Musing on Justice

I have been preparing for tomorrow's Children's Moment at the same time I have been doing some curriculum research and reading on deconstructing racism for an adult education class next February. The text for the Children's Moment is Micah 6: 6-8: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."

This is a familiar passage and lots of sermons and homilies have been preached upon it. But this time around, I am having a hard time with how 21st century Americans understand justice with the way the Scriptures understand justice - and I am particularly struggling around how we convey the difference to our children.

Americans have a mental picture of justice - the blind-folded woman holding the balanced scales. We are given to understand that justice stands above us- impartial - adding to or subtracting from each side until the scales balance. And once equilibrium is reached, the problem is solved. And we feel better.

But this NOT how the Scriptures tell us God views justice. God's justice is most definitely NOT blind: God sees the plight of the widow, the despair of the poor and the hungry, the pain of the exile and the homeless. The very first thing God's justice requires of us is that we take the blindfold off and see the dynamics of human relations for what they are; disordered, destructive and well beyond the power of fairness to fix. And once we have seen human relations for what they are, we are called not only to mitigate the damage already done; we are called to engage the powers and principalities so that we change the dynamics toward those of the Kingdom of God.

As I read through anti-racism materials, this is far easier said than done - and in all honesty, we prefer it that way. It is hard to admit that well-intentioned though we are, we are part and parcel of the unjust systems that allow some to prosper and others to barley subsist. Doing God's justice, we must LOOK at ourselves and the society of which we are a part and then having SEEN, we must CHANGE ourselves and the society in which we live. The task is daunting.

We aren't the only ones who fail to understand what God is asking of us. God's people from the very beginning fell into the trap of thinking "justice" means "just us." Cautioned by God to remember that they too had been slaves, the prophets over and over reminded the people of Israel that fairness wasn't the standard. The people were to remember the pain of what it felt to be slaves in Egypt, hungry in the desert, exiles in Babylon and not perpetrate the same upon anyone else. God's people were called then - as they are now - to change the way they lived so that there would be a place for everyone, plenty for all and so that each and every human being would be able to live out being made in the image and likeness of God.

This is pretty heavy duty stuff - and it will take us a long time to wrestle with it as adults dealing with racism in adult education. I have time and wise counsel to help me plan for that. The real question is how I am going to manage to convey this to our children in five minutes or less tomorrow morning. Come to Church tomorrow and see how it turns out.

Faithfully,
Elizabeth