Sunday, January 25, 2015
Isaiah 45:8 (CEV)
8 Tell the heavens to
send down justice
like showers of rain.
Prepare the earth for my saving power
to sprout and produce justice
that I, the Lord, create.[a]
Isaiah 45:8 (NRSV)
8 Shower, O heavens, from
above,
and let the skies rain
down righteousness;
let the earth open, that salvation may spring up,[a]
and let it cause
righteousness to sprout up also;
I the Lord have created it.
God created the world, the universe,
you, me. A few atheists have sold a lot
of books rejecting the existence of God.
By far most scientists, even those who aren’t at all religious would not
claim science does away with God or the idea of creation. That’s not territory covered by scientific
research. Church goers agree that God
created everything. We may debate the
mechanisms by which God created, but we can agree God is the creator.
Anyone who studies the Bible knows God
creates intentionally. God had a vision
in Eden. The culmination of God’s work came
in creating one in his image, the human, the woman and the man.
God creates. God creates with a plan. God sees humans as His greatest creation and
the center of his plan. We know God as
Father, Son, and Spirit, three in one.
The trinity exists in relationship as God is relational. Human to God, human to creation (nature),
human to human, and human to society; we live as God intended when we construct
our lives around relationships. We do
our everyday work with relationships in mind.
When we live in humility, peace, and most importantly in love, then
things are the way God wants them to be.
Look around the world. Are things the way God wants them to be? In some cases, yes. Overall, no.
So what does God do?
According to Isaiah in the exile, God makes it rain.
“Tell the heavens to send down
justice like showers of rain.”
“Shower, O heavens,
from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness.”
Prolific writer and preeminent scholar Walter Breuggemann cites
Isaiah 40-55 as the foundational word of God that comes out of the exile.[i] Any people utterly defeated in battle on
their homeland and then dragged to slavery 1000’s of miles away would be
overwhelmed and disoriented. In 586 BC
Israel was.
Israel had, prior to the fall at the hands of Babylon, been guilty
of systemic idolatry and systemic injustice.
The wealthy few prospered while the most vulnerable of society
suffered. The prophet Amos and the
earlier chapters of Isaiah both take up this point. God’s response to his own
people’s generational, systemic disregard of his way was to allow Babylon to
rise in power and crush Israel. The
prophet interpreted Israel’s pain as coming not from Babylonian cruelty, but
from God’s punishing hand. Babylon was
God’s instrument.
The exiles perceived themselves to be defeated and by extension,
their God, the God Abraham had been defeated by Babylon’s gods. No, Isaiah said. All the horrors are a result of turning from
God. And, now, the punishment is
over. As bad as things look, God is
bringing a new day.
This is Isaiah of the exile.
This is the word from the exile on which all other words from that time
stand. Isaiah comes onto a scene of
depression, despair and rage, and into that he speaks hope that transforms and
praise that recognizes who God is.
Brueggemann calls Isaiah’s prophetic
poetry ‘invitational.’[ii] Isaiah calls Israel to a new hope, a hope for
a new reality. The Holy Spirit animates
Isaiah’s message as we read it. In
Isaiah we are invited to be washed in the rain God sends. But what is it exactly that falls on us when
we are the rain God sends?
In two English versions of Isaiah 45:8,
we see a word in the original language translated in two different ways, once
as ‘righteousness’ and once as ‘justice.’
Which is it? Is this a matter of
one translation being correct and the other wrong?
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance says
this Hebrew word, ‘tsedeq’ means righteousness.
However, The New American Standard
Exhaustive Concordance in a more expanded definition says the word can mean
‘righteousness’ or ‘rightness,’ and it belongs to a family of meanings that
includes ‘fairly,’ ‘just cause,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘vindication’ in addition to
the definitions already noted.
Just as the best way to construct our
reality is in terms of relationships – to others, to God, to creation, to human
society – the best way to take in these Hebrew words and concepts is in how
they relate to other concepts and in how they are lived out. It is not a matter of a precise definition so
much as in the idea lived out relationally in the world as God created it and
intends it to be.
I offer a few other Hebrew terms. First ‘mishpat.’ This term is used three times in Isaiah 42
and is translated ‘justice.’ One commentator describes is as God’s absolute
divine right, true religion as lived out in everyday life.[iii] Next, ‘Hesed,’ which is God’s loving
kindness. Throughout the Old Testament,
God is known by ‘hesed.’ It is this
loving kindness that drives God to rescue his people from exile even though
their sins of inequality and ill-treatment of the poor, widow and orphan are
what got them in trouble in the first place.
And finally, ‘shalom.’ This can
mean peace but a fuller meaning is life in which all is in harmony and all is
well. This is life that prospers.
‘Tsedeq,’ ‘mishpat,’ ‘hesed,’ and ‘shalom;’ in the way these terms
play off each other in describing God and God’s expectations for human life, we
see justice, mercy, love, peace, and hope.
Please note, whatever this means for our activity, justice does
not come because we work for it. We
should. We should be advocates for
justice. But it originates with
God. God brings justice. In Isaiah’ terms, God rains justice
down. Also note, in Isaiah’s day, God
did this through human agency, not by way of miracles. The agent of God’s justice was the Persian
emperor, Cyrus. He led the defeat of
Babylon and he freed the exiles to return home.
Some Israelite did not appreciate that God would accomplish God’s
purposes with a gentile pagan. God
responded, “Woe to you who strive with your maker, earthen vessels with the
potter. … I made the earth and created
humankind upon it; I stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their
host. I have aroused Cyrus in
righteousness and I will make all his paths straight” (45:9, 12-13). How awful!
Will God do this by way of some Persian who doesn’t even pray?
Today, are we ever opposed to works of justice because we don’t
like the people at the microphone? I
don’t know how you feel about Al Sharpton.
As the story of unarmed Michael Brown being shot by Officer Wilson
unfolded, the dominant theme was the horrific trend of African Americans being
killed by police instead of protected by those commissioned to protect and
serve. Add to that the alarming reality
that African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for crimes where
whites are likely to get off with no prison time for the same crime. We have injustice – systemic injustice.
But, I hear many Christians I talk to say they don’t like Al
Sharpton. I don’t know why he’s the
voice at the microphone. I am not hear
to defend or criticize him. But when a
white guy gets community service for a crime and a black guy gets 6 months to a
year for the same crime and it happens all the time, that’s injustice. When there is a trend of unarmed young black
males getting shot by white policeme, we have a problem. When one of those killed is the same age as
my 12-year-old white son and he was shot doing the kinds of things my boys
does, I get scared. I have a black son
who will be 12 soon. We who follow the
God that insists upon human beings living in peaceful and loving relationships
with each other cannot bicker about our distaste for the voice at the
microphone.
This is not about Al Sharpton or Bill O’Reilly or whomever. Nor is it about recent tension in the United
States. That is one of our current signs
of rampant worldwide injustice. Racial
inequality is an example but not the only one.
And it is not even about injustice.
This is about God. God demands
justice as a norm among the people He created.
In describing the concept of justice in the Old Testament,
Brueggemann says that it recognizes that “the well-being of the community
requires that social goods and power to some extent be given up by those who
have too much for the sake of those who have not enough.”[iv] The very first Christians did this in sharing
resources so everyone in the church could flourish (Acts 2:44-45).
A core New Testament value is generosity. The book Philemon takes this to an extreme
where the Apostle Paul subverts an accepted first century practice,
slavery. He tells the slaveholder,
Philemon, ‘Your man, Onesimus, is no longer your man. He is God’s.
He was a slave, but now, you, he, and I are all in one family, brothers
in Christ.’ Paul did not condemn slavery
as an institution in and of itself. He
envisioned something grander. In Paul’s
view everything in life is re-imagined in light of Christ. When we are in Christ, racism, slavery,
poverty – these are all unthinkable. The
God who rains down justice and righteousness, peace and harmony has no place
for suffering and hunger and inequality.
So, if we say justice is from God, not a result our works, then
where is it and what are we to do? Where
was God when Michael Brown was shot, when Eric Garner strangled? I read this that the richest 10% of the
world’s population owns 87% of the world’s wealth. Maybe that doesn’t bother you. When I think of the Old Testament concept of
distributive justice and when I think of the core value of generosity in the
New Testament and when I hear Jesus saying that when we share with the poorest
of these his children we are sharing with him, I am deeply troubled by this
reality. A few people are ridiculously
rich and seemingly without concern for the billions who struggle with
malnutrition, lack of educational opportunities, and inadequate housing. Where is God?
Where is the God who rains down justice?
And if justice comes from God, what do we do?
First remember that our understanding of ideas like justice is in
terms of relationship. We are connected
to the orphans in Ethiopia, to the immigrants lacking documentation who are
expelled from America, to Michael Brown’s mother. In God’s view, human beings are connected to
one another in relationship. So, our
first action is to see how one person’s pain is an injury to God’s creation.
Second, as we read Isaiah, and imagine his words of hope as words
for us, we remember that God is present in the world today in Spirit – the
Holy, and in body – the body of Christ which is the church. So, yes, justice is a work of God, and God does
His work through the people who make up his church. Our prayer life has to be one that moves from
silence before to the action of love and compassion given to women and
men.
This becomes specific when a disciple’s life is full of
relationships of compassion that are based in volunteer efforts. We don’t just sponsor an orphan in
Ethiopia. We write letters. We send pictures. We pray for the child by name. As much as we can we enter the child’s life
relationally. We don’t just volunteer to
help build a ramp on someone’s home who cannot afford to hire contractors. When we go, we talk to that person. We hear her story. We are blessed by sitting with her. We don’t just enter protest movements, walk
in marches, or sign petitions. We
befriend people whose lives are different than ours. We enter their stories and take them into
ours.
We think about injustice relationally, and this includes the
complete elimination of “us” and “them” language.
We follow God from prayer to action. In this our action is always based on
relationship more than project completion.
Third, we think of justice with an eye toward human
flourishing. A few years ago, the youth
group was in Atlanta helping underprivileged inner city kids improve their
reading. Our partnership with the CBF
missionaries there helped a multiple levels but one persistent theme is that if
these kids master literacy and comprehension, they will be able to succeed in
school. If they succeed in school, they
might be able to get good jobs that enable them to shed the label
“underprivileged.” Instead of surviving,
these kids, today called “poor,” having learned love and developed academic
skill may be able to thrive professionally and relationally. The justice and compassion works that fill
our lives and connect us to people are carried out with an eye toward human
flourishing.
We won’t bring justice to
world, not even as the body of Christ doing the work of God. When Jesus was present, the world did not
change. But those around him did. The world continued to sink in sin, but he
was present, offering a new hope, just as Isaiah offered a new hope. Now, we lived between the resurrection and
the final day when God will set everything right. Now, we are the voice that points the world
to God. We who believe in the
resurrection God and the glorified future he promises are “unstoppably
motivated to work for that new world in the present.”
Justice will always be a dominant theme in the prophet’s words and
a defining characteristic of the church.
AMEN
[i]
Brueggemann (1978),
The Prophetic
Imagination, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.70.
[ii]
Brueggemann (1997),
Cadences of Home:
Preaching among Exiles, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p. 46
[iii]
K. Keil (1890) in
Commontary on the Old
Testament in 10 Volumes, translated by James Martin (reprinted 1973),
William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), p.175.
[iv]
Brueggemann (1997),
Theology of the Old
Testament, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.737.
[i]
Brueggemann (1978),
The Prophetic
Imagination, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.70.
[ii]
Brueggemann (1997),
Cadences of Home:
Preaching among Exiles, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p. 46
[iii]
K. Keil (1890) in
Commontary on the Old
Testament in 10 Volumes, translated by James Martin (reprinted 1973),
William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), p.175.
[iv]
Brueggemann (1997),
Theology of the Old
Testament, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.737.
