justice — Andy James

Speaking Up

January 17, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 62:1-5
preached on January 17, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent…”

These days, it feels like there are lots of people who are taking this word from the Lord very seriously! As we approach the presidential primaries this spring and the national elections this fall, candidates and pundits and regular people are speaking up constantly! But even beyond this moment, people are raising their voices more than ever before. Sometimes reading on Facebook or Twitter or other social media makes me wonder if some people ever have a thought that they do not say out loud! The comments section of many online news articles is even worse, as hate and vitriol pour forth unchecked. And the constant call all around us to speak up about one thing or another by posting on Facebook, signing a petition, writing a representative or senator, or even sending smoke signals just leaves me wondering if any words I choose to offer will ever be heard above the din of the world in these days.

The biggest issue about all this noise for me, though, is that it is so often about the wrong things. Who are those who refuse to keep silent speaking for? Are they raising their voices for themselves or for others? Are the issues being lifted up for the benefit of a few or the many? Are these people speaking up on behalf of the well-off or of the poor and downtrodden? So often in these days, those who refuse to keep silent are concerned only about themselves and not others. They so often seek the well-being of a few at the expense of the many. So many who speak up in these days seem to be working for the safety of those who are quite safe already while endangering those who have no way of protecting themselves.

While so many loud voices around us today are focused on self-preservation and permitting injustice, the prophet Isaiah here declares that God will raise God’s voice on behalf of those who might not otherwise be heard, of the people of Israel and Judah who were struggling to find their voice—and a way to raise it up—following their exile to Babylon. While many of the exiles had returned to their homeland, they could not forget the trauma that they had experienced. Their story was deeply and directly marked by the experience of their exiled refugee ancestors, and they were still suffering the effects of this experience. They may have been back home, with reconstruction of the buildings and institutions of their homeland taking place all around them, but they were still filled with the signs and markers of deep brokenness, of long-term defeat, and of a feeling of abandonment by God. And God may have offered them deep promises of comfort and hope for generations, but they still bore the scars of a people violated by siege and invasion that divided them from one another and from their God who had seemingly left them alone to suffer.

In response to all these things, the prophet offers the people the words of God in poetry that, as commentator Kathleen O’Connor describes it,

takes historical circumstances and transposes them into the small story of a couple and their household. The poetry moves between language about an ancient city and the life of a bride. It attends to and gathers up the suffering of generations by using imagery of a women cast off and abandoned. In ancient Israel such a woman faced life-threatening peril, because she could not survive without family to support and protect her. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

But God’s proclamation here makes it clear that such peril is not the last word for this woman—or for the people. God will speak up to make it clear to all the world that this woman—and these people—are not only protected but beloved and celebrated. God will make it clear that these whom others may deride as devoid of beauty and wonder “shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” God will transform these who once were desolate and forsaken into a joyous, hopeful, and beloved people. Amid all their conflicts, all their fears, all their uncertainties, all their as-yet-unfulfilled promises, God’s light will break forth in their midst, making it clear that they are beautiful, beloved, and special. All the harm that they have endured, all the dishonor that has been poured upon them, all the fear that has surrounded them—all these things will be vindicated as the world is shown that this harm, this dishonor, this fear is not the last word, for the glorious transformation of new life will shine brightly as God rejoices in these new things.

In our day and age, when there are so many who will not keep silent about the wrong things, when there are plenty of people who are attacked or left without support and protection, when there are so many in our midst who struggle to find a hopeful way to interact with one another, these words still echo loudly among us. These words are not so much addressed to us for ourselves—after all, if we are truly honest with ourselves, most of us are not the kind of downtrodden people God is addressing here—but rather these words are shared with us so that we might offer God’s love and light to those who might not otherwise know it. In our world, there are plenty of people who need to know that they are chosen and singled out and gifted as God’s beloved. As Kathleen O’Connor puts it so well,

Isaiah’s passage supports divine election not to buttress the contented, to uphold the secure, the confident, or the arrogant. Isaiah’s theology of election is rhetoric of immense power because it tells the poor, the second-class nation, the excluded and cast-off women of this world, that God takes immense delight in them. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

As God’s people, then, we are called to share this kind of new life and light with exactly these people—these who are dismissed by the world as “illegal” because they fled across human borders seeking hope for their families and themselves; these who are caught up in the violence of systemic racism and sexism and homophobia and religious preference because they do not look or act or believe like others; these who long for a safe place to escape violence against their bodies and spirits because they have been hurt in body, mind, and spirit by those who say that they love them; even these who find themselves mixed up in anxiety and fear over an uncertain future and so lash out against others who seem to be so different from them. We are called to remember that God’s care is first and foremost for those who are not cared for by the world—and that we join in God’s work when we reach out in mercy, grace, and love to make God’s presence real.

There is no better time to remember all these things and return to this pathway of hope and justice than on this weekend when we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. More than any other figure in our history, Dr. King embodied the fullness of these words in his life and work. He refused to keep silent and did not rest in his pursuit of the case of justice and righteousness for all of God’s people and especially for the downtrodden and excluded among us. He insisted that God’s vindication and glory would be revealed among those who had been cast down, that their lives would be “a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord.” And he made it clear that God delights in all people and will bring us all to a new day of equality, justice, and peace, fulfilling not just our national commitment to care for our people but our human responsibility to embrace the wonder of God’s love in ways beyond our immediate understanding and outside of our usual knowledge. Martin Luther King, Jr., insisted that we as a people could be more than we were and can be more than we are, carrying the potential of great wonder, hope, and restoration for ourselves and all the world, for God’s liberating glory invites us to shine God’s light into every dark and uncertain place.

So, my friends, it is time for us too to follow these prophets’ proclamation, to set aside our silence and to take up a new voice, to shine God’s vindication of the poor and outcast before all the nations to broadcast God’s salvation of the excluded and cast-off to the ends of the earth, to join the faithful saints of the ages who have shared this message of transformation and hope with our actions in solidarity with God and others so that it will be clear to us and the downtrodden and all the world that we are all God’s beloved and that we are called to celebrate all the ways that God rejoices in us and all our sisters and brothers until the whole creation is made new in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Making the Story Our Own

December 21, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:26-56
preached on December 21, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As some of you know, I am a collector of nativity scenes. Over the past seven or eight years, I’ve managed to assemble a collection that includes a depiction of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus from every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I’m still trying to complete those last two, though I suspect that anything from Antarctica might be nothing more than a puddle of water by the time it gets to me!

The incredible thing about all these nativity scenes is the variety of different ways that they depict the same story. The materials vary based on the things common to that part of the world, and there are cultural differences in dress, look, and even skin color. Even beyond this, though, these different nativities show Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and others with a variety of different expressions and feelings. Sometimes they are shown with great seriousness and piety, other times with a bit of happiness and satisfaction. One setting has nothing more than the name of each character in a simple typeface on a block of wood, and there’s even one where Mary looks so peaceful and prayerful that I think she may be asleep!

All these different depictions of the nativity remind me that this is ultimately the story of God coming into our world, taking human form just like us, coming to us to relate to us as one of us. While Jesus was certainly born into a particular time and place, bearing the cultural, religious, and personal markers of his human identity, all these different depictions of the nativity remind us that we are constantly called to make this story our own.

The pre-birth story that marks our reading this morning is filled with so many wonderful moments that can touch our lives: the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the news that the young virgin Mary will bear a child by the power of the Holy Spirit, the visit of Mary to her relative Elizabeth, the songs offered by Elizabeth and Mary as they sort out what these strange events mean for one another and the world, and the extended conversations between these two very blessed women about the children they are bearing into the world. All these different elements of this story connect to our lives in different ways based on our individual experiences, our cultural backgrounds, the circumstances of our time, and even our varied spiritual experiences. As we sort out what all these things mean for us, all those different nativities might help us a bit, for just as they give us so many different depictions of the same story, so we can remember that we will carry even among us gathered here today many different connections to this story behind the birth of Jesus.

Even with our varied interpretations and connections, there are I think two particularly important elements of this story for us to carry with us in these final days on the journey to Christmas and beyond. The first is the vision of holy friendship that we see in the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary. Our Advent Bible study lifted up this theme beautifully, and so some of you have talked about this with me before, but there is something truly incredible that we see in the encounter between these two pregnant women. Elizabeth and Mary are connected by many things. They both thought that they could not bear children—Mary because she was too young, Elizabeth because she was too old. They both were wandering through the uncertainties of pregnancy in a day and age when the health of mother and child were at far greater risk than today. And they both knew through an encounter with the divine that the child each was bearing would be special and set apart for God’s incredible purposes.

These common experiences brought Elizabeth and Mary together in a bond that only they could understand. In reflecting on this connection, author Enuma Okoro observes, “It is a testament to God’s care and provision that each woman has someone to journey with as she navigates the peculiar seasons in which she finds herself.” (Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent, p. 67) As we reflect on this story and make it our own, we can think about the holy companions that we have on our journeys. Who can open our eyes to a deeper understanding of how God is at work in our lives and our world? What sorts of people are among us—or should we seek to be among us—who can remind us of our blessedness and challenge us to help others to embrace their blessedness? How can we be ready to welcome people into our lives—and into the life we share in this place—to be the kinds of companions that we need to journey with us?

The holy friendship that Mary and Elizabeth shared can take so many different forms in our world. For some, it may come in the relationships of marriage and lifelong commitment. Others may find it in friends who can walk together amidst the many changes of life. Some may find it within their families, with siblings or even between parents and children. And some holy friendships may even last for an extremely short season of life and yet still show the kind of divine presence and holy imagination that emerged so beautifully between Elizabeth and Mary. Whatever form these holy friendships may take, they all can build on the kind of connection that Mary and Elizabeth shared, for just as they found support in one another as they waited to welcome their children into the world, we too can deepen our faith and find new hope as we share our joys and struggles with one another along the way.

Just as holy friendship can open us to one way of making this story our own as we find a new and different way to live together, the great song of Mary that follows in their encounter can show us to a new way of being in the world. Mary offers this great song known as the Magnificat after her initial encounter with Elizabeth, as the impact of their shared joy settles in all the more. Mary’s Magnificat, so named because of its first word in the Latin that was the primary language of the church and Bible for so many years, builds on the tradition of the psalms and canticles of the Old Testament, especially the Song of Hannah, mother of Samuel, to give praise for God’s great works and the promise of justice and righteousness for all creation that is being fulfilled in Mary’s life as she bears Jesus into the world.

But this is more than any old song. Mary’s song here is the song of a mother who realizes that her child will change the world, of a woman who recognizes the deep blessing that has come to her and the world through her because of the child she is bearing, of a person who can see the transformation that God is making real in the world. Mary gives praise to God for the things that she is experiencing and the blessing that she is finding, but she clearly knows that this is ultimately not about her. She continues her song beyond this personal understanding of blessing to give praise to a God who brings favor when the world would never dream of such, shows mercy from generation to generation, scatters the proud from their places of privilege, turns the tables of power upside down, offers a strange but real preference for those who are poor or in need, fills the hungry with good things, and remembers promises of mercy and hope.

Empowered by the gift of holy friendship with one who understands the challenge and blessing of her life, Mary proclaims the greatness of a God who turns the world upside down, and we can echo her words of praise not just in the gift of our next hymn based on her song but also by living our lives in ways that further God’s justice, peace, mercy, and grace in our world. The incarnation of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas becomes real when we find ways to make this story our own, when we discover how God has not just broken into the world of first-century Palestine but twenty-first century New York City, when God’s presence is not just something that we experience in our hearts but that we see taking root around us in the transformation of our world.

In the holy friendships of our lives that give us space for fear and hope amidst uncertainty, in the joyful songs that challenge us to make God’s work more real in our world, we encounter the one who comes in these days, the one who turns everything upside down in a baby born in the most humble of circumstances who yet reigns over all the earth, the one who makes all things new through death and resurrection to new life. So as we journey these final days toward Christmas, may we find ways to make this story our own, whether it be in nativity scenes that help us to see these characters as people like us, in seeking holy friendships that open us to God’s presence in our lives in new ways, or in the ways we join all that God is doing in our world to live out the joys of Mary’s song. And as we go along this way, may we be ready to welcome the fullness of Christ’s gift into our lives and our world both this Christmas and when he comes in power to finish making all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Sitting at the Welcome Table

August 17, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 15:21-28
preached on August 17, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

(“I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table” audio)

That wonderful song, rooted in the life of slave communities in the deep South and sung in that recording at a rally during the Civil Rights Movement, seems strangely appropriate for today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew. The Canaanite woman in this text seemed intent upon singing exactly those words even when Jesus himself tried his best to deny her a place at that table. Just as Jesus arrived in a town away from everything, in a region filled with people who were unlike him, this woman came up to him, begging him to heal her daughter: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

At first, Jesus completely ignored her. You have to wonder what was going through his mind to drive him to behave like this. Was he just tired and a little zoned out after an intense week of teaching and healing, not to mention all the traveling involved? Was he so marked by the cultural influences of his day that he could not look past her different race, gender, religion, and ethnicity to offer her compassion? Or was he so intent on completing his mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” that he could not offer even a little to others along the way? Whatever the reason for his silence, when he ignored this woman in this way he looked a lot more human than divine to me.

The woman, though, didn’t give up so easily. When Jesus ignored her, her cries grew louder: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” Now she was starting to get on everyone’s nerves. The disciples started complaining to Jesus, but why? Were they just reporting the unrecorded complaints of others? Were they too embodying the sort of attitude of their time toward people who were different? Or were they a bit afraid that she might draw more attention to them in this community where they were actually the outsiders? Whatever the reason, the disciples told Jesus to send her away, and he did, finally telling her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Still, this was not enough to convince her to go away. When her loud cries for help were ignored, she fell on her knees before Jesus, pleading with him, “Lord, help me.” This time, Jesus’ response to her went from quietly disrespectful to directly demeaning: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Again he insisted to her that his purpose for ministry didn’t involve her or anyone like her. While we may lose a bit of the cultural or linguistic play on words at our distance, Jesus’ intent in his response to the Canaanite woman seems clear to me: he had had enough of her. It was time for her to go away and leave him alone, and he would tell her whatever was needed to make that happen.

But even with this response the woman did the unimaginable and came back at him a fourth time. As one commentator paraphrases it, she basically told him, “Yes, Lord, I am a dog, so treat me like one. Give me the crumbs [from that table].” (Stanley P. Saunders, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew, p. 153) After this, Jesus couldn’t turn her away, so he turned toward her instead. He healed her daughter and praised her faith, her belief that “she and her daughter should receive mercy from the ruling activity of God.” (Jae Won Lee, “Exegetical Perspective on Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3, p. 361) With her persistent faith in God’s mercy and compassion, she had claimed her place at that welcome table. She was willing to accept a lower-level grace for now, for the sake of her daughter, but by her persistence she made it clear that she would one day sit at the table, no longer relegated to lap up the crumbs on the floor with the dogs. She knew better than Jesus did in that moment that the incredible depth and breadth of God’s love breaks through every human limitation and makes a place for all at the welcome table.

Over the centuries since this first encounter, the followers of Jesus have often been too much like Jesus at the start of this story. We have let our exhaustion or anxiety in the moment shape our reaction to those in need. We have been so focused on our own understandings of ministry that we miss the people we weren’t expecting to encounter along the way. We have even fallen into the traps of the world’s ways to ignore those who cry out for help because they don’t look like us, live like us, think like us, love like us, or even cry out for help like us. If we haven’t done it ourselves, others surely have done it in the name of Jesus at one point or another.

We need people like the Canaanite woman to remind us that our reaction to injustice is so very often shaped less by God’s commitment to the humanity of all and more by our preferences. We need people like the Canaanite woman to step up and sing loud and clear, “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table,” claiming their place not under the table scavenging for the leftovers of justice and peace but a place where the fullness of new life from God is provided abundantly for all. And we need people like the Canaanite woman to urge us to action so that we can respond to the cries for compassion that are offered right in front of us, to challenge us to set aside the fears that all too often drive our actions, to bring us together in offering a united cry for justice and peace that is more than empty words, to join in God’s work of making all things new.

There have been plenty of people in our world crying out like this Canaanite woman in recent days, insisting that they too are gonna sit at the welcome table. Even on vacation over the past two weeks, I couldn’t escape the cries and shouts for justice in our world. All over London, thrift shops run by the relief organization Oxfam highlighted the great need of response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where two generations of occupation have kept the Palestinian people from living life to its fullness and left Israelis at risk, only to have recent warfare bring further death to both sides in this intractable conflict as everyone seeks a seat at the welcome table.

Then, when I tried to turn to my social media friends on Facebook and Twitter to provide a bit of company along the journey, I was overwhelmed by the outcry over the troubling death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager stopped for walking in the middle of the street by a white police officer in a suburb of St. Louis last weekend. When the police offered limited, confusing, or conflicting answers to reasonable questions about the incident—in the rare moments when they spoke at all—the community’s peaceful protests escalated as the police approached the protestors in military riot gear. Images of these protests bear an eerie similarity to photos from the Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement, and it is clear that even fifty years later, with some real change in our world, there are still people crying out for a seat at that welcome table.

And there are so many other places where women and men cry out for justice and peace and wholeness and new life in our world—among Ebola victims in west Africa, amidst renewed conflict in Syria and Iraq, alongside power struggles in the Ukraine and Russia, even among the poor and marginalized much closer to home—women and men and children cry out for a seat at that welcome table.

So what are we to do with all this pain around us, both far and near? Is our best response to be like Jesus at the beginning of the story, to ignore those who cry out in hopes that they will be respectful and just go away, or to tell them that they are a distraction from our bigger purposes, or even to insist that they are something less than human because they have dared to challenge the established order of things and seek a seat at the table with us? Are we to take a step even further and respond with violence? Or can we find a better way than what Jesus did that honors both these cries and the humanity of those who cry out, that shows compassion to those who suffer, that offers a word of grace to those in need, that embodies God’s love for all—love whose power is greater than even the smallest portion of crumbs—that offers a much-needed seat at the welcome table of our world?

In the midst of all the pain and war and suffering that marks our lives and our world, we can live and pray and work in ways that honor the loud and soft cries of those who are in need so that God’s love might touch each and every place where new life is needed. So may we join in God’s work to make space for everyone to have a seat at the welcome table, not leaving anyone just to pick up the leftover crumbs but ensuring that all God’s people can know the full abundance of God’s grace, mercy, peace, and love. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Bait and Switch?

August 18, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 12:49-56
preached on August 18, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When you think of Jesus, what kind of person comes to mind? Do you picture him as a kind and gentle man, always offering a nice word to everyone he encounters, caring for children, and never raising his voice or showing a temper? Or do you imagine him like a fiery preacher, ranting and raving against all the bad things in the world, and always making people mad about something or other? Maybe I just saw too many pictures of a gentle and kind Jesus in Sunday School as a child, but I sure have something like that first image stuck in my head, and I suspect I am not alone. The song “Jesus Loves Me” that marks so many of our images of God suggests a kind and gentle man, not a fiery preacher. The gifted teacher and healer we hear about in the gospels surely only offered positive words that never condemned anyone, right? The quiet and gentle baby that we remember every Christmas was born to be the “Prince of Peace,” not one who stirs the pot constantly!

We could go a lifetime with these simple and peaceful images of Jesus, and many of us do—but then Luke confronts us with the Jesus from our reading this morning. The Jesus who speaks here sure seems like a very different person than the one we sang about a month or so ago when Cristian so wonderfully led us in singing “Jesus Loves Me.” This Jesus doesn’t offer a gentle or kind word—he speaks of fire and division! It feels a bit like a classic bait and switch move, as if Jesus has lured us in with the promise of simple love and grace and then tells us that that is all out of stock—with only fire, brimstone, and family conflict available instead!

His words here are intense and direct. He starts out with a simple promise tied to a lament:

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

Now it is certainly reasonable for Jesus to suggest a fire to purify the problematic areas around us, but I for one am not really interested in him bringing great destruction to the entire earth. Either way, his words here are not easy to hear.

Then he turns to the things that are ahead for him. As Luke tells the story, we’re right in the middle of an intense time for Jesus. He has been doing his basic ministry of teaching and healing for quite some time, and after an encounter with Moses and Elijah on the mount of Transfiguration, he has set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing that great challenges await him on the journey. So after he promises to bring fire to the earth, Jesus declares that he has “a baptism with which to be baptized,” and that he faces incredible stress until it is completed. He clearly knows that that road ahead for him leads to the cross, and because of that he has little patience for anyone who doesn’t share his commitment to the new things that God is doing in the world.

After this, he clarifies his intentions once and for all:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two and against three; they will be divided:

father against son and son against father,
mother against daughter and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

This is the ultimate bait and switch of this text, I think— the one who has repeatedly been declared the “Prince of Peace,” the one who has said that he comes to inaugurate a new and different way of life in the midst of the deep uncertainty of his time, the one whose mother sang of his mercy and strength even before his birth, for this one to suddenly declare that he comes not to bring peace but rather division is a dramatic reversal!

It seems that we have been deceived into thinking that Jesus is up to one thing when in fact he is doing something entirely different. We have been deceived that Jesus will make all our relationships stronger and better right away. We have been deceived into thinking that Jesus wants us to put our families first and ask questions about it all later. We have been deceived that following Jesus will lead us simply and easily into eternal life.

You see, when you get down to it, the content of Jesus’ message is so radical that it can’t help but bring a divisive response from some people. If we take just the words of his mother’s song, the Magnificat, that help to open Luke’s gospel, there are a whole bunch of potentially angry people: the proud who have been scattered in the thoughts of their hearts, the powerful who have been brought down from their thrones because the lowly have been lifted up, and the rich who have been sent away empty as the hungry have been filled with good things.

All this is only the beginning of what Jesus is up to. As commentator Richard Carlson puts it,

The divinely wrought peace that Jesus inaugurates and bestows involves the establishment of proper relationships of mercy, compassion, and justice between God and humanity. Not everyone, however, wants or welcomes this divine peace plan. Hence the initiation of Jesus’ peace agenda also triggers contentious disunity and fissures among all facets of society, right down to the societal core of the household. (“Exegetical Perspective on Luke 12:49-56,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3, p. 361, 363)

So will we be deceived? Will we be deceived into thinking that that we can only focus on Jesus’ message of love without talking about the things that that message condemns? Will we be deceived into thinking that the “Prince of Peace” who comes to bring people together will not stand up to those who continue to beat the drums of war? Will we be deceived into putting temporal relationships with family and friends above the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God? It is easy to fall into these traps and set aside the more challenging parts of the gospel message, but when we listen to Jesus and take these words seriously, something can and will change for us and our world.

When we listen to him closely here, we will recognize that a full embodiment of Jesus’ way of life will make some people angry, maybe even some people we deeply love. But we will also remember that this is to be expected, and we can’t let others’ responses to our actions turn us back from following him. I find strength for doing exactly this in the example of the thousands upon thousands of women and men who practice nonviolent resistance, where quiet and gentle people simply seeking to exercise their rights to assemble, protest injustice, and live with the full dignity of their humanity insist with words and actions that they will not be moved, that they will not be silent until all people are recognized as children of God, that no one of us can be truly free until all of us are free. In the protests of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the Moral Mondays celebrated each week this summer in North Carolina, and so many other such things, these women and men do not set out to bring conflict but show that the divine intentions of justice, peace, and mercy stand in direct conflict with so many of the practices of our world and so deserve our condemnation. In drawing attention to the injustices of our world, these people who live out the message of Jesus in this way remind us that those who claim a place of power and privilege for only a few do not speak for all.

And so Jesus’ strong words here can give us the courage to speak up with so many others around us about the places that need the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit, about the people who face a challenging road of uncertainty as they follow the path that Jesus set out for us, about the injustice that remains so pervasive in our city, state, nation, and world, and about the depth of peace that still evades us even when we seek and pursue it each and every day. Jesus calls us, even us, to be a part of God’s new thing in our world, to speak up against everything that gets in its way, and to step into the world proclaiming this way of justice, peace, mercy, and love every day.

So may we trust even the Jesus who seems to bait and switch us and not be deceived along the way, for the path is not easy, but he walked it before us and walks it with us as we join in his work of making all things new until that day when he comes again. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Justice and Peace for All

October 7, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 for World Communion Sunday
preached on October 7, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Back when I was in college, I was attending a conference when a minister I knew pulled me aside. We had met in person earlier in the week, but we also knew each other from online conversations. I had been working on the website for the conference, and she was wondering if I might help with the website for another conference that she was helping to organize. Rather than just signing me up to work, she invited me to be on the conference planning team, working with a bunch of far more experienced people to plan an event in an area where I had little or no experience. Still, she felt like the conference would benefit from my presence and work by taking a different approach to promotion. We would have a vibrant website well in advance of the conference that would not only tell people about how to register and attend but would also be updated in real time during the event so that people could follow along rather than just waiting until it was all over to read an article about it. So that’s how I came to be a part of the planning teams for the 2000 and 2001 Presbyterian Peacemaking Conferences and had my first exposure to the work of peacemaking in the church.

Those experiences were formative for me. Through the planning process and the event, I met several of the people I now consider mentors and friends in ministry, including two colleagues who later became moderator and vice-moderator of the General Assembly, several of my colleagues here in New York City Presbytery, including Krystin Granberg, our guest preacher last week, and several others who are nothing short of legendary in many circles in the Presbyterian church. The people were great, but we had some fun times together as well, beginning with a memorable afternoon in a 15-passenger van circling the LAX airport to pick up members of the planning team and continuing through three years of work together to pull off two years of Peacemaking conferences.

But the most memorable and most important part of that formative time for me was learning more about what it means to be a peacemaker in the church. As I, a college student from a pretty conservative background in Mississippi, sat with these women and men who had marched for civil rights and campaigned against the Vietnam War, among other things, I learned so much about our call to be peacemakers. Every year on World Communion Sunday, the first Sunday in October, I think about these experiences, for this is the day when we collect the Peacemaking Offering to continue this work that I was a part of and the time when we celebrate and reaffirm our call to be peacemakers in the world.

The most difficult lesson of those days for me was one that I hear repeated in our reading from Proverbs this morning: there can be no peace without justice. These words from Proverbs talk about the responsibility of those who have—the “rich”—toward those who do not have—the “poor,” and ultimately that responsibility shows us that justice is required for there to be peace in our world. The first saying here calls us to take a first step in this direction:

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.

Money and power and wealth don’t matter as much as doing what is right, whether you are rich or poor, because in the end, God makes everyone and everything and will call everyone to account for their use of what has been given to them. But the second saying here makes the link between justice and peace very clear:

Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.

Where there is injustice, there will be strife and pain and sorrow, and justice is required to set things right and make the way clear for peace. The proverb continues by reminding us what is required of us to make justice real:

Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.

The way of peace does not come from others taking care of those in need, but instead it requires that we reach out to those who have been left behind by the ways of the world, whether they live around the corner or around the world. The third saying, then, pulls all this together into the great challenge for us:

Do not rob the poor because they are poor or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the LORD pleads their cause and despoils the life of those who despoil them.

We are certainly not to take advantage of anyone, but here God goes beyond this to challenge us to join in God’s preferential treatment of those who are in greatest need, for God does not help those who help themselves but rather shows favor to those who have no way out other than God.

So on this Sunday when we remember our call to be peacemakers and gather around this table to remember how we share this feast with Christians all around the world, these warnings seem to be a good reminder to us that the way of peace requires us to work and act for justice in the world. This table of celebration is an empty promise for our sisters and brothers who long for something more if we are not working and acting and speaking up on their behalf, standing up for their humanity and insisting that all people are not only welcome at the table but should enjoy the fullness of life that is ours. Our prayers for peace in the world are empty if they are not accompanied by real and concrete action, not by putting the preferences of one nation or people above another, but by calling for justice to prevail for all so that peace can flourish. And even our action for justice is incomplete if our attempts to ease the immediate pain of our sisters and brothers in need are not accompanied by faithful challenges to the systems that allow injustice to prevail.

In 1984 and 1985, a terrible famine in Ethiopia brought a worldwide response, highlighted most by the prominent song “We Are the World” that brought together a number of famous artists to sing one song. While there was a tremendous outpouring of food aid and immediate support, those same areas in Africa have been faced with similar crises several times since because all we really offered in that moment was a band-aid rather than actually addressing the problematic systems that perpetuate violence, hunger, and injustice. A real and true response to injustice does not just fill in the temporary gap but steps up to demand change in the system so that justice might be made real and peace might take hold.

So on this day when we remember our connection to our sisters and brothers in faith around the world and offer extra gifts to support the work of peacemaking in our world and in our own backyard, may we remember God’s call to be peacemakers, not just papering over conflict or pretending that it doesn’t exist but confronting it honestly and recognizing what really separates us from God and one another, not just offering a tiny band-aid to cover up the gaping wounds of our world but working to join in God’s work of pouring out justice like mighty waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, and not just trying to bring about peace for ourselves and in ourselves but stepping up to seek and offer peace to our community, our city, our nation, and our world so that all might be made whole and complete.

So may God strengthen us for this work of peace and justice each and every day until God’s new way of peace, justice, love, and freedom is real for every human being and for all creation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.