November 8, 2020; Yellow Lake Lutheran Church; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Justice and Righteousness like Water
In 2006 I was working as the Executive Director of a non-profit organization in Duluth Mn called SOAR Career Solutions. We helped people get jobs. Our clients had a variety of challenges: chemical dependencies, or mental health issues, a lack of education or training, negative work histories or criminal records. We provided training and support to help them break out of the cycle of poverty.
One of our key staff members suggested that we specialize our services on the group of people with criminal histories. I had never imagined that I would find myself in that situation. You see, I had been the victim of a violent crime when I was 17. So, my first reaction was just outright rejection of the idea. Someone else could do that but I couldn’t see myself leading such an effort.
However, I couldn’t deny the considerable need and our capacity to meet that need. So, SOAR created the Community Offender Reentry Program to assist people returning to Duluth from prison so that they could succeed and avoid re-offending. Instead of what I think of as a catch and release model of criminal justice focused on punishment and incarceration, we adopted a restorative justice model of rebuilding lives and creating solid relationships. I had to let go of my judgmental views and my fears. The meaning of the word justice changed for me.
One of the volunteers who was instrumental in our program is Don Streufert, a psychologist who facilitated a weekly restorative justice group session for program participants. But Don is much more than a psychologist. In 1991 Don and his wife Mary’s 18-year-old daughter Carin was home from college for the summer. They lived in Grand Rapids MN, a relatively small town where people generally felt safe. Until the night Carin was abducted, raped, and murdered.
Although her killers were caught, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for this brutal crime, Don and Mary didn’t feel closure. They sought healing that the retributive criminal justice system didn’t provide. They turned to restorative practices and forgiveness. They founded an organization to reduce violence, held forgiveness workshops for other crime victims and even visited their daughter’s killers in prison. They found a way forward without letting anger control them.
Amos spoke his prophetic words 2800 years ago contrasting outward displays of piety with what God really seeks—justice and righteousness, rolling and flowing unceasingly like waters.
Today we hear calls for justice after a crime and the intent is usually a call for prosecution and conviction through the courts and criminal justice systems. The George Floyd case comes quickly to mind. But a guilty verdict won’t be enough. We also hear the cries – No Justice, No Peace. The deeper need is for the forging of restorative practices and the building of right relationships, for the formation of what Martin Luther King Jr called, the Beloved Community.
Words from today’s Old Testament lesson are carved on Martin Luther King Jr.’s gravestone. It was his most quoted passage of scripture and shaped his vision of the Beloved Community, a global vision in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. The Beloved Community is something we shape and form together, on earth as it is in heaven: where poverty and hunger and homelessness are not tolerated, where racism and discrimination, bigotry and prejudice are replaced by the all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood, where international conflicts are resolved by peaceful conflict resolutions and reconciliation instead of by wars. Love and trust triumph over fear and hatred, peace and justice over war and conflict.
Martin Luther King Jr quoted our text for today in his I Have a Dream speech in 1963. Now, 57 years later, basically my whole lifetime, we live in a nation so divided, the tension in the air this week is palpable. Fears of militia uprisings loom right alongside fears of riots and looting. We are a broken nation right now. Friendships and families are strained over red and blue lines. The calls for No Justice/No Peace are not threats but a description of our reality. After 2800 years the stark call of Amos rings as truly as it ever did.
Justice and Righteousness are words with rich and deep meaning in Hebrew. They do not mean law abiding adherence to any external standard as one might think. No. At the core, these words have to do with relationship, RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS. These words are not one-size-fits-all concepts. No. They instead describe the condition that occurs when each relationship is right, according to its own specific demands. No one is free until everyone is free.
Our biblical tradition teaches us that God’s desire is that we be a part of creating a community where all types and classes of people are assured access to what they need to live well. The people of God are repeatedly called to provide for the poor, to break down systems of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to support the widow and the orphan, to visit the sick and imprisoned because that is what it meant to be in right relationship, with them, and with God.
Without true Justice and Righteousness all the offerings, prayers, hymns, vestments, and talk of God are of no use at all and not pleasing to God at all.
I spoke to my son the other day. He lives in Minneapolis near the Theodore Wirth Parkway. He walks his dog there daily and he called me during his walk. He told me there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln there that has become part of his new ritual. When he feels anxious or weighed down by the conflicts and divisions in our culture he makes his way to Old Abe. In Lincoln’s second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, he encouraged a divided nation with these words:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
One hundred and sixty-five years later those words speak still. We are challenged to face others without malice, with love, and with a commitment to shaping the Beloved Community that God intends for this world.
Today, after our worship service we will honor the veterans from our community in another ceremony. This solemn recognition acknowledges the battles for freedom that have been waged by this country even as we pray for and work toward the day when such sacrifices will not be required.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give us peace, peace in our homes and our hearts, in our cities and rural communities, in our civic processes and our government. In any conflicts help us to meet each other without hatred or bitterness, to listen for your voice amid competing claims and to work together toward the Beloved Community you envision. In the holy name of Jesus, our Prince of Peace we pray. Amen.