus. Here are some clarifying thoughts for myself:

• I am to be God’s advocate on behalf of the church for those in need of compassion, justice and mercy (1 Peter 4:11). In short, I am to be an emissary of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am not a social worker, an activist, or a politician, but a servant of the Church whose task is to proclaim the good news and invite others to follow Jesus. This declaration means that there should be no distinction between evangelism and advocacy. My goal is not the transformation of the world per se but to help the Church live out its call faithfully in the world.
• Following Jesus may place me in questionable company and may mean that I “suffer for doing good.” (1 Peter 3:17) The Gospel accounts reveal that Jesus often associated with sinners and was reviled by religious people for just such an association. However, the issue for Jesus was the invitation of sinners to enter into God’s kingdom. In other words, get in trouble for proclaiming and enacting the gospel and avoid what distracts from it.
• Get in trouble with trustworthy and upright believers. Partnership begins (but doesn't end) in the Church rather than outside of it. (Mark 6:7) I may “participate” and “associate” with others because the gospel remains a welcome to all but “partnership” should be reserved for Church members and likeminded Christians. The intimacy of partnership demands personal commitment.

This last point has spurred me on to begin creating a Gospel Action ministry team to help facilitate the work that God has called our church to do. My recent experiences in the community and further reflection on my role, have reminded me that Jesus did not send his disciples out alone to preach the word, He sent them two by two. I have had a recent success in this area of corporate ministry by bringing together different business leaders in our church to reinstate a Benevolence Committee, which will be used to empower parishioners struggling financially by offering them practical financial and spiritual advice.

Now that I have a better sense of the myriad things that are currently going on in our community I am going to seek to bring people into partnership so that we can be faithful to the irrelevance that Jesus has called us to perform because God’s fundamental means of change remains the gospel of Jesus Christ, and God’s primary agent of change for the world is the Church.

The Lesson No One Wants to Learn: A Reflection on Suffering (Excerpt)

This past Sunday I was asked to preach on a difficult text: Hebrews 5:5-10. The text includes the startling truth, “All though he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” I began by telling the congregation that this is a sermon best whispered because like Peter, who was rebuked by Jesus for questioning his suffering, I have more questions than answers, but I don’t want to sin. I don’t want Satan to use me. Because of this I decided not to preach. My wife called what I was doing an “anti-sermon” but I decided to call it a reflection. The Apostle Paul tells us that this side of God’s kingdom we “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). Acknowledging my lack of sight in discerning the clarity of God’s word and the difficulties of our world seems easy enough, but often the older I get the more my sight seems to fade. Even talking about suffering points to our own present fragility and limits, both as subjects and as students of God.

I went on to explain that Jesus defined obedience as being compassionate as God is compassionate. How is such obedience learned?

According to our text, what elements are critical in Jesus’s learning of compassion amidst suffering - obedience to the Father?

1. Jesus learns to acknowledge suffering honestly

He doesn’t pontificate about the causes of suffering, argue a particular view of good and evil, or defend God. The text says that He responds in tears.

On the one hand, Jesus refuses to engage in a common sort of Christian stoicism – indifference to suffering – “keeping a stiff upper lip.” A state of being that I call “holy lying” where due to some vision of spirituality we choose to deny the realities of life. We here it in the “I’m okays” and “fines”. Now, this is a difficult truth. And I in no way wish to chastise those who are suffering for failing to somehow fall apart. What I want to say is that God recognizes that suffering hurts and that Jesus invites us to acknowledge it to God. To do so, is to confess a deeply human truth that we are fragile creatures, vulnerable to things beyond our control.

On the other hand, if Jesus weeps we must remember that not only is such an expression human but also divine. If Jesus weeps at suffering then on a fundamental level it means that suffering is not the way it should be. That God doesn’t revel and traffic in painful circumstance or horror for our good.

If Jesus weeps as one who suffers he also weeps for those who suffer. To weep with those who suffer is to express the fundamental ache of God for those who need redemption. I’m not saying that God is not providential nor in control – I willingly confess that these things are true. But to weep with those who suffer is a fundamental aspect of compassion. It is a form of suffering and a critical part of God’s redemptive plan. BUT the fact that Jesus weeps surely challenges any glib explanation of God’s providence amidst suffering. We must always remember that the God who uses suffering is also the one who weeps over it.

If Jesus’ fundamental response to suffering was to choose to share in our sufferings, to acknowledge the difficulties of suffering, to weep with us and willingly enter the dark uncharted spaces of our lives, then what do we make of the miraculous, the desire to end suffering though acts of miraculous power? What does it mean to be a healer?

Well, if Jesus’ miracles were the central event of the Gospels a cynic might rightly point out that most people during Jesus’ day were not cured. Mark 1:34; 3:10. It is true that Book of Revelation tells us that ultimately suffering will have no place in God’s kingdom where he will wipe away every tear, death will be no more and mourning, crying, even pain will vanish (Rev. 21:3-4). Yet, there are many who are so eager for this reality that they refuse to weep because they want suffering gone right now. They believe that what is required is power and that suffering is entirely evil and irredeemable.

I don’t have an answer for this tension but understand that Jesus’s obedience to the Father, his compassion for those who suffer and the healing of some while others wait brings us back to the mystery of God’s love. He did not cure to prove, to impress, or to convince. His cures can never be separated from his being with us. This brings us back to the great mystery that the expression of God’s love is not that our pain is taken away, but that God first wants to share that pain with us – that our salvation is because of divine solidarity. If God’s compassion in Jesus Christ is located in solidarity first and foremost rather than any expression of great power or authority, then Jesus’s obedience invites us to be as close to each other as God is to us. It means that no matter what happens we are to be present – healing, no healing – the test of our faithfulness as a Church will not be how we respond to suffering but those who suffer. In the movie Patch Adams, Robin Williams character says it well, “If you treat the disease you win or your lose. If you treat the person you always win.”

This side of heaven, what is important is not the cure of the sick, but the deep compassion that moved Jesus to these cures, his presence with us in our suffering. We would do well to remember the response of Job’s friends to his plight:

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home . . . They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” Job 2:11-13.

It is when they stop weeping and start speaking that are confronted by God and called to repent. The same is often true for us.

Three Action Verbs (part III): PARTICIPATE

Participate with others in God’s collaborative kingdom work – The summons to join God’s kingdom is an invitation to collaborate in work that He has already initiated and to which He has asked all believers to participate joyfully in. It recognizes that God’s kingdom is more than any individual person but found in the bringing together of the near and the far, Jew and Gentile, men and women, slave and the free – it is a corporate work that can involve both those inside as well as outside the church. In other words, God's kingdom work defines the community as both the means and result of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

GUIDING TEXTS: Ps. 24:1; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:1-2; Acts 10:1-8; Gal. 3:28; Phil. 2:1-4; 1 John 4:7-13
GUIDING QUESTIONS: Where is God at work in our city and how can we partner with Him? How can we integrate works of mercy more into our corporate life? What does it mean to act as the Body of Christ?

Three Action Verbs (part II): ADVOCATE

Advocate for those who need to experience God’s kingdom – To advocate is to live out the prophetic call of inviting everyone to recognize, receive, and enact God’s reconciling message of compassion, mercy, and justice – his kingdom rule. It means speaking and acting on behalf of Jesus Christ and his Church as well as for those who are poor and marginalized.

GUIDING TEXTS: Deut. 27:19; Psalm 10:17-18; Isaiah 61:8; Micah 6:8; Amos 5:24; Matt. 25:31-46; Mark 1:14-15; Luke 18:1-8; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; James 1:27
GUIDING QUESTIONS: How are we currently praying for our community? How can we extend God’s compassion, justice and mercy to everyone in our community? How can we create long-term systemic change that is in keeping with God’s design?