In light of these
scriptures and in light of other scripture what is your idea of justice? What do you believe or understand justice to
be?
We’ve all
experienced injustice. And I thought I
would start today by reading you a letter I wrote to Jasmyn when she was almost
three years old. Before I read this I
need to tell you that she was a very tiny child. The doctors believed she would remain a
“little person”. When she hit 4’8” they
said she was done growing. She surprised
us all by jumping another 6” that same year to hear gigantic height now of
5’2”. But this was unexpected. When she was little she was truly tiny. That’s the context for this letter.
“My dearest Jasmyn,
Sunday
was a hard day. You were invited to the
birthday party of your little friend, who was turning three. The party was a great extravaganza of food,
noise and play as lots of little almost-three and just-barely-three year olds
took over the house, running, eating, laughing and playing, and mostly, you had
a good time. In one corner, your friend's mother had invited a friend to do face painting with the children. You all stood in line, some more patiently
than others, waiting your turns to be turned into a lion, a butterfly, or
anything else your hearts desired. You,
my daughter, ended up at the very end of the line, but you patiently
waited. As we stood there, you excitedly
watched your friends’ faces being painted and you told me over and over, “I
want to be a tiger! I’m going to be a
tiger!” Finally, you got to the front of
the line. The face painter turned to you
and with a firm quickness proclaimed, “She’s too little, she’ll be too wiggly.”
And she grabbed her paints and began to close them up.
I was
stunned. So stunned that it took me a
minute to respond. “Jasmyn is the same
age as these other children!” I proclaimed.
The woman took one look at you, my tiny, elf-faced daughter and brushed
me off, “No, she’s not. She won’t be
able to hold still.” And, with me
arguing, begging and shouting protests as she packed up, she left.
It took
me a minute to get the full effect of this.
But after reassuring you and offering to buy some face paints myself to
make you into a tiger, the anger that moved inside of me made me cry. As I stood there talking to you, my little
daughter whom I love more than my own life, I realized that this was
undoubtedly the first of many experiences you will have in your life where you
experience discrimination because of your size.
Yes, Jasmyn,
you are small. On the growth charts you
are somewhere under the second percentile, meaning that 98% of the children
your age are taller and heavier than you are.
In addition, you are quiet and do not “show off” your speech, so
strangers cannot judge your age by listening to you. You are also smart. Smart enough that you got the full effect of
what happened. For the last two days I
have heard over and over from you, “The woman with the paint wouldn’t make me
into a tiger because she said I was too small and would be too wiggly. She painted Moira’s face. She painted Lauren’s face. She wouldn’t paint my face.” Yes, you got it. But you’re not yet wise enough to understand
that it was not your fault. You are not
yet worldly enough to get that this was not really about you, but about a
woman’s prejudice. Not old enough to
feel okay about this event.
As I’ve
reflected on this, I’ve had some time to think about what other people go
through and I realize that we are lucky.
Yes, my daughter, you are small.
But you can learn to stand up for yourself; you will have to. And when people realize you are older than
you look, smarter than you look, I expect they will treat you more fairly.
Not so
with racial prejudice. Not so with prejudice
against the poor or the immigrant. Not
so with gender discrimination. Not so
for those with disabilities. People
suffer real discrimination, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ageism,
from the hands of fearful, prejudiced people.
Sometimes people are kept from work because of their appearance,
sometimes they suffer cruelty beyond imagination because of their ethnicity,
sometimes they die because people are afraid of them, don’t understand them,
condemn them. For some, they cannot
afford to get upset every time they experience discrimination, fear or hatred
because it is part of their everyday life.
We are lucky, my daughter. We
don’t experience much prejudice. We do
not know what it is to be judged everyday by our skin color or our accents when
we talk. I assume my privilege, which is
why I have the luxury to become angry when someone mistreats you, Jasmyn. When something like this happens, it angers
me. It is also a reminder of just how
fortunate and privileged our lives really are.
So what
can I tell you, my daughter? Even these
very early experiences are an opportunity to learn to stand up and say, “No, I
will not be treated as less-than.” But I
also want you to learn from this how we should be towards others who may experience
pain in the world. It is not enough to
say, “I will not let you do this to me.”
We must also say, “I will not do this myself.” And even, “I will not let
you treat my brother or sister in this way.”
Yes, my
daughter, you were judged unfairly. Remember
this and choose to act differently.
There is another way to be in the world.
There is a God who created you beautiful and who loves you regardless of
size, race, appearance. God calls you to
be part of recreating a world where all are treated fairly. Jesus calls us to see and know and mostly, to
love. The Spirit gives us the strength
to walk unafraid in the world, with openness and compassion.
I love
you, my daughter. I am sorry you were
treated unfairly. And yet I hope for you
it will help you know your God - a God who does know you, who does love you,
and who does want all the best things for you - a God who would paint you a
tiger, if that is what your heart so desired.”
It is from this
place, of having experienced injustice, as all of us have at one time or
another, that I call us now to look at the ways in which we are called to live
lives of justice.
For Amos, like
Micah and almost all the prophets, the profound call was and is for us to act
with justice. Amos states that our
worship is meaningless, pointless, even hateful - if not accompanied by
justice. Amos tells us God is angry with
injustice.
But again, what
does it mean to do justice?
A few decades ago
Princeton seminary decided to really test its ministerial candidates. All of the candidates had to walk through a
specific tunnel on their way to one of the class rooms. On the day of the final exam for the class,
the dean “put” an “injured” person in the tunnel whom all of the students would
need to pass by on their way to their final.
The result? What we would
probably consider a shocking number of students - 70% of these ministerial
students did not stop to help the man because they were worried about being
late for their final. What would you have done?
Like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, like
the people Jesus and Amos condemned, sometimes like us, these people failed to
do justice. We can see that. We can see what it is to miss the justice
boat.
But still, in our
every day living, it can be harder to see how to act with justice. As I understand justice, there are several
things that are required.
I’ve shared with
you before about the incredible documentary, “The Color of Fear?” This movie documents a group of men from
different ethnicities and cultures who gathered together for a weekend to talk
about racism. One white man who was present spent the most part of the weekend
fighting hard against the idea that racism was real. In the face of the stories of deep pain,
isolation, limits on opportunities, and cruelty that the men of color around
him were sharing, he kept saying to them, “Why do you have to see yourselves as
different? We’re all the same. Why can’t you just be like me? You’re imagining any oppression. No one really cares what color you are.” No matter what the other men in the room told
him, he could not hear their real experience of racism, of invisibility, of
abuse. Finally one of the men said to
him, “What would it mean to you if what we are telling you about our experience
were true?” The man looked startled for
a moment. Finally, he answered, “It
would mean that the world isn’t as safe or beautiful as I had thought...And it
would mean that I was part of the problem.”
With those words he began to cry.
It hurts to
see. But I believe the first part of
justice requires opening our eyes, being courageous enough to see the world’s
injustices, to believe the pain that others experience, and even harder, to
look honestly at our part in contributing to the injustice in the world. In what way do we, in our own corners, in our
relationships with the hurting neighbor that no one likes and therefore no one
speaks to contribute to the pain and injustice in the world? In what ways do we refuse to listen to or
stand up for our children, for family and therefore become part of the
injustice that they experience? In the
larger world, in what ways do we contribute to injustice, by the choices we
make about the products we use, buying things without thought that were made by
children paid a penny a day? By the
choices we make in the food we eat, in the choices about who we vote for - will
this candidate lift people out of oppression and injustice, or will this
candidate support the status quo and contribute to greater inequality in the
world? We are first called to see the
pain in the world and own our part in its injustice.
At one church
where I served, we were part of a
community of churches that provided food, showers, haircuts, community
fellowship, resources for getting one’s life back together, clothing and a
variety of other services and goods.
Through this work and through our time with the homeless people in our
community, we developed a very close relationship with one homeless man in
particular. This man was very loving,
very giving, very caring. He began
attending our church and when he did so, he offered to run our sound system, he
helped with the gardening, he was always on hand to help us in any way. He was not unintelligent, but he was a severe
alcoholic who could not seem to get through the disease to a place where he
could give up drinking. He would give it
up for a week or two and then something would happen and he would be drinking
again. We saw him fight for his life
against this disease and we saw him losing the battle. For awhile he lived on the church campus, but
we, too set boundaries around his drinking behavior and when he could not live
up to them, he could no longer stay on the church campus. Still, he understood our need to protect the
children and families who came to the church and so he continued to be an
active member of our community, and we continued to provide care, love and
support within the boundaries. At one
point however in our relationship with George, he had a seizure while walking
along the street, fell and hit his head.
The police found him hours later and took him to the local
hospital. His injuries, especially to
his brain, were very serious and he was admitted for long term hospitalization
and rehabilitation. However, when the
nurses and doctors at the hospital came to understand that he was a homeless,
jobless, resource-less man, they gave up caring for him. He remained at the hospital for quite a
while, because he was unable to walk a straight line, he could not speak
clearly and had very little control over his movements. But in large part he was at the hospital for
so long because they would not provide the care to get him to a place where
they could discharge him. The people of the
church loved George for the gentle caring soul that he was, and it broke all of
our hearts to see our brother in faith, our brother in Christ, our neighbor,
the neighbor Jesus calls us to care for, treated in this way. But the only time that George received any
attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of
us was there to insist on it. We paid
what we could to the hospital, but this church was mostly made of working class
families and retired folk on fixed income, and we simply did not have the resources
to pay for better medical care for our brother.
Still, we brought him food. We
sat with him. We fought for him with the
medical personnel. We cared for him.
The second thing
justice requires is , then, is loving and caring for those we can touch who
cannot care for or speak for themselves- reaching out to those right in front
of us who are in need, whether they be a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a
community member, a homeless person, or a stranger on the street. Like with the story of the Good Samaritan, whomever
God places in front of us: that is the most important person at each moment:
that is the one we are called to serve and love. But justice doesn’t end there.
Doing justice also
means taking the risk, stepping out of our comfort zones to confront and
challenge the status quo. It is hard, it
is challenging. And yet, we are required
by our love of God, by our love of neighbor.
Mostly, we are called by God’s love for us to do nothing less. Because we will never be whole until our
brothers and sisters find justice. We,
too will be lessened, we too live in injustices as long as they exist.
I am reminded of a
poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade
unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Justice is
remembering that we are all connected.
This takes us back to the very first story that I told about my
daughter. We are called to live lives of
justice out of love and gratitude. We
often find that love from a place of remembering our own pain. Because justice is about living out our deep
connections to all others, by knowing our pain and then by seeing the pain of
our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, even our enemies and then by being
willing to own our part in the worlds’ pain and being willing to change
it. Justice is acting with love and
compassion for those in front of us.
Justice is standing up against the status quo even for those we will
never meet. Justice is knowing that
while I do this out of love for you, in serving you, I serve myself because
without your justice, there is no justice for me; without your peace, there is
no peace for me; without your wholeness, I too am broken.
Amen.
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