What Is Justice?

 “The clear meaning of “justice” is “what is right” or “what is normal” — the way things are supposed to be. The fairness of laws coupled with fair and equal treatment under the law are common biblical concerns. Throughout scripture, God is the defender and protector of the poor, the alien, the debtor, the widow, and the orphan. Justice can also mean “deliverance,” “victory,” “vindication,” or “prosperity” — but for all, not just a few. Justice is part of God’s purpose in redemption.

One of the clearest and most holistic words for justice is the Hebrew shalom, which means both “justice” and “peace.” Shalom includes “wholeness,” or everything that makes for people’s well being, security, and, in particular, the restoration of relationships that have been broken. Justice, therefore, is about repairing broken relationships both with other people and to structures — of courts and punishments, money and economics, land and resources, and kings and rulers.” 

Quote from Wallis,  How the Bible Understands Justice ( https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2014/06/06/how-the-bible-understands-justice/32339 )

2017 Princeton Kyuper Prize

There used to be a Virginia Slim TV commercial for cigarettes that had the quote, "you've come a long way, baby." Those words highlighted an extreme contradiction: Yes, women had come a long way; but the very fact that they called woman by the belittling name "baby" showed that women had a long way left to go. 

In a current analogy, the fact that Princeton Theological Seminary chose this year to award the 2017 Kuyper prize to Evangelical megachurch pastor Tim Keller, who doesn't believe women should be ordained, is a slap square across the face to women everywhere. Women are grateful to have been ordained and to be accepted in ministry, yet every day they encounter and cope with systemic, widespread discrimination and unthinking acceptance of misogyny. 

Would Princeton Seminary  have given this award to a man who proclaimed that the Bible supported slavery or (echoing the Jim Crow South) that "all Negroes should work on the farm"? Of course not!  It would be outrageous!  If there is a lack of similar shock and outrage over the selection of Keller as a role model for future theologians, it is only because so much of our culture is still wearing blinders when it comes to discrimination against women. 

Yes, women in ministry have come a long way.   Princeton's decision this week reminds us that, indeed, women still have a long way to go.

Tim Keller photo, from Wikipedia

Take Up Your Cross, and Follow Me!

Today's musing brings together two different photographs which may shed light on what it means to "Take up your cross and follow me." This first photo is of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., removing a cross from in front of his home, in the presence of his small son.  This photo gives a different slant on the meanng of that directive, as he literally "takes it up" out of the soil in front of his home.  

AN INVITATION TO WILDERNESS

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness ….” (Luke 4:1)

The forty days of Lent represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. Lent invites us to enter into and explore the landscape of our own, spiritual wilderness. In this blog post, I would like to invite the reader to explore with me some ideas about what such a journey might look like, feel like, what tools we need before venturing into our own “wilderness,” and benefits of such a journey. (Note: a shortened version of this blog post appears HERE .)



(Christ in the Wilderness, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Be The Light!

What day is this, December 21, 2014?

It's the Sixth Day of Hanukkah

It's the 2014 Winter Solstice

It's the Fourth Sunday in Advent

...........

No matter what our faith, as we light a candle, 

let us remember that even on the longest of nights, 

the light shines in the Darkness.  

The Darkness cannot comprehend the light, yet neither can the Darkness overcome the Light. 

(1 John 1:5)

In whatever way is available to us, 

may each of us make a decision to be the light.  

Reshaping Our Dreams

Sometimes life takes a different turn than we expected. Our dreams, as if they were bread dough, get folded and kneaded back over on themselves, and sometimes even pounded, pulled, and stretched into a different shape than the one we had envisioned or planned for ourselves. But our re-shaped and re-made dreams can still be beautiful. To illustrate in a personal way how this can apply in an every day, ordinary life, I am linking at the bottom of this post to a blog post by Kelle Hampton. This moving story of a mother's love is a testament to the truth that beauty can come from events which totally disrupt our life narrative and turn it upside down on its head.  When Kelle learned her baby had been born with Down's Syndrome, she had to say goodbye to the baby she had expected and dreamt of, and hello to the baby she received.  In the process of doing so, she herself was transformed.

On this Fourth Sunday in Advent of 2013, it is also natural to think of the Christ Child. This little Jewish boy, born to young parents of obscure origins, seems the most unlikely of candidates for God to have chosen.   He was not what the Jews envisioned as their Messiah, at all.  Indeed!  He turned our every narrative and expectation on top of its head.  When he returned to his home town as a prophet, the people were so shocked they couldn't believe it.  After all, he was just an ordinary boy!  In Matthew 13:55 they are reported as saying, "Is this not the carpenter's son?  Is not his mother called Mary?  And his brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas?"  Their narrative, their view of the world, was being bent and shaped and folded in a new way.  Could they accept it?  Could they release their own preconceived expectations about who Jesus was and what he "ought" to say, in order to hear what he really had to say?

Has so much changed?  Even today, there are many people who would rather not hear what Jesus really has to say. We would so much rather remake God into our own image of what we would like to imagine, or to hear our own wishes expressed in what we hear.  It's much easier to push Jesus into our preconceived box of what we want to hear, rather than to hear his real message, isn't it?

Thus, at Christmas, I remind myself and each one of us:

Click HERE to read about a Mom's spiritual journey after learning her daughter had Down's Syndrome.
(   http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/01/nella-cordelia-birth-story.html  )

Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If art is a creation which captures some deep essence of truth, and in which the whole transcends the sum of its parts, then this masterfully-told story is art of a mythical and poetic form rarely seen in our Western society -- a society in which we tend to focus on the logical and empirical than the equally legitimate range of human experience in the poetic and mythic. Buechner helps draw us back to experience some of that poetic and mythical quality, and even understand some of the jokes that too seriously minded folk might miss from a less imaginative reading of the gospel story. I'm afraid anything further that I could say about this book would fail to do justice to Beuchner's essay, which reads like the yarn of a master story teller and which is framed by the image of a man giving a sermon. Instead of telling the reader "about" the gospel, as a nonfiction writer would do, Buechner leads us to experience for ourselves, and thus to better understand, the elements of tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale, as we ourselves are drawn closer through these interactions to a greater appreciation for the divine. This book is a short read and an easy to read book, but it is one that will both be read more than once and which will profoundly influence how one relates to idea and metaphor in the grand and beautiful story -- tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale, all -- that we call the Bible.

View all my reviews

More on the Meaning of Peace

At the end of his time with the Disciples, Jesus said to them  

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)

Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles, Duccio c. 1308
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

What does Jesus mean by that?
This morning, I would like to point to the following thought:

Who Is My Neighbor?

A false god 

divides the world

 into 

friends 

(those the god loves) 

and 

foes 

(those the god hates); 

the true God 

loves all, 

and 

loves equally.

(Miroslav Volf)

Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan

Letter From A Birmingham Jail

In the midst of national sadness stemming from a brutal act of terror and violence, let us not overlook one of America's shining lights for nonviolence and justice.  

Walking Into the Light

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness

For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil;

For You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

All the days of my life;

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord

Forever.

Danielle Ridgway Knight, The Shepherdess of Rolleboise (1896)

courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes life gives rise to anxiety. 

When it does, we Americans tend to compensate by talking so much we can hardly hear ourselves think.

On Loving One's Enemies

[W]e know it is possible to love our enemies. Otherwise why would Christ in the Sermon on the Mount ask that we so love? . . . Are we to make Christ a liar? If we do not think it possible to love our enemies, then we should plainly say Jesus is not the Messiah.

 (Quote from Stanley Hauerwas)

Karoly Ferenczy, Sermon on the Mountain (1896)

Rethinking Church?

I can’t stand your

religious meetings.

I’m fed up with your

conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your

  religion projects,

your pretentious

  slogans and goals.

I’m sick of your

  fund-raising schemes,

your public relations and

  image making.

I’ve had all I can take of your noisy

  ego-music.

When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

I want 

JUSTICE

— oceans of it.

I want

 FAIRNESS

—rivers of it.

That’s what I want. 

That’s all I want.

How does this strike you?  
It's a direct quote from 
Amos 5:18-24 
(The Message translation of the Bible)

*Image is the Tower of Babel, from a Russian manuscript of Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. 1539), scanned from В. Д. Сарабьянов, Э. С. Смирнова. История древнерусской живописи. М., ПСТГУ, 2007, стр. 586 by an anonymous source. It is in the public domain due to expiration of copyright.

Noblesse Oblige, Boxing, and the Limits of Charity

A post challenging us on the link between charity, other-ness, and equality.  For more click here ...

Detail from tapestery, "Adoration of the Magi "by Edward Burne Jones

Is He Really the Prince of Peace, or Just a Figurehead?

As I write this post today, it is the fourth Sunday in Advent. We celebrate today, in the birth of an innocent child, the arrival of Emmanuel, which means "God is With Us." In Isaiah Chapter 9 it is written 

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

How ironic that just as we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace, in my own culture just so recently there has been yet another mass killing by a deranged man who had access to firearms. How ironic that some of the same people who claim to believe in the teachings of the Prince of Peace will still resist efforts to disarm killers and reduce their opportunity to harm others by regulating access to handguns, automatic weapons and high capacity ammunition. How ironic that some people who claim to believe in peace, advocate violence themselves? 

The evil caused by handguns and high capacity firearms is so obvious it cannot be ignored.  

Damned to Hell? A Hellacious Accusation.

Franz Franken, The Damned Being Cast Into Hell, c. 1605, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Some might say that if a man has no enemies, he has not taken a stand.  But what if the enmity comes from within one's own church?  For more, click here ...

Subversion!

Long haitus.  Been busy.  But here's a worthy thought for the day:  

‎"It is safe to say that Jesus was not crucified because he taught love and forgiveness or because he set about debating legal points with the scribes of his day. Jesus was crucified because he was seen as a threat to the powers-that-be. His brand of non-violent resistance, his manner of stirring the people and empowering the poor, were correctly judged to be challenging the political power structures of his day." -- Gerard Hall

Sunrises in Daily Life

Happy Easter!

To celebrate Easter, I originally searched for a beautiful photo of a glorious sunrise to post here.  This rendering of a sunrise was not quite what I had in mind.  In the end, that's exactly why I decided to use it.  In the rest of this blog post, I will explain why.

Light in the Darkness

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  (John 8:12)

For those who doubt, this talk of "light" can be a bit hard to fathom.  If you find yourself in the category of people for whom faith does not come easily, this post is for you.

The Bitter Herbs of Bondage

Tonight is both Good Friday and the night of the Passover Seder.  Both are days in which we remember the bitter herbs of bondage, of slavery.  What can we learn about our own bondage by remembering the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt?  I suggest the question “what is bondage,” is a question each person must examine and discern for themselves.  Sometimes slavery is easily discernable, and sometimes it is not.