justice

by Rev. Mark J.T. Caggiano, January 14, 2010

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-21

For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. It makes you wonder what is going on here. Reading from the law in modern society would often bring one to tears, but for any entirely different reason.

The Book of Nehemiah chronicles the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was a Persian official. He was also a Jew. He became aware of the terrible state of the city of Jerusalem, which had been laid low through earlier conquest by the Babylonians. The Persian monarch noticed the dejected state of Nehemiah and learned that it was because of his former homeland. He allowed Nehemiah to become governor of Judea and to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

The tears of the people should be understood in this moment. The Second Temple had mostly been rebuilt and now the walls are being restored. One portion of the passage not read today was a lengthy and detailed genealogy of dispersed families who had been gathered for registration by Nehemiah. The families were now being brought back together. The city was rising from the ashes. And the law, the symbol of God even in exile, was being read and explained to people gathered after much destruction and dislocation.

Nehemiah and Ezra said do not mourn and weep for this is a happy occasion, a time of renewal and growth, of rebuilding and restoration. It is a time of healing. A time of healing.

Still, we do not think of the law in this way in this time. Where is this sense of deliverance, the feeling of hope or even a semblance of pride? The law does not serve in that role in modern America. Where do we look for renewal and restoration? When are we given a sense of justice?

But of course, the law is supposed to be the bedrock principle of justice. We are awash with laws and regulations. We are up to our necks in lawsuits and lawyer suits. One would think America of all places would be the most just place on Earth. Yet, strangely, it does not always seem that way.

What is justice? The dictionary defines it as the quality of being just, impartial or fair. It derives from the Latin root, ius, meaning law. Interestingly, “just” can mean either reasonable or proper, which are not necessarily the same qualities. Laws applied without a sense of the larger picture can wreak havoc in a society, such as when corporations gain a citizen’s right to freedom of speech as we saw this past week. The law can take on a rigid quality that in application creates unusual or seemingly unfair results. Or, there are times when there is no law. There is no law requiring aid to places like earthquake-shaken Haiti or tsunami-soaked Indonesia or even flooded New Orleans. There may not be a law, but it seems like the right and just thing to do.

Lawsuits are inherently about failed relationships. Lawsuits are therefore often about not killing each other. I do not mean this in jest. Disputes among neighbors throughout history often flared up into open warfare. Society exists as a means by which these warlike tendencies can be inhibited. Laws are created to reflect expectations and are most generally propounded to enshrine what we are not supposed to do.

In the Book of Genesis, the sons of Jacob became upset when their sister Dinah was raped, or in some accounts seduced, by a man from a neighboring village, Shechem. The angry siblings pretended that matters could be made right if the men of Shechem were circumcised and therefore would become part of the people of Abraham. Dinah, the victim, agreed to be married to the man. While these villagers were recovering from this surgical ordeal, the sons of Jacob attacked, slaughtering the men and enslaving the women and children.

Jacob, the family patriarch, was bereft by this violence. “Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land … my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.’ But they said, ‘Should our sister be treated like a harlot?’”

Jacob’s lament is not that ennobling because it suggests he would have been more accepting of the carnage if he had more men at his side. Yet it is better than what happened. Rape is of course a heinous crime. But in this instance, a whole village was put to the sword and its survivors enslaved for the actions of one man and the wounded sense of honor of two brothers. As punishments go, it went well beyond the scope of the crime.

The Old Testament frequently runs red with the blood of warring tribes and factions. This is why it was the preferred source of scripture in the wild Germanic tribes of Northern Europe. The New Testament was too pacifistic, too unrealistic. Vikings balanced the scales of justice on the tip of a sword.

But what about now? How do we interpret these tales of warfare and destruction? Do we see our modern sense of justice in these tales of revenge? There does not seem to be anything just about the actions of Simeon and Levi. There does not seem to be anything just arising from their spirit of anger. In many ways, justice is the means by which violence is prevented in a society. If we live in a just nation, people may get angry but preferably do not take out their rage upon the wider public. I am not sure if this means we should be happy because of the law, but at the very least we should not be as quick to lash out as we see in the Book of Genesis.

Anger is a dangerous emotion. In the form of wrath, it is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, to which the Seven Virtues serve as a moral counterweight. But anger is corrosive. And, it can be subtle. It can secret itself away into the corners of our civilized minds waiting to spring out. If you pay attention, you can hear it even in the most unlikely places.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. This is an ecumenical Christian organization and we were meeting in plenary session to discuss a new strategic plan. In a strange coincidence, one member of the clergy gave a presentation on social justice. This is often either a soft, feel good discussion or a fiery call to action, wrapped up in a bow of guilt. In this instance, it was the latter. The clergyman was an Armenian bishop and he was reminding us of the plight of his people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Rightfully, the man was upset about the tragic history of his people and the hidden genocide of the last century. Rightfully, he discussed the terrible persecution faced by Christians in China, the Middle East and elsewhere. In the course of his remarks, however, he illuminated for me one of the major obstacles for justice in the modern world. And he reminded me that our response to injustice can unknowingly and profoundly damage us.

This bishop asked us to consider the remarkable drop in the number of Christians in the Holy Land, worrying that the churches would eventually turn into museums. He sought to bolster the role of Christians in the peace process. He wanted the Israelis and Palestinians to allow Christians a place at the table as observers or even advisors. These do not seem to be outlandish requests. And then, he mentioned in passing that he wanted us to consider the dwindling community of Christians in Constantinople.

Constantinople. Most of us are aware that the city of Constantinople was renamed Istanbul. It has gone by this name since the middle of the 15th century. To place this into historical context, it is believe that the fall of the city of Constantinople impoverished many Italian merchants who were unable to ship wool and other items east. This inspired European explorers to look west, including one very young Christopher Columbus. This was a long time ago.

Now, I cannot on any level imagine the pain and suffering of the Armenian people. Their history has been ignored and diminished for most of a century. Their grief and their grievances are real. But again, as to the name Constantinople, five hundred years is a very long time.

The tragedies of history burn brightly in the minds of many cultures. Wars of occupation and imperial conquest have left physical and emotional wreckage across every continent. Think of Rwanda, the Belgian Congo, Israel, Northern Ireland, Korea, and the entirety of South America. We live in a modern world pieced together from shattered empires. The surviving states often live in a twilight culture in which the shadowy presence of the former overlord looms darkly over their horizons. How do you heal such enduring scars? How can you take back such brutality? How do you get beyond genocide?

You can’t. You cannot undo the past. You can only move forward. Or, at least that is what you should try to do. Not everyone can do it. And it is not even reasonable to expect people who have lived through such things to let go of the memories or the pain. But there is yet another injustice to these horrible situations. This ongoing resentment and constant re-visitation of past, and even ancient, violence prevent the victims from ever being free.

Those who have suffered keep on suffering. Victims of torture who are released from their confinement carry it with them. Victims of racism and oppression become shackled to their experiences even when the overt aspects of the restrictions have been removed. They cannot be completely free until they are able to unlock these mental prisons. They cannot experience the true meaning of a free life until they can somehow move on.

And, it gets much, much worse. I can say with some feeling of certainty that I will never say a more outrageous thing from this pulpit, but here it goes: the victims of violence and abuse, of oppression and racism, will never truly have justice in their lives until they can forgive.

I know. Ridiculous nonsense. Utterly foolish, post-modern psychobabble mumbo jumbo. Where on Earth would I come up with such gibberish? It came down from the cross: "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." From the cross, Jesus forgave those who were in the process of killing him. It is unbelievable.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We are not perfect people. We are filled with weakness and flaws and, yes, sin. We look to the example of Jesus forgiving his enemies and come away shaking our heads. I do not know that I could have done that. I imagine myself in the role of Peter cutting the ear off a soldier rather than in the role of Jesus healing that same man. Why in the world would Jesus ask us to do this? We live in a crazy world filled with lunatics and terrorists, rapists and every shade of evil. This makes no sense.

Or so we think. Jesus lived in the Roman Empire, a dictatorship that swallowed up or annihilated everyone that stood in its way. The City of Carthage was destroyed brick by brick and its whole population killed or enslaved. Within a generation of Jesus’ death, the walls rebuilt by Nehemiah were torn down and Jerusalem itself was again put to the torch. We recoil in horror from genocide because of its relative rarity in the modern world. In the Roman Empire, it was frequently standard operating procedure. Jesus was remarkable because he stood for peace when he was surrounded by violence. Our world is no more routinely savage than that and our nation is certainly an island of peace amongst that relative civilization.

As always, Jesus was much wiser than us. In his brutal world, oppression inspired fear which fermented into hate. Christianity survived even as a religion of pacifists. It survived and overwhelmed the more violent society around it. Its success may have led to its own problems, but the seemingly ridiculous advice of Jesus on the cross has some historically interesting precedents.

Jesus recognized the power of anger because he lived amidst it. Anger changes us. Hatred burns away like a fire in our souls and will erupt when given a chance. Yet, anger and hatred are not always discriminating. They often lash out at those nearby. They distort whole cultures. They warp whole families. They are the ultimate destroyers.

The French writer and philosopher Simon Weil suggested that there is a limited amount of evil in the world. We unfortunately keep passing it around to each other. We need to recognize this tendency and disrupt its hidden power over us. How do we make the world right again and stop this cycle of anger and hate? We do what we consider almost impossible and try to forgive.

I recently saw the movie Invictus. I give nothing away in the movie if I point out the remarkably forgiving nature of Nelson Mandela. He was locked away in a jail cell in which he could barely lie down. He spent thirty years breaking rocks by hand for speaking up for racial justice. He was released and quickly rose to become the president of a new South Africa. He had every reason to be angry and bitter. And, unlike most people, he achieved the power to make his enemies crawl. Yet, he did not do it. He sought reconciliation. He sought to forgive what seemed unforgivable.

And, so did Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Their efforts were so outlandish that they made history. But they were not complacent. They were not doormats under the boots of oppression, but beacons of hope dispelling the shadows of despair. They were fighting the injustice, not the people. They raised their voices in protest and in song and in prayer, but they did not raise their hands in violence. They forgave even as they tried never to forget.

I know it sounds crazy. Our world seems so out of control and here I am suggesting that we can forgive such trespasses. Yet we seek forgiveness each and every Sunday, calling to the heavens with our prayers with the suggestion that we will forgive. This is the hardest moment if we want to follow as a disciple of Jesus. Or, Gandhi or Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama. This recognition of the power of forgiveness forces us to understand the words that freely roll off our tongues in the Lord’s Prayer and then carry these simple words forward in the actions our lives.

And forgiveness is not just for international relations or racial harmony. We need to forgive those who trespass against us and, perhaps even harder, those who have done so in our personal lives. Nursing old grudges heals no one. Your brother or sister, father or mother, husband or wife, son or daughter, best friend or workmate may have done you wrong. At some point, maybe not right away and maybe not in the near future, you should seek to forgive them. Some people warm themselves on the heat of their anger, but that fire consumes more than they might care to know. It is terribly hard to forgive, but the consequences of anger are more terrible.

I will restate my preposterous thesis: there can be no justice without forgiveness. Until we can learn to forgive, Simeon and Levi may rise up with murderous swords under a flag of truce. Until we learn to forgive, Constantinople will remain a battle cry instead of a historical footnote. Until we learn to forgive, we will remain trapped in prisons of our own making, with bars of anger and hatred. And, unlike Nelson Mandela’s jail cell, this prison has lots of room. It can surround the entire world if we allow it.

We must be stronger than this. We must have the courage of Nelson Mandela. We must have the determination of Gandhi. We must have the wisdom of Martin Luther King. And, most of all, we must try beyond all reason and all human limit to walk in the pathway of Jesus. Forgiveness may not be a virtue, but it will truly be our salvation.

Our closing hymn this morning is the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was the battle cry of the Union during the American Civil War. This war ended in 1865, but the inability to forgive led to ongoing bloodshed such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The inability to forgive also led to another century of tension and the institutionalization of slavery even as it was technically abolished. It impoverished generations of freed slaves and their former masters alike. An effort to redress this injustice resumed about forty years ago, costing the life of its most famous proponent.

Forgiveness is extremely hard to come by under such circumstances. But our national history reflects the long term costs of refusing to reconcile even after such tragedies. We do ourselves no great service by proclaiming our weakness. Hopefully we can find the strength shown by Jesus of Nazareth. Hopefully we can learn to forgive as easily as we promise to forgive. This is the only pathway to reconciliation. This is the only road to justice.

So ends the sermon.