Called to Justice

Sermon preached at Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community, San Diego, CA on October 23, 2016

Readings: 

Sirach 35:12-17

Psalm: 34:2-4, 17-18, 19+23

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Luke 18:9-14

“I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

We hear these words from the second letter to Timothy quite often. They’ve become a popular sound byte over the years. And as a former athlete, the metaphor is one that has resonated with me over the years, particularly as I’m still recovering from breaking my leg playing soccer. But these words are more than just comfort after a difficult game or a long race – they serve as both a testimony and a challenge. They echo with a resolute calm as he reflects on his life and faces death.

There is a quiet strength in these familiar words, a resolute faith and certainty in God’s love and justice. And they encourage us to do the same. Over the past two days, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to members of this community and in those conversations I’ve come to see that same commitment to God’s justice and unconditional love. As I look around and reflect on the conversations I’ve had so far and on the stories I’ve heard, I see a community that has fought the good fight and has kept the faith; a community that yearns for and works towards God’s justice. But that is not enough. Because, my friends, our race is not yet over. Our fight continues.

We live in a world where we are faced with injustice at every turn. From systemic racism and sexism that pervades society to the refugee crisis to the various wars that wreak havoc upon our world. We struggle to reconcile the God who is loving and just with the horrors we see in this world. The words from the wisdom of Sirach remind us that we have an ally in God. “God is just and knows no favorites.” (Sirach 35:15) Yet we live in a world rife with economic inequality, where politician ban the arrival of refugees to their states out of fear. We see corruption go unchecked and occasionally even be rewarded and we’re left wondering – where is God’s justice in this?

Where is the God who affirms what is good and right when young black men are being murdered, when LGBTQ youth are more likely to be bullied at school and commit suicide because they cannot envision a world where it gets better? Despite the evil and injustice in the world, I have confidence that God is with us, that the Holy One hears our prayers, but also that we have been called – not just to sit back and be satisfied with the good we have done, but to constantly and ceaselessly work for God’s justice. To create a community where all of God’s children can flourish?

How do we create such a community? In the short time I’ve come to know just a little about Mary Magdalene’s and the people that make up the community here, I’ve come to understand that this is a community that, since its inception, has been founded with a thirst for justice, a hunger to what is right, and to work towards creating the beloved community we so often hear evoke. As Christians, we are called to form beloved communities wherever we are. Communities that go the extra step – to lift up the dispossessed, the marginalized, those who are left outside our doors, outside the margins. We are called to work towards justice, to offer hospitality, to the stranger, to love unconditionally and practice radical welcome – reaching out to those who have faced oppression and discrimination.

In the words of the poet Edwina Gateley: [adapted]

“We are called to say yes

That the kin-dom might break through

To renew and to transform

Our dark and groping world.

We are called to say yes

That black may sing with white

And pledge peace and healing

For the hatred of the past.

We are called to say yes

So that nations might gather

And dance one great movement

For the joy of humankind.

We are called to say yes

To a God who still holds fast

To the vision of a kin-dom

For a trembling world of pain.

We are called to say yes,

To this God who reaches out

And asks us to share

In a crazy dream of love.”

This crazy dream of love is the transformative justice that we are called to participate in. To not be satisfied with the way things are, with the injustice in the world, with the status quo. Let us not become like the Pharisees in Luke’s account, resting on our laurels and praising our actions and good works. It is not for us to make that call. We are called to seek truth and justice boldly, to be disturbed and discomforted by the injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people; to tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace. To stand in solidarity with those who suffer and struggle, to work to change oppressive structures and systems that perpetuate the sins of sexism and racism, of homophobia and transphobia.

The race we hear about in the second reading is not a sprint, it is a marathon relay that we as Christians have been called to run and to work at generation to generation. As Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Parker, and Barack Obama have said – the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice. However, it will not get there without our help. We must keep working to transform our world, to create communities where the suffering and persecuted are not only welcomed, but supported and encouraged. We are called to transform the world we live in – but to do so humbly, always seeking God’s justice in all that we do and everywhere we are.

We have kept the faith; we have fought the good fight. But we must keep on because our race is far from done. Amen.

love your enemies

Perhaps one of the hardest commandments given to us by Jesus, it is something that doesn’t have quite the same context in the states as it does here. In the US, even when we try to make it tangible and specific, it usually relates to those who have slighted us or to enemies of the state, in an attempt to speak and practice peace in a world that seems more and more divided by war. Even the word “enemy” does not have the same concept in the states. It’s a bit abstract, unless you’re a soldier serving in the military.

It’s different here in the Holy Land. It’s real. It is the daily reality of people who live here. How do you live out such a commandment when your village can be isolated by roadblocks, when you’re required to go through a checkpoint with metal grates, when you can be stopped and detained at any moment with no rationale, when you can be shot on sight if an Israeli feels they are endangered? It is unimaginable. I can’t even pretend to understand. Perhaps the most striking thing about spending time in Palestine is the persistent and perseverant hope in the midst of injustice and oppression. The humbling part is that I’m not sure I could do the same.

I’m an emotional person and on my first trip to Palestine I was shocked, horrified and angry. Perhaps it was “righteous indignation” but it was still anger. On this trip, I am filled with sorrow, but I am also inspired. I see all these people working for peace, working non-violently for peace. It’s easy to respond to violence with violence. I wonder if it’s actually inherent in our nature; I know it is inherent in my nature. To overcome that urge, to not throw a punch when you’re arrested by soldiers with machine guns, when you’re beaten, when children throw rocks at you, requires an immense amount of courage and strength.

One of the speakers yesterday commented on the distinction between pacifism and passiveness – a distinction that I think is incredibly important. One can be a social revolutionary in a pacifistic, non violent way in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr and Ghandi. It’s not always about fighting back physically. I can’t help but draw compromises between some of the non-violent protesters here and the occupy protesters in the US. My brain automatically connects the image of Palestinian and International protesters getting fired upon with concussion grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets to the recent scenes in the US of occupy protesters getting pepper sprayed and tear gassed at point blank range and I stand in awe.

Standing in solidarity with the oppressed, standing up and voicing opposition to injustice is certainly a good step, a responsibility that comes from scripture (and more than that, from the fact that all of us are human beings who deserve justice and equality, regardless of who we are and where we come from). In the midst of this, I struggle with the commandment to love your enemies. What does it mean for me, an educated American with great privilege, the child of immigrants, and someone whose cultural history includes a history of persecution? Alternately, what does it mean for those whose daily lives include oppression, injustice, and persecution, be they in the West Bank or Uganda or in the US? The only conclusion I can come to is that I cannot fully understand this verse, this commandment without experiencing “enemies” in a real and tangible sense. But this doesn’t mean that I can ignore this verse as something that doesn’t apply to me.

As an American, it means that I need to fight for justice. That I should fight against the racial discrimination and profiling that still takes place in the US. That I need to fight for justice, even for those with whom I disagree. It means that when politicians and religious leaders speak things that I cannot believe to be true, things that I believe violate the intrinsic human rights of individuals, I should not give into the hate that tempts me. It means not doubting the intelligence of those I disagree with, but trying to educate them, to listen to them, and engage them in dialogue.

But how do Palestinians live out that commandment? How can they persevere in this love when their lives are constantly disrupted? One of the speakers yesterday expounded on this:

“What is this love? Do I go to a checkpoint, get out of my car, approach the Israeli soldiers, open my arms and go, ‘Habibi! Give me some love? That’ll get me in one of three places – in prison, in a loony hospital, or six feet under. What does it mean to love your enemy? It means to get to know someone.”

It is easy enough to proclaim the “enemy” as the “other”, to generalize them as one giant group, a collective other, forgetting to view them as individuals, as human beings. How often do we refer to Al-Qaeda, to terrorists, as a collective group as though there are no individuals among them? That’s one of the important points being reiterated here at the conference. Some refer to the occupation as the systematic dehumanization and degradation of Palestinians, but insist that one should not generalize. There is a danger in generalization – be it Jews, Israelis, the Israeli government, the Israeli army. Each of these categories is made up of individuals. To generalize them as homogenous categories, as unified forces with no internal opposition is to vilify them and make it nearly impossible to view them as individuals. They are human beings. Every person on this earth is a human being, worthy of love and forgiveness, no matter who they are or what they have done.

Last night, the student group was fortunate enough to meet with an ex-Israeli soldier, one of the cofounders of Breaking the Silence and who now works with Grassroots Jerusalem. He had many good points (which I may expound on later) but the part of his talk that corresponds with the theme of loving your enemy was the simple exhortation “Compassion works”. In trying to witness to what is happening here, in trying to foster discussion about the occupation and what it means, it is important to remember this. Compassion works. We need to treat everyone with compassion. According to Sami Awad, this translates to the need to grieve in their pain and celebrate their joys with them. So much blood has been shed on both sides of this conflict, so many lives have been lost, and an anxious “peace” has been achieved. Bombings on both sides have decreased, Israelis are segregated from Palestinians and neither side is encouraged to travel freely among the other and both sides are being allowed to vilify the other.

Loving your enemy does not mean ignoring the injustice, forgetting the horrors that have happened. Loving your enemy requires the ability to go beyond this, the ability to view individuals as something more than their actions, to view them as fellow human beings. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The cracks let the light come in - responding to injustice

How do we reconcile the will of God with the evil and injustice in the world? With all that is wrong in this world, with all the wars and destruction, the hatred, the human rights violations, it can become incredibly disheartening to believe that God has a plan, and a good plan. A plan to help and not to harm (Jeremiah 3:8?). I think that’s one of the hardest things about visiting the Palestinian Territories – the difficulty in trying to maintain hope in the midst of all of this injustice. When a thirty foot wall topped with razor wire and an electric fence separates the Palestinian territories from Israel and there are checkpoints with armed guards where pedestrians file through metal gates reminiscent of cattle grates. I can’t help being reminded of my first trip to Auschwitz in 1993 and the despair that I felt. “Never again.” There are similarities here – the separation of people, the division, and what can only be described as the dehumanization of people. If we put aside the question of who has a right to this land, I still cannot think of anything that legitimizes this. The hardest thing for me in visiting here is that it is hard to imagine how one can maintain hope in such a climate, how one can persevere in nonviolence and peacemaking despite all this.

However, there are glimmers of hope. There are numerous individuals who I’ve had the opportunity to meet who are able to maintain hope for peace, even though there are children who have few options for a future. I can’t help but ask, “Are those glimmers enough?” Last night, Shane Claiborne quoted John of the Cross, “The cracks let the light come through.” It’s a quote I’ve been rolling around in my head since then. What do we do if we can’t see the cracks? Is it our job to create cracks? To chip away and allow glimmers, slivers of light to come through. There are few cracks in the wall that divides this land, but there are some. There are ways for people to illegally cross the wall and in a way,that gives me hope while simultaneously worrying me. If anyone is caught illegally scaling the wall, they can be shot on sight. There are people who work in nonviolent means for peace. Perhaps the amazing and inspiring art on the wall (some by the famous British artist, Banksy) represents another series of cracks in the wall. Beauty in the midst of this sterile, intimidating wall. Seeing all this begs the question – what is my (our) responsibility to injustice? What should be my response?

There are various responses to this. We are all called to different ministries – some are called to be prophets, others teachers, others martyrs, etc. This is a bit how I understand vocation – something personal. My spiritual director once told me that “vocation is what you do when you can’t do anything else.” Perhaps it’s an extreme statement, but it makes quite a bit of sense. However, such a statement doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to discern what one’s vocation is, especially for someone like me who has quite a few interests.

How does our vocation relate to the injustice that we witness? It should be obvious that none of us can do everything. We have limited time and resources and to attempt to stretch ourselves out over all the causes that speak to us might leave us with the ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ feeling. I’m not sure that’s the answer. I think each of us have causes that speak to us more than others, something that touches us personally, something that becomes part of our ministry, whether we are lay or ordained. And our individual response to this injustice is an opportunity for grace.

So what is that response? Perhaps the most common response that I have heard here in Palestine and which was echoed by Bishop Hayes of the United Methodist Church in Oklahoma today, “It is not enough to come and see, it’s also go and tell.” The two requests I have always gotten from people I’ve met here is ‘go out and tell our story’ and ‘pray for us’. Those are simple enough requests that any of us can fulfill. Witnessing injustice does not automatically require us to become an activist, to put ourselves in the way of bullets, to endanger ourselves and our security. Prayer and witness is sometimes enough.

Within those who witness injustice, there are certainly those who are called to action. Some of us are not content to sit idly by, to simply pray for peace. Last night’s talk by Shane Claiborne touched on this by connecting it to the miracle of loaves and fish. In the story, it is the disciples who notice that the people are hungry. They come to Jesus and say, “The people are hungry. Do something” And Jesus’ reply is roughly “Why don’t you do something?” and the disciples go out to find food and then it miraculously becomes enough to feed the entire crowd. But there is a sense of agency among the disciples. We can’t rely on God to do everything for us, to intervene and interfere in our lives. Sometimes we have to do something.

There’s a similar sentiment among the conference attendees here that Shane mentioned. Often after seeing the situation here, people turn to God and demand “God, do something!” Shane postulated that perhaps the response from God would be “I did. I made you.” This statement carries with it both responsibility and agency. I don’t think this means that everyone who witnesses injustice is required to respond with direct action and involvement, but I think that for some of us witnessing injustice leads us deep into the wilderness to discern what God is calling us to do. How are we supposed to respond to this? Are we called to share what we have seen, to bear witness to those in trouble? Are we called to be activists? Are we called to donate money and resources to worthy causes? I think the answer is ‘any of the above’. Only through prayer, stillness, and listening to God can we discern what our response should be. Through the cracks, we can see the light and perhaps our job is just to do whatever we can to amplify that light.