Justice for God’s People

Justice for God’s People 

Luke 18:1-8: Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.  

As God’s people in the world we have received God’s Law in many ways.  It the Biblical books of Exodus and Deuteronomy we have received God’s Law written on stone (the Ten Commandments).  As Christians we believe the Bible contains God’s law. It also contains lots of other things; poems, hymns, history, legend, foundational stories of our faith and life.  In fact, story and myth communicate more to many of us than do laws.  They even help us to understand law in ways that often make more sense than codes and codicils. 

I believe that was the goal of God’s communication through the Prophet Jeremiah during the exile in Babylon.  It is just possible that this message will serve us well on our journey of life and faith. 

Jeremiah 31:27-34: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make

a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like

the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to

bring them out of the land of Egypt-- a covenant that they broke, though I was

their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the

 house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and

I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

Jeremiah is proclaiming that God is putting the divine law on human flesh, not just any flesh, but the heart, the traditional source of life, thus proclaiming that life in this world is important to

God.  That what happens in this world is important.  That God desires justice for all people. 

Franciscan Friar and Roman Catholic Priest, Richard Rohr believes that when we pray for others, that what we are doing is bringing thinking down from our head to our hearts.  Rohr suggests that:  

next time resentment, negativity and irritation come to our minds, that we move

that thought or that person into our heart space.”  The heart, according to Rohr is

surrounded with silence, surrounded with blood which is warm and life giving.  In

this place it is impossible to comment, judge, create story lines and remain antagonistic.  In this place we do not create or feed on contraries, but on life, embodiment and love.  Love lives and thrives in heart space.  It has kept me from wanting to hurt people who have hurt me.  Could this be what we are really doing when we say we are praying for someone?  That we are holding them in our heart. (Immortal Diamond, Richard Rohr) 

The Law written on the heart makes our faith real.  Faith becomes about flesh and blood, new life; “the word became flesh and dwelt among us,”(John 1:14)  and it becomes dangerous! 

When God’s Law is written on our hearts, we are able to find God within us as well as beyond us.  This is an exquisite balance that I believe religion is able to achieve.  People who find this balance that both Jeremiah and Jesus had, find a wholeness and tend to blossom and flourish.  As we flourish in our faith we move beyond being mere conformists or mere rebels who just take sides on everything—no wisdom required.  Sounds like a pretty good place for Christians to hang out. 

When we live into this Law Written on the Heart, this law of flesh and blood, we have nothing to prove.  We only need say with Mary, “the almighty has done great things for me and Holy is His Name.”(Luke 1:49)   We can also say, must also say, the Almighty has done great things for all of God’s children, not just those of us who know God through Jesus. 

Those of us who are God’s Children, those with God’s Law written on our hearts, might just become co-creators with God, might just become the people who can help God put back together our sometimes sad and fragmented country and world.  Not lording it over others, but welcoming them, even those who are different, into this place, this world God has given us as home.

(A WRITER’S CREDO)

(A WRITER’S CREDO)

Reflections on an Essay by Edward Abbey 

“It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be the critic of the society in which he lives.  It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rile away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders, and at those within our borders  who question the prevailing order.” (Edward Abbey) 

Abbey believes that if a writer is not willing to take on this responsibility that he or she should become a surgeon or a truck driver or a cowboy or a nuclear physicist.  Writers, particularly free lance writers, are in a position to serve as the conscience of our nation, to speak truth to power.  So many Americans are in positions in which speaking out can put ones employment, and thus one’s ability to feed self and family in danger.  This does not mean that writers will not pay for their comments, but that they will have a forum through which to communicate with the public. 

According to Abbey, the writer as critic is able to point out those decisions and policies from government and business alike that support the status quo to the detriment of all the citizens of this country.  “Far better to remain silent than to use the written word to shore up the wrong, the false, the ugly, the evil.”   

I gather from reading Abbey that writing matters, that what writers do actually makes a difference in the world. Whether poetry, essays, or novels, writing makes a difference. Writers must, in fact, become political.  That is, they must become involved, responsible and committed.  The writers’ duty according to Abbey is “to speak the truth, especially unpopular truth, especially truth that offends the powerful, the rich, the well-established, the traditional, the mythic, the sentimental.” 

A writer can do these things when others cannot because they have the freedom to do research, to not lose their jobs, though of course, people can refuse to by their books or their writings.  As an aside, we priests and preachers should be able to speak the truth as well, but unfortunately the church is often the last bastion of the status quo and truth can be a real threat to that status quo; whether the truth is theological, political or anthropological.  And this is true even when we preachers make a point that what is being asked of people is not to agree with us, but to reflect on what we say or write through the lens of their faith and their life experience.  I am sure this is true for teachers and others in our world as well. 

Nothing should be sacred or spared from the writers work, whether it be Health Care, Immigration, Greed, In-effective Government, Homosexuality, Racism, or any other issue.  And writers do not have to be of one mind in what they write.  The must however speak the truth as the see it and understand it.  Writers may be one of the few forces in our world that enable civilized dialogue, a quality quite rare in our day. 

To become a bit more personal, Abbey’s essay inspires me to remember that I have been given the gift of writing, and as a retired priest, the freedom to speak the truth as I understand it and the responsibility to share this truth with the world.  As a priest I have been blessed to struggle with life and faith with “all sorts and conditions of people,” those who are likeable and those who are unlikeable, those who seek a newer and in their minds a better world, and those who are quite content with the past.  I have learned to see the world through the eyes of people who are in a different place in life than am I and therefore to see the world through many different lenses. 

One person does not possess all truth, but many people together sharing their portions of the truth can bring us much closer to “the truth” than simply trusting our own favorite sources of truth and the institutions which provide them. 

Abbey ends the first part one of this essay: “Since we cannot expect much truth from our institutions, we must expect it from our writers.  Tolstoy said: ‘The hero of my work, in all of his naked unadorned glory is truth. . .Thoreau said: The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.  And that other trouble maker said, Ye shall hear the truth and the truth shall make you free.”