But then the other day a colleague said that they can’t preach on social justice because their congregation has made it clear they don’t want to hear it. Thinking back on my sermons over the last few months, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could have possibly preached on certain passages without talking about justice. The theme of justice runs deep throughout scripture. The word justice appears 173 times in the NRSV, and that doesn’t even count the many stories that deal with themes of justice without actually using the word. Every time that Jesus crossed social boundaries to minister to women, the disabled, foreigners, and other marginalized peoples, he was doing justice work. Every time God commands us to care for the poor, the hungry, the weak, the stranger, the oppressed, God is commanding us to do justice. It’s impossible to preach on these scriptures and not mention justice without perverting what the authors intended when they wrote them. Social justice isn’t a liberal agenda: it’s a Christian tradition.
In the book of Isaiah, the prophet talks about a figure known only as the “servant” several times in the later chapters. The most famous of these passages is the Suffering Servant in chapter 53, but the first mention comes in 42:1-4:
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (NRSV)
There’s a lot of debate about the exact identity of the servant. Some argue that Isaiah identified it as Israel in 41:8. Others try to argue that it is Jesus. Still others say that the exact identity of the servant is not important, and what matters is the role the servant plays as one faithful to God. Chapter 42 especially focuses on the servant’s role in bringing about justice. The one who God delights in, the one who has received God’s spirit, is the one who works tirelessly to establish justice on earth. In other words, if we want to follow God faithfully, if we want to do what pleases God, we have to be like the servant and work for justice.
Over and over in scripture, God commands us to work for justice. This is not something that is optional, it’s not an addition to the Gospel, it’s not something we only do if we have spare time after sharing the Gospel. Justice is an essential part of the Gospel. While the world says that only certain people have value, that only certain people are welcome, that only certain people deserve our compassion, the Gospel says all have value, all are welcome, all deserve compassion. Justice is essential to the Gospel because it was essential to Jesus’ ministry. Justice is when Jesus healed the disabled and sick, even though his culture said they were in their situation because they had sinned. Justice is when Jesus spoke to women and invited them to follow him and counted them among his closest friends, even though his culture said that women are property and they cannot talk to men they are not related to. Justice is when Jesus ministered to Samaritans and Canaanites and other non-Jews, even those his culture said they were unclean and he should not even speak with them. To fail to do justice is to fail to live out the full Gospel.
The fact that people in our churches get upset when their pastors talk about justice shows that we’ve failed to teach them the full Gospel. So I’m going to keep preaching the justice of the Gospel as often as I can, until people are no longer shocked by it. And then I’ll keep preaching justice, so they never forget it again.
The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program provides a daily lectionary of scriptures based on themes of peace and peacemaking. Over the course of 2019-20 I’ll be basing my blogs on one or more of the scriptures from each week’s lectionary. If you would like to follow along in the lectionary with me, here are next week’s scriptures:
Sunday – Genesis 2:4-9
Monday – Leviticus 25:18-23
Tuesday – Proverbs 8:22-31
Wednesday – Psalm 95:1-7
Thursday – Mark 4:26-29
Friday – Colossians 1:15-20
Saturday – Revelation 22:1-5