The Gospel of Justice

This is a sermon I wrote on Saturday, August 19, 2017. I didn't give it at my church. I had another one that still spoke of justice but that I thought fit my congregation better than this one would. Here it is, for your consideration.

The Gospel of Justice

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

August 20, 2017

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The issue of justice is always before us as Christians. There simply is no doubt about that. Jesus was more about justice than he was about anything else. We claim to be Christians. We claim to be followers of Jesus. Well, if we’re really going to be followers of Jesus we need to speak up and stand up for justice. The Romans didn’t execute Jesus because his death was part of some great cosmic albeit brutal plan of God. The Romans executed Jesus because he lead a justice movement. He called his vision “the kingdom of God.” The kingdom. Not the country club of God. Not even the community of God or the fellowship of God. He called it the kingdom of God, and the word kingdom is nothing if it is not political. The world in which Jesus lived and worked was organized into kingdoms. Some of them were so big they were called empires, but an empire is just an oversized kingdom. God’s kingdom is about nothing if it is not about justice. God’s kingdom is a vision of how God wants the world to be structured and run. It’s about this world, not some other world. It’s about the world restructured to be grounded in justice for all, not privilege for some and oppression for others. Today the fundamental justice issue of American life stands before us in the bright light of recent events. That issue is racism. Racists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Some of them wore Nazi insignia. All of them advocated white supremacy. They came ready for violence. Right wing extremists always resort to violence. They are violent people. A crowd of peaceful people showed up to demonstrate for love and justice against those apostles of supremacy and hate. Those apostles of hate got what they wanted. There was violence. One of them rammed a vehicle into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators and killed a woman who was committing the egregious sin of walking across the street.

The racists had gathered to protest the removal of a confederate statue, a statue honoring one who was a traitor to the United States in the cause of slavery. Advocates of white supremacy put up statues like that one throughout the Confederate states during the days when Jim Crow was the law of the land; and they did it to say to Black people we rule you, we’re superior to you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Everyone in that crowd was a racist. Everyone in that crowd wanted whites to be supreme in our land and Blacks to be oppressed. They want to return to the days of Jim Crow or even to the days of slavery. They were a racist rabble intent on causing nothing but trouble. Again, there simply is no doubt about that.

And the President of the United States said that there were good people among them. No, Mister President, there weren’t. No good people advocate what that mob advocated. People who support what that mob advocated are not good people. They are engaged in evil even if they themselves are not violent. The reaction against Trump’s remarks has been swift and strong, even among some members of Trump’s own political party. That is a very good thing. But most of those racists in Charlottesville claim to be Christians. Most racists throughout our country claim to be Christians. They’re not. In their hatred of many of God’s children they betray everything that Jesus came to teach us, everything Jesus stood for and stands for. So we who truly are Christians must speak up. We must speak out. We must stand up for justice against the evil some baptize with the sacred word Christian.

I have a new hero these days. His name is The Rev. Dr. William Barber. Rev. Dr. Barber is the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He heads an organization named “Repairers of the Breach” which advocates a progressive political agenda grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rev. Dr. Barber is the most powerful Christian voice for justice in our land today. He is not a politician. He is a preacher. He is a pastor. He has the potential to become today’s Martin Luther King. He is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). That’s not the denomination of my church, nor is it mine. But my United Church of Christ is closely allied with the Disciples, and as one who holds ordained ministerial standing in the UCC I also have a kind of standing in the Disciples. Rev. Dr Barber makes me proud to be a Christian. He makes me proud to be a member of a denomination closely aligned with his.

I saw Rev. Dr. Barber again on the MSNBC program “AM Joy” yesterday. In his remarks on that program he said we must be concerned not only with statues but the statutes. We must demonstrate against Confederate statues and the evil they represent, but we must also work against statutes that take away voting rights and that perpetuate poverty and discrimination. In his remarks he referred to the Judgment of the Nations parable in Matthew, and he said something important about it. It is not individuals who get separated into the sheep and the goats, into those who cared for the needy and those who did not. It is the nations that get separated that way. That text says “all the nations” will be gathered before the risen Christ as judge, not all people individually. I have always called that text the constitution of Christian social justice work. Rev. Dr. Barber called it an “evangelical” text, and I suppose it is; but mostly it is a justice text. In it Christ says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” And “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” NIV The great judgment of the nations scene calls all Christians to the work of justice. It calls us first to the work of charity, the work of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. But it also calls us to the work of justice, the work of dismantling social, economic, and political structures that keep people hungry and homeless. That deprive people of education and medical care. That depend on there being a large number of poor people so that a small number of people can be immensely rich. The events of recent days force us to decide: Are we with the blessed sheep? Or are we with the condemned goats?

Our world and our faith put that choice before us, and to decline to make a choice is itself a choice. It is a choice to stand on the side of the goats. It is a decision to stand on the side of the racists. Racism is the American norm. To say nothing is to support it. To say nothing is to let it stand as the American norm, to remain the American norm. Silence perpetuates the cultural norm. Silence props up racism. Silence props up economic disparity and cultural oppression. And yes, I know. Many of you don’t want to hear that. I don’t much want to hear it myself. Life would be so much easier if it were not true. But it is true, and people not wanting to hear it doesn’t make it false. It remains true whether we want to hear it or not.

The choice between justice and injustice is always before us. Today it is before us as sharply and forcefully as it has ever been. The highest elected official in our land refuses to denounce racism unequivocally. He starts to, then goes off script and says the violence in Charlottesville came from “many sides.” We cannot read his remarks as saying anything other than there is a moral equivalence of the haters and the lovers, the racists and the those who resist racism, the advocates of oppression and the advocates of justice. I know you don’t want to hear politics from the pulpit, but in times like these we Christians truly have no choice to be prophets of justice. Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord and Savior ,was a prophet of justice. He picked up the voice of the ancient Jewish prophets of justice—Isaiah, Amos, and Micah—and proclaimed their truth—God’s truth—to the powers of his time. As Christians we must proclaim God’s truth to the powers of our time. I have written my Congresswoman. Have you? I have spoken out in every public forum I have, limited as those are. Have you?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only about justice. It is also about peace both in the world and in our souls. It is about salvation, although it sees salvation mostly as something that happens in this life not some next life. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only about justice, but it is most definitely also about justice. Our Bible tells us that God created women and men. It doesn’t say God created different races of people. In the Bible people of all nations come to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. In the Bible both Greeks and Jews are saved. Eunuchs are blessed. Women are disciples. The downtrodden are lifted up and their oppressors are condemned. In the Bible prophets demand justice for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. In the Bible rulers act in their own interest not in the interest of the people, and the prophets damn them for it.

Folks, our country today is sliding back into the worst of our history, into racism and racial discrimination. It doesn’t have to be that way. People like us, ordinary and without great power as we are, can be part of reversing that slide. This isn’t a partisan issue. Both Republicans and Democrats have been appalled by our President’s remarks. That’s probably because Christians are both Republicans and Democrats. Rev. Dr. William Barber and so many other voices of justice, both Christian and non-Christian, call us to heed the better angels of our national character. The Gospel of Jesus Christ demands no less. So what are we going to do about it? Amen.