Jeremiah, Chapter 34:8-11 (NIV) The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim freedom for the slaves. Everyone was to free their Hebrew slaves, both male and female; no one was to hold a fellow Hebrew in bondage. So all the officials and people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves and no longer hold them in bondage. They agreed, and set them free. But afterward they changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again.
This is part 2 of a series based on a recent podcast featuring Bishop Kenneth Carder and Texas Sample. In part 1, the two legends of United Methodism discussed growing up in times of great injustice. In this snippet from the conversation, the two men continue their discussion.
How would you define justice from a biblical and theological standpoint?
Tex Sample
I want to go to the biblical text first. And you know, in the Old Testament, Zedakah, works for justice and righteousness.
I remember sitting at a church once where I was a pastor and a guy said to me, “You know, we don't like to hear you talk about this justice stuff. So that sermon last week…you need to reconsider those sermons.”
It blew my mind. I knew enough by then to know that that was a crazy notion if you look at it biblically. And I think my answer to him…I tried to be gentle, but I said: “That's too bad.”
And then I told him how central it was in biblical text. I think when you look at that, justice would always, at least in great part, be defined by Jesus's teaching about the kingdom of God. But a lot of people ignore what Paul did with that. You know, Paul appreciated the notions of value and of good things in the world around him. He talked about what is noble in the sight of all.
Paul, in the earliest of his writings and the very latest, talks about the good of all over. I've spent a lot of time in community organizing; I think I've been involved in it 30-something years. I think the common good is a very important notion for those of us working for Christian justice. It's not something we know ahead of time. Either it's something you do down on the ground by listening with people, talking with people, and finding out what the real issues and the real concerns are, so that it has to be built from the ground up. The problem we've got in our society is we have a lot of “astroturf organizing.” That's where a group of elites, intellectuals, academics, etc. devise a plan for what needs to be done, and then they come down and try to get people on the grassroots involved and engaged. I think there is a place for national organizing, but one needs to be very careful about astroturf organizing. One of the reasons I'm so committed to community organizing is that it happens on the ground. Let me stop it there.
But the common good, biblically informed, the kingdom of God - central to the biblical language in the Hebrew text and the New Testament - all of those things are desperately important.
Kenneth Carder
Now, as I understand it, justice is the alignment of the world with God's vision for it. It's the alignment of our practices, our policies, our relationships, and our institutions with God's vision for the world, which Jesus does talk about in terms of the kingdom of God. Paul talks about the new creation.
So justice, as I understand the biblical notion, is God's vision for the world. It involves enabling the least and most vulnerable to flourish as beloved children of God. It is welcoming all to God's table of abundance. It is living in God's economy, and God's economy is the equitable distribution of all resources that are necessary for abundant full life, and that's for humans and for the whole of creation. Therefore, whether a policy or a practice is just, from how I understand the prophets particularly and Jesus and Paul, is what is the impact on the least and most vulnerable so that justice doesn't, as the text was saying, it doesn't come down from the top; it bubbles up from the bottom. It's not a trickle-down. Justice doesn't trickle down. It bubbles up. It bubbles up from the least and most vulnerable in local, specific contexts. It's more than rights, Tex, and you have written some wonderful pieces about Christian justice and the common good. You talk about justice. It’s more than just rights, even though we believe in rights. Still, it's more than rights. It's more than the blindfolded woman weighing the scales. God's justice is never retributive. God's justice is always restorative.
And therefore, what is restoring relationships? I often contend that justice really involves living God's dream for the world. And therefore, we need to be clear as to what God's dream is. And many of you have heard me mention some of these, but God's dream for the world is that everybody knows their identity as beloved children of God with infinite worth and dignity. That's a gift. God's dream for the world is that there be no barriers among human beings.
To be continued in the next issue of UM Insight.
