This is Justice
Sunday. And I have to admit it. Part of me doesn’t like it. All this talk about Justice Sunday makes me
uncomfortable. I know. The Bible again
and again shows God’s call for justice.
I can go to verse after verse where God calls us to care for the widow
and the orphan: to stand up for righteousness, for what is right and good
before our leaders. Still, it bothers me. Why?
So often, I have seen calls for justice get mixed up
with judgment and self-righteousness. People pick one side, whatever it is, and
assume that they are the righteous ones, and those folks on the other side, whoever
they are, they’re the bad folks, the evil ones. It gets so ugly, so quick, and those in the
middle of it, can’t even see it. They
can’t see how ugly it has become. And they
say, it’s all about God, but is it? Or
is it really about them, about their need to be right, about their need to
win? As the Baptist preacher Tony Campolo says, “Mixing religion and politics is a lot like mixing ice cream with
cow manure. It doesn’t really bother the
cow manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.”
So how do you deal with people in power, and not
mess up the ice cream? How do you work for
justice, and not get caught up in self-righteous arrogance? How do you stand up for what is right, but
not get caught up in judgment and condemnation? How do you do what God calls you to do, to
stand up for what is right and good, and actually do it in a way that is good
and right? How does that happen? In these verses from Romans, God shows us the
way. Let’s listen and hear what God has
to say.
How do you work for justice and righteousness, but
do it in a way that glorifies God, rather than glorifies you? You move from boasting to faith. Or to put it more clearly, you move from
boasting in things that don’t ultimately matter to boasting in the only thing
that does. But before, we see what that
only thing is, why does boasting lead us so astray to begin with? Why does the Bible speak so strongly against
it, not only here, but in many other places as well?
To understand that, we need to understand where boasting
comes from. In the ancient world when
people talked about boasting, they were thinking about the battlefield. Before an army entered battle, their leader
would always enter into a boast. He
would talk of how they were going to demolish the enemy, that he would have the
enemy king’s head on the end of his spear.
And that boasting had a practical purpose. How do you get people motivated to go out and
put their lives at risk in a battle? You
fire them up. And what better way to do
that, than by boasting about how great they are.
Heck, when you look for it, you see ritual boasting
in a lot of places, even in literature. Have you ever heard the famous St. Crispin’s
Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry 5? If you haven’t check it out on You Tube,
it’s a humdinger. And how does it end? With
a huge cheer. And who are they cheering.
They’re cheering themselves.
But you don’t need to go to Shakespeare. If you had gone to the locker rooms before
the Super Bowl, you would have heard a boast there. You can bet that the coach on either side
fired up his team by talking about how great they were, what heart they had,
how victory was theirs.
But what the Bible gets is that boasting doesn’t
only happen before a battle or the big game, it happens all the time in every
human heart. It’s why God said in
Jeremiah these words:
Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do
not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their
wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and
know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and
righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.
See, here’s the human problem. In our hearts, human beings are always looking
to something to bolster themselves, to give themselves value and significance. After all, life can be a battlefield of
sorts, and you need something to cheer you on, to move you forward. So you make your boast in something. You say, “I’m a good provider or a good
parent or a good spouse or a good worker, and this is why I am worthy. This is what I can boast in to feel good about
myself.”
Think about it.
How do you defend yourself when you are attacked? You find your boast. “I’m a good person. Look at what I do for others, how I care for
my kids, how I do my job, or even how I stand up for what is right.” But God says. “Don’t do that!” Why?
When you boast, you’re not simply boasting. You’re
delivering a battle cry. And every
battle cry carries a taunt. In other
words, even as your boast lifts you up, it does it by bringing someone else
down. So if you boast in your tolerance and
acceptance of others, you will have to feel superior to those you see as
intolerant and unaccepting. Or say you
boast in your commitment to God and to obeying the Bible. Well, then you’ll look down on those who are
don’t believe in God or the Bible at all.
And that brings us to the problem with Justice
Sundays. Too often when folks talk
about justice whether it be in a church or a debate hall, it turns into
boasting and taunting. Look at how righteous
we are, which means anyone who thinks differently has to be bad. Boasting
first gives you a false sense of your own righteousness, and then gives you an
exaggerated picture of other people’s lack of it. And God forbid, that you fail in what you
boast in, or what you boast in fails you, that will shake your foundations. Boasting and taunting messes up our world.
So how do you stop boasting? Paul tells us. Faith destroys boasting. And he gives the example of Abraham. How did Abraham find approval from God? Did he earn it, because of all the good
things he did? No, he didn’t earn
it. God gave it to him. All Abraham did was believe God. And
that belief, that faith saved Abraham from boasting. Now how does faith do
that? How does believing in God’s
approval save you from boasting? To see
that, we have to realize that all this talk about boasting here goes back to an
argument Paul began almost from the beginning of this letter.
When he criticized his fellow Jews near the
beginning, what did he criticize them for?
He didn’t criticize them for keeping the law. He criticized them for boasting in it,
boasting as he put it, in their circumcision.
They were saying. “See because I
keep the law, because I am circumcised, I am better than those nasty Gentiles
with their pagan ways.” But Paul says. “You don’t get it. You can’t get your approval from the law,
because first of all, you really haven’t kept it as well as you think you have. But second, you can’t get approval there,
because God’s have given you his approval, written it into your very hearts.” And then he gives this sentence “Such a person
(a person who realizes this approval) receives praise not from others but from
God.” And that’s the key.
When I lived in New York, each year Gay Men’s
Health Crisis put on this huge dance-athon at the Convention Center. It was a blast. All the best DJs played sets, and there were
over ten thousand folks on the dance floor.
But what I really liked the most was what happened, when you came
in. As you walked through the lobby,
the thousand volunteers who had organized the fundraiser lined up behind ropes on
either side of you, and wildly cheered you as you walked in. It felt awesome to have a thousand people
wildly applaud you. And we all need
this. We all need approval, validation
from outside ourselves. Kids get this. When
I get together with the two year olds, after every song they want to
applaud. And they can’t get enough hugs
or high fives or fist bumps. We all need
folks to show us the love.
And Paul is telling us that’s exactly what you
have in Jesus. Jesus opens you to the applause
of heaven, to the cheers of the creator of the universe for you. You
get your high fives from Jesus. You get
your fist bumps from no less than God. And
all this applause, you didn’t do anything for it. But
God did. God laid down his life for
it. In Jesus, God suffered the jeers of
the crowd, so you can hear the cheers of heaven. God
faced utter rejection so you might have utter acceptance. God endured scathing hatred so you can have joyous
and loving adulation without end. And
when you get this, when you grasp what God at infinite cost has given to you, then
you are ready to boast. But now you are
boasting not in what you’ve done, but in what God has done for you. And in that boasting, God works wonders not
only in you, but in our world.
In the Civil Rights movement, on the night before
they marched, what did they do? Did they hold rallies where they lifted up
their own goodness, and hurled abuse at their opponents? No they held worship services. They praised God. They celebrated God’s goodness to
everyone. They prayed for their
enemies. They boasted in the Lord, in
God’s grace and love. And that filled
them with the power and faith to face fire-hoses and attack dogs, and batons
and guns. And in that power, in that
faith that came as a gift they knew they had not earned, God turned the hearts
of a nation to the right.
And when we
come together as brothers and sisters in Bold Justice, that’s what we do. We come to boast in the Lord, in God’s
vision for a world redeemed by God’s love.
We come to live out the Lord’s Prayer, for God’s kingdom to come and God’s
will to be done on this earth as it is in heaven. We come to celebrate a God who loves us in
spite of ourselves. And so when we see
things like a bill in Tallahassee that makes civil citation the law of the land
move forward, when no one said it could, we don’t pat ourselves on the
back. We give glory where glory is due,
to a great God who works through us, not by power, not by might but by my
Spirit says the Lord. And as long as we
boast in the Lord, then God will use us, not to divide but to unite, to bring God’s
healing and justice to our land. So sisters and brothers, take a moment. Do you
hear it? Do you hear the applause of
heaven for you? Bask in that. Rest in it.
But realize. You didn’t earn it. God gave it to you. And in the power of that gift, go forth to
boast in the Lord, a Lord who didn’t simply come to bring you to heaven, but to
bring the beauty and the love and the justice of heaven to earth.
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