GOD’S JUSTICE

Text: John 1:6-8, 19-28

This is always a difficult time of year to preach sermons. It’s difficult because while all around us is celebration - shopping, baking, eating, parties and anticipation of the big day – the scripture lessons of Advent are solemn and spiritual. They admonish us to find our hope and our joy in things other than shopping, baking, eating, parties and the “big haul” we’ll receive on Christmas morning, as my brothers used to say. John the Baptist is the most serious, the gloomiest of all. He says, “Clean up your act. Be ready for the coming of the Messiah.” And the prophet Isaiah is a lot the same. He says “The good news I bring is for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the prisoners, those who mourn.” Well, John and Isaiah may be serious, even gloomy, but they’re not Ebenezer Scrooge. They’re not saying, “Bah, humbug” about Christmas. They’re saying “Think about what you’re doing. Think about what you can really celebrate. Think about what’s real and genuine and lasting, and celebrate that.”

Reading through the lessons for today, I was struck with their focus on rejoicing, on joy and laughter. Isaiah says God has anointed him to give God’s people “a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.” There will be restoration and repair. The people of Israel knew the need for restoration and repair and for healing – they suffered greatly at the hands of their enemies…a small nation with a unique and stubborn faith in one God – a people caught between powerful surrounding nations with brutal religious practices and no tolerance for anything different. Isaiah proclaims clearly what God is about: God loves justice. And God will see that justice comes about. And what does that look like? God declares that he will faithfully give what they deserve to those who suffer: assistance and restoration; and God’s promise to them will last forever. They will be a people acknowledged as blessed by God, and all will see it to be true. God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. This means that those who have been wrongly treated will be compensated for their pain and suffering. And that will be something to celebrate.

Similarly, in the Psalm for today, the writer celebrates the restoration of the people of Israel after the exile in Babylon. For 400 years, they have lived in a foreign land as slaves and exiles. When they are delivered, they shout with joy at the prospect of going home. Their fortunes are restored like the valleys in the Negeb desert when the rivers fill with water. The experience of exile is described as a source of “seed” which grows into crops that bring a rich harvest. The reward of those who are faithful through times of suffering is to be able to proclaim, “The Lord has done great things for us.” And even more, to hear those who witness their faithfulness say, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
Likewise, in the letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul the Apostle exhorts the Christians there to be steadfast. They are a community under pressure from the surrounding society to turn back to their former way of life. They are in danger of persecution. But what does Paul say? He tells them to rejoice, to pray constantly, to give thanks whatever is happening. This is not a gloomy message; it’s a strong message of hope and encouragement to a community whose faith is being tested. They must hold on to the words of the prophets, look carefully at everything, abstain from evil and embrace the good, trust the Spirit. And through this experience, God will make them holy so they may present themselves pure and without blemish at the day of judgment. This time of testing is something in which they should rejoice.

So I should not complain about having to preach about such texts, which expose the deep experience of goodness and joy which is given to those who remain faithful to God. It’s not a matter of hanging on for dear life and managing to do nothing but survive. Instead, great reserves of thankfulness and joy are discovered by those who persevere to the end, trusting in God’s faithfulness.

Well, you might say, we don’t experience slavery and exile from our homeland. We don’t identify with Isaiah and the psalmist and the people of Israel. We don’t know what it’s like to live in an outpost in the Roman Empire and attempt to be a faithful Christian community, as did the church in Thessalonica in Paul’s time or in Galilee in the time of John the Baptist. So can’t we have some innocent fun preparing for Christmas? If we’re average pagans, yes, I suppose we can amuse ourselves with superficiality and senseless consumerism. But as a Christian community, we have no excuse to do that. Because even though we don’t experience exile and slavery and poverty and persecution, many people, perhaps most people, in our world, do.

Isaiah says that God loves justice. What is God’s justice? Apparently it has more to do with doing things right than simply catching those who do wrong. When we think of justice our first thought is to condemn those who break the law. But God’s first thought seems to be for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the prisoners. Such people may well be the population of our jails. God doesn’t condemn the inmates, but rather the surrounding society which ignores and forgets those who are incarcerated, condemning them as lawbreakers who deserve no compassion and no helpful attention.

At this time of year there is a huge amount of attention paid to a certain sector of the poor in our community, children particularly. No one would argue that children living in poverty are not extremely important and in need of compassion and attention. And we have some sympathy with those who are hungry, because it challenges our guilt about having far too much to eat. Regardless of our reason for doing it, it’s a good thing to see that people who are hungry are fed. But do we have to publish advertisements that say “$2.62 will give a good meal to the hungry”? Have you seen those ads? I think they’re insulting to the poor, as if it’s that simple to deal with the problem of hunger: those of us who have disposable income can throw down a loonie and a toonie and feel as if we’ve done more than give a person a good meal. I don’t think so! The problem of hunger is not solved in that way. How many good meals does a person need in a year? At least 365, right? If each meal is worth $2.62, how much is that? It’s $956.30…almost a thousand dollars. How many of us are willing to throw down that much? And what about the issue of homelessness, which means that a person has no place to store and cook and serve food? And the issue of a living wage, which means that people who are making less than $15 an hour can hardly afford to house and feed themselves….And what about the issue of addictions, which means people are wasting any income they have on substances which destroy rather than nourish their bodies…and the issues of unemployment and lack of education and lack of job-skills and domestic violence and so on? All of a sudden it’s much more complex than a few coins will address. So it’s necessary to take a more informed approach to hunger, in order to make it possible for people to provide their own food. God is talking justice here, which means doing right by those in need.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to address the issue of those nifty shoeboxes that are shipped by the boatload to children in Third World countries. It’s a big Christmas project in North America – the idea of packing a box full of goodies that some child in Africa or South America or Asia will like. First thing to realize is that they don’t arrive at Christmas. They aren’t shipped until several months down the line. We have a relative who works in the warehouse owned by Samaritan’s Purse in Calgary – which is the distribution centre for all of western Canada; those boxes are brought in by the tens of thousands and each one needs to be inspected and repacked. They must take out anything that won’t last six months or more. They must take out anything sharp or inappropriate. They must take out religious materials of any kind. And they retrieve any money that’s included – people are asked to give five dollars for shipping. It’s a huge project. And the conventional wisdom that I hear people coming up with is that it’s wonderful to think of those poor children receiving these gift-boxes. At Safeway stores you see glossy pictures showing black children in Africa waving their gift-boxes in the air in joyful celebration of having received something wonderful. You’ll have to excuse me if I say “Bah, humbug!” to those gift-boxes. All that money, all that time and energy and hard work, all those hopes of doing something meaningful for the poor of our world go down the drain when you think how essentially useless that stuff is for the poor. Is it food? No. Is it educational material? Very little of it. Is it good hygiene? Maybe the odd bar of soap. Is it warm clothing for cold nights on the desert or in the mountains? No – there’s no room in a shoebox for a warm jacket. There’s no room in a shoebox for a roof over somebody’s head, or a supply of nutritious food, or a well that pumps clean water, or a supply of antibiotics or antimalarials or antiretrovirals, the treatment for HIV. Is it justice? Not by a long shot. And I am not so critical of the people who pack the shoeboxes, in the fond hope that they are doing something helpful, as I am of the people who run this program. Those people in the Billy Graham organization, the senior partner of Samaritan’s Purse, have the infrastructure and the money and the wherewithal to run a program that truly meets the needs of the people they serve. And instead of that they encourage millions of North Americans – in the name of Christ – to send boxes full of plastic junk to hungry children. I’m angry about that. And I encourage anybody in our church who wants to do something for Christmas for people who are in need in our world to think about Gifts From the Heart, a program of Canadian Lutheran World Relief. Look at their catalogue and choose something useful and helpful to give: a sack of seed potatoes for a family in Peru (that’s what I’m going to give as a gift to my own children this Christmas, because people in mountain villages I visited in that country in May this year shared their potatoes with me, and I know how important they are), a flock of chickens, a pair of goats, a bamboo granary. And if you’re feeling well off, you can give two cows and a plough for $500.

Isaiah the prophet says doing God’s justice leads to good things for those who suffer: building up the ruins, raising up the devastations, repairing the ruined cities. And it leads to good things for those who share their possessions with the poor. We will be known as a people whom the Lord has blessed.