Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

November 14, 2010

 

^Reading

^NRS Matthew 25:34-40 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸ And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹ And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' ⁴⁰ And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

 

John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, New York:  HarperOne, 1992, pp. xii-xiii passim.

[After John the Baptist was beheaded], Jesus, finding his own voice, began to speak of God not as imminent apocalypse but as present healing. To those first followers from the peasant villages of Lower Galilee who asked how to repay his exorcisms and cures, he gave a simple answer, simple, that is, to understand but hardy death itself to undertake. You are healed healers, he said, so take the Kingdom to others, for 1 am not its patron and you are not its brokers. It is was, and always will be available to any who want it. Dress as I do, like a beggar, but do not beg. Bring a miracle and request a table. Those you heal must accept you into their homes.

That ecstatic vision and social program sought to rebuild a society upward from its grass roots but on principles of religious and economic egalitarianism, with free healing brought directly to the peasant homes and free sharing of whatever they had in Lawn. The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal, miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality, was a challenge launched not just at Judaism's strictest purity regulations, or even at the Mediterranean's patriarchal combination of honor and shame, patronage and clientage, but at civilization's eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations. It did not invite a political revolution but envisaged a social one at the imagination's most dangerous depths. No importance was given to distinctions of Gentile and Jew, female and male, slave and free, poor and rich. Those distinctions were hardly even attacked in theory; they were simply ignored in practice.

What would happen to Jesus was probably as predictable as what had happened already to John. Some form of religiopolitical execution could surely have been expected. What he was saying and doing was as unacceptable in the first as in the twentieth century, there, here, or anywhere.  And it is now impossible for us to imagine the offhand brutality, anonymity, and indifference with which a peasant nobody like Jesus would have been disposed of.

^Sermon

I got a call from a hungry man the other day; let’s call him Jerry.  He told me that I had helped him once before a year or so ago; I had a very vague memory of him, if any, and he reminded me that he had lived in Hingham for some years and attended First Parish in Norwell.  He said that the former minister there, Dick Fuchs, had on occasion helped him out.  That jogged my memory a little, enough at least to continue the conversation.  He said he’d been in and out of the hospital with cancer – he was calling from the hospital, he said, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to beat it.  He was homeless and would not be welcome back at the place he’d been staying with a friend since his latest hospitalization.  Of course, my antennae went up and I wondered if I was being played.

I’m a convenient mark, of course.  All ministers and all congregations are marks, and my colleagues have commented to each other on occasion that those of us in South Hingham are especially likely to be approached because we’re closer to Route 3.  The policy we have adopted and normally follow as members of our Hingham Hull Religious Leaders’ Association is to refer all petitioners to Vinnie Hart at Wellspring in Hull.  Vinnie is in a better position than any of us are to check out stories, make sure people aren’t pulling a scam using a number of agencies in the area, and making up their tales of woe.  If they are truly needy, Vinnie is in a good position to provide them help and he has been very generous in helping friends of mine who are really in need.  I therefore insisted that Jerry call Vinnie and make an appointment to see him before I would give him any help himself.

He called back and said he had called Wellspring but all they could offer was food from their food pantry; he said that would not be useful to him, because he couldn’t carry around a week’s supply of food; he didn’t have the strength because of the cancer.  I insisted he get in touch with Vinnie directly, and told him that Vinnie could address the range of problems he presented – need for medication, getting on disability and short-term financial assistance.  I left a message for Vinnie introducing Jerry and asking him to make sure to talk to Jerry and let me know if his story held up.  Jerry called back to say that he’d made an appointment with Vinnie for this coming Monday, but in the meantime needed a food card to be able to eat until then.

I was torn, because I felt as though there might be something fishy about his story, but I remembered what Jesus said in our reading this morning, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” [Matt. 25:35] and that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had said “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” [Matt. 5:42]  So I bought a gift card from one of the supermarkets and met him in downtown Hingham and handed it over.  He was younger than I expected, but he had the identification band from a hospital on his arm, and I decided that since he said he was hungry, I should do my best to make sure that he was fed.

You may well think I was a fool, but I decided that the risk of failing to respond to someone in genuine need was greater than the risk of being a patsy.  As John Dominic Crossan said in our other reading this morning, the brunt of Jesus’ message was that insofar as you have been healed, you must pass it on, and insofar as you have been blessed you should use what you have to bless others.

We can always invoke rationalizations for not helping others.  There is in the air of this country a doctrine that society is better served if each one takes responsibility for his or her needs, and that those who claim to be unable to do so are living unjustly at our expense.  There are those who believe that any taxation is theft, and some of them are about to join our national and state governments.  We can always rationalize to ourselves refusing to help.  We can say that those who claim to be in need of health insurance, for example, have no one to blame but themselves for smoking or becoming obese or being in need for other self-inflicted reasons.  We can claim that we have no obligation to them; we work to meet our own needs, and they should do the same.  We’ve worked hard for what we have, after all, and we deserve whatever we have.  I once wrote a satirical song along those lines: “I’ve got mine, and I’m going to keep it; you can have yours if you can get it from me.”  I won’t sing it for you, as you will be relieved to know, because my skill with the guitar has been lost with age.

There are unquestionably people who game the system and take advantage of others, but I find rationalizations like these a little harder to justify when I remember that some are widowed or orphans, some have become homeless through no fault of their own, some can’t find work in this economy, some lack insurance and can’t pay for the medical care they need for illnesses to which they in no way contributed, some have been victims of natural catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes, or changing climates among many others. 

We all participate in various ways to help to those in need; our Second Sunday offering today is going to the Interfaith Food Pantry here at Second Parish.  Many of us give to help Wellspring as will one of our Second Sunday offerings later in the year, as will the offering for the Thanksgiving Eve service at Old Ship.  Some here have helped to provide leadership there by serving on the Wellspring board of directors, and others have helped aspiring students by tutoring there.  We help to support our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee; we will be distributing the Guest at Your Table boxes next week to remind ourselves of the needs they help fill around the world in seeking justice for marginalized victims of humanitarian crises, support for the rights of exploited workers, interventions in support of civil liberties, and advocacy on behalf of those deprived of access to clean water.  Many of us help support our Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, which serves the marginalized in Boston, providing shelter for women and children subjected to domestic violence, offering tutoring and mentoring to inner city children, and helping to forge partnerships between suburban and inner city youth.

We offer help not just because it’s the right thing to do; we offer help, we meet those in need, because we have a great deal to learn from those who are living in far different circumstances than we are.  John Dear, priest and peace activist, describes how he discovered new wisdom from serving those living in poverty: 

In the desert of northeastern New Mexico, where I live and serve several poor parishes and missions, we are surrounded not only by poverty but also by stunning mountains and desert vistas as well as countless deer, buffalo, antelopes, horses, and elk. The people who have grown up in both poverty and beauty have an innate, deep spirituality that I cannot grasp. All they seem to do is work outdoors, help one another, and pray.

During my first week in Cimarron, a small desert town, I began a weekly study of the Gospel of Mark with the high school confirmation class. When we read in [Luke 13] that Jesus announced that "the reign of God is at hand,” I asked the young people, "What is the reign of God?"

These high school juniors and seniors looked at one another as if to say, "What's his problem? Doesn't he know what the reign of God is?"

Finally, one of them spoke up. “The reign of God is life.” He looked at the others and they all nodded in agreement. "The reign of God is all around us, here in Cimarron, in our day-to-day life.”

I nearly fell out of my chair. In a million years, I do not know if I would ever have thought of such a simple and profound answer. I would expect this kind of answer from the great Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh or the Trappist monk Thomas Merton but not from a teenager.

The reign of God is life. The reign of God is peace. The reign of God is love. The reign of God is our community of compassion and kindness. The reign of God is nonviolence. The reign of God is as close as our hand held up to our face. The reign of God is here.

I think Jesus would have liked that young person's answer. [i]

John Dear makes it clear that we are the ones who gain when we meet those who are marginalized, those who have learned to count their blessings even though they have little, those who are reviled because they have a different sexual orientation, those who are hungry or in prison.  Jesus didn’t just offer charity.  He offered healing, he touched even untouchables, lepers, the dead, sick people of all kinds, and those who were demon possessed; he share meals with those who were excluded by others – women, poor people, sinners, exploiters, rich people and meaning, even those who had until then believed they were superior to everyone else; and he gave hope, and meaning, and a message that the reign of God was at hand if only his listeners would open their ears and being to live into it, to bring it about by treating everyone – friends; neighbors from anywhere, especially those who were held in contempt; the sick, the halt the lame – as he himself treated them.  When we come to worship “in the spirit of Jesus” here at Second Parish, we commit ourselves to that vision as well.

We sometimes hear that religion teaches piety, good behavior, and inevitably a bit of self-righteousness.  The teachings of Jesus are not about that at all, but about meeting those who are in need of healing, of good, of comfort, of hope, of welcoming and acceptance regardless of how we feel about them – of listening to them, of learning from them.  When government budgets are cut in ways that especially harm those in need, those who are marginalized, it may satisfy those who believe that caring only for themselves is the best way to build a good society, but it certainly would not satisfy Jesus.

Nor was Jesus the first or the last to teach this message.  Moses in his teachings just before his death said, “Justice, justice shall you follow, that you may live, and inherit the land which the LORD your God is giving you.” [Deuteronomy 16:20 (Jewish Publication Society)]  The prophet Micah, centuries before the time of Jesus, said “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” [^NRS Micah 6:8] As Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently recalled, the prophet Amos said, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” [^NRS Amos 5:24]  And it is said that Mohammed, who taught centuries after Jesus, said:

What actions are most excellent?

To gladden the heart of a human being.

To feed the hungry — including those who hunger for justice and peace.

To help the afflicted — including those afflicted by the consequences of privilege, who would grow larger souls, braver hearts, more expansive imaginations.

To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful.

And what about Jerry?  I’m not sure I did the right thing for him or for myself. I suspect that even if he’s scamming me, he is still actually in need of help.  I would rather err on the side of generosity than to refuse to help someone in real need. That’s my understanding of what I have been taught by these prophets.

More than that, we can all ring the bell of Atri from the story we told the children.  We can all cry out when injustice is done to anyone anywhere.  We can all advocate for justice, justice, as we orient ourselves to the Reign of God.  May we be blessed as we give, as we love, as we care for and meet and learn from those who need us, and as we support justice for everyone.

Amen.

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