| Grace and Social Justice |
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| Written by Skip Jackson | |
| Sunday, 11 April 2010 | |
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A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — April 11, 2010 Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio Texts: Nehemiah 5:1-13; Isaiah 58:1-14 Some 80-90 years after Hebrew exiles were allowed to return from Babylon to Judah, the king of Persia decided it was time to rebuild the wall around the city of Jerusalem, so he sent Nehemiah to direct the project. When he arrived, Nehemiah found a great deal of discontent among the people. Nehemiah 5:1-13 describes the situation and what Nehemiah did about it.
1-2 A great protest was mounted by the people, including the wives, against their fellow Jews. Some said, "We have big families, and we need food just to survive." 4-5 And others said, "We're having to borrow money to pay the royal tax on our fields and vineyards. Look: We're the same flesh and blood as our brothers here; our children are just as good as theirs. Yet here we are having to sell our children off as slaves—some of our daughters have already been sold—and we can't do anything about it because our fields and vineyards are owned by somebody else."I wanted you to hear the Nehemiah story from Eugene Peterson’s The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language because it sounds so much like something we might read in today’s newspaper about longer and longer lines at food banks, about skyrocketing home foreclosures rates, or about payday lenders gouging desperate borrowers by charging 400% interest. Also because BREAD’s (Building Responsibility, Equality and Dignity) Nehemiah Action Meeting this coming May 3 takes its name from this very story. In BREAD, we work together with 50 other Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations on behalf of social justice here in Columbus—addressing problems not just through charity but by changing the system. The main way we do this if to use the power of numbers to bring public servants to the table and influence their decisions and actions by getting them to make public commitments at the Nehemiah Action Meeting. Sometime around 450 years B.C.E. the Hebrew people in Judea were working to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. Part of the population were Jews who had returned from exile in Babylon. Most of the returnees brought with them abundant resources to establish themselves in their ancient homeland plus the priests who were descended from the temple priests who had been taken into exile. The majority of the population, however, were people of the land, peasants left behind to produce crops for the Babylonian conquerors while being ruled by foreign overseers. The returnees used their resources to buy up land directly and to make loans at exorbitant terms so as to acquire yet more lands through foreclosure. When Nehemiah showed up to direct the rebuilding of the city walls the inequities had been building up for several decades, and the people complained to him, at least in part because he hadn’t taken sides yet with the wealthy and powerful. They called “a great protest” to raise their complaints: “We’re starving. Our lands have been taken from us. The royal tax is bankrupting us. We and our kids are becoming debt slaves to build these walls around the lavish houses of the rich.” Nehemiah heard their complaints and got angry. He called “a big meeting,” a “Nehemiah action meeting,” where he called the powers-that-be to account. The very people who had been freed from exile, who know the grace of a second Exodus to freedom, were themselves guilty of grave injustices. Nehemiah shamed them in public, and it worked. They could say nothing at all in response and agreed to all that he demanded of them, publicly declaring, “We’ll give it all back.” they said. “We won’t make any more demands on the people.” Some 20-30 years earlier among the returned Hebrews, a prophet we now know as Third Isaiah had spoken out against the same kinds of injustice and oppression, making the same connection between the experience of grace and the importance of social justice. We don’t know the exact situation addressed in Isaiah 58, except that the rich folk in Jerusalem saw themselves as law-abiding, religious people who observed all the proper religious rituals, even going beyond what was required by fasting to humble themselves. They expected this to put them on God’s good side, but the prophet says otherwise. For them, religion is a matter of self-interest. He begins by crying out—this is God speaking through the prophet—to get everyone’s attention. This is Third Isaiah’s very own “Nehemiah Action Meeting.” (Note how the work of justice needs to be persistent and ongoing. Those in power never seem to tire of trying to fashion or use the system to benefit only themselves… like the payday lenders here in Ohio who found loopholes in the law to allow them to keep charging more than 400% interest to desperate people.) Here’s what Isaiah had to say. Isaiah 58:1-14 (from Eugene Peterson’s The Message)Law-abiding doesn’t necessarily translate into justice for everyone. Laws themselves can be unjust or contain well-crafted loopholes. (Todays “Dilbert” comic has the pointy-haired boss saying, “We’re using the law to keep justice away!!”) And just because people are “busy, busy, busy at worship” and study all about God does not mean they are “a nation of right-living people.” Religion needs to make a real difference in how people live their lives. These people in Jerusalem were fasting for show, with gaunt faces and somber dress, even as they took unfair advantage of people and fought with each other. Their fasting even showed off how wealthy and well-off they were, for only the rich can ostentatiously give up far more than any poor person can possibly possess. But God wants something much more than proper religious ritual. Proper religious observance must include social justice, says Third Isaiah—“breaking the chains of injustice, freeing the oppressed, canceling debts”—as well as meeting the needs of the poor—sharing food, shelter, clothing, and solidarity with those in need. Peterson takes ancient Hebrew idioms like “removing the yoke… and the pointing of the finger” and casts them in contemporary language: “…get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims.” These are the kinds of activities that lead to peace, to shalom. Remember that in Hebrew shalom encompasses wholeness, wellness, harmony, welfare, and peace. Shalom is God’s gift of wholeness-in-community for all, a social reality that embodies grace and radical equality, where everyone has enough, where forgiveness abounds, and where all are fully included in the common life. Isaiah’s images for God’s shalom include knowing where God wants you to go, living a full life even in the emptiest of places, being like a well-watered garden, taking the broken pieces of the past and using them to build a future full of promise and hope. Then, says Isaiah, “You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.” This could well describe the mission of BREAD, as people of differing faiths come together pursue positive changes here in Columbus. “You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.” In closing, Isaiah returns to the issue of worship. His denunciation of the people’s fasting is not mean he opposes all worship—just worship that is selfish and self-centered. Observe the Sabbath, he says, but only as a day of joyous celebration. No “business as usual.” No money grubbing. No looking out for number one. The Sabbath is God’s Holy Day of celebration precisely because it is a perfect example of grace shared equally with all as a matter of social justice. We might well miss this connection between Sabbath and social justice, because we usually associate the Sabbath with God resting on the seventh day of creation. But by the time of the Babylonian exile, the Sabbath was rooted primarily in the social structures of the community as a reenactment of the Exodus delivering the people from slavery. In Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath commandment extends to every last person in the community. Why? Here’s what it says: Work six days, doing everything you have to do, but the seventh day is a Sabbath, a Rest Day—no work: not you, your son, your daughter, your servant, your maid, your ox, your donkey (or any of your animals), and not even the foreigner visiting your town. That way your servants and maids will get the same rest as you. Don't ever forget that you were slaves in Egypt and God, your God, got you out of there in a powerful show of strength. That's why God, your God, commands you to observe the day of Sabbath rest. (The Message)The Sabbath is grace in action, equal treatment for all, no matter who they might be. For the prophet Amos, the Sabbath protected the poor and needy from the greed of the wealthy, for it was the only time those in power couldn’t cheat the poor in the marketplace since it was closed. And Third Isaiah made Sabbath-keeping the sole mark for including people in the covenant community. Whole classes of people were being left out, but Third Isaiah insisted that even eunuchs and foreigners were to be included if they observed the Sabbath (Isaiah 56:5-7). To sum it all up… Worship is incomplete without concern for people’s basic needs. And even charity—sharing food, clothing, shelter—is not enough without social justice. For justice is also a basic need. Social Justice is grace in action in the world for the entire community. The prophet Micah said, “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.” BREAD’s Nehemiah Action Meeting is one way we take our God-walk out into the community in pursuit of social justice. Amen. |
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