[insert rants about drug companies abusing the law for their own greed here]
If this gets you mad and makes you want to get to involved in making health care available to all, than you are probably well planted on the justice pathway.
This Sunday, two days before we celebrate independence from Britain, we are celebrating this justice pathway. Those who are called and committed to the justice pathway are easy to pick out in a church. They are the ones who are always asking the questions about why we are wasting our time and money with this or that in the church when there is that or this need in the world. Often, Christians on the justice pathway are not in church for this very reason, which is a tragedy because those who aren’t plugged into a community are likely to become bitter and burnt out. But how can we better understand the justice pathway, to listen to whether the Holy Spirit is calling us down this road.
This weekend, we are celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of this nation. And, despite all the lawyer jokes and whatnot, and any disparaging comments that I may make toward certain ones who work for [a certain pharmo co], – it is worth remembering that the majority of our founding fathers were lawyers or at least trained in law. And so, it is no surprise that this nation was founded on law from the very beginning. The Declaration of Independence itself reads as a legal brief. The constitution is nothing more or less than guidelines on how law in this country will work, namely how to keep balance between those who make the laws, those that interpret the laws and those that execute the laws separate. The Bill of Rights is a simple declaration saying these freedoms will be granted to our citizens by rule of law.
And so when the words justice and freedom are used in relation to people who are in this country, it is a justice that is promised by law and it is freedom secured by law. This is a good thing, because it is because of this foundation in law that this country has flourished. In addition to the ridiculous amount of natural resources that we have, it is the respect for our laws that separates us from struggling two-thirds world. As citizens in a free country, it is our responsibility to ensure that the rule of law trumps even our own personal preferences. That is, we need to defend another person’s freedom to do something that we would rather they not do. Even if it allows others to disrespect our beliefs, even if blind people remain blind because of them, even if we ourselves suffer unjustly under them as we read in Romans 12 and 13. We endure this because, without respect for the law, even for the bad laws, the whole system would collapse.
But when the words justice and freedom are used to describe the conditions of the Kingdom of God, law is not the guide. In the Kingdom of God, compassion trumps the law. Love trumps the law. Jesus knew the law. Jesus knew that according to the Levitical Law, being touched by an unclean woman or touching a corpse, would make him unclean and therefore, unfit for teaching. That these acts should be avoided at all costs by religious and holy man. But Jesus allowed the Hemorrhaging Woman to touch him and he picked up the corpse of a little girl before bringing her to life. Christ showed us that in the Kingdom of God, healing trumps the law.
It is true that, Jesus did not come to overthrow the law, but to fulfill it. Jesus worshiped in the synagogue, preached the Hebrew Scriptures, was circumcised according to the law, and did all the other rites of worship that the Hebrews did. But Jesus put the law in its proper perspective. The Sabbath serves man, the man does not serve the Sabbath is how he put it. In the Kingdom of God, the law is established so that all may receive justice. To receive justice by living in a Kingdom where nobody lacks because those that have bread share it with those that do not. A Kingdom where death and dying and mourning are no more and where war is no more because the commandments of Jesus toward reconciliation where followed. Where animosity fades away because everyone comes to trust in the wisdom of loving your enemies, even your deepest enemy that seeks to destroy you. But, living in Christ trumps living according to the letter of the law.
In the Kingdom of God, the law is established so that all may live in freedom. That we all might live in the freedom of true security that only comes from following the commandments laid down before us. But the law is the means, not the end. Compassion trumps all. Love trumps all. Justice trumps law.
When we finally allow compassion to be the primary flow of our thoughts and actions, we will be moved to doing our part to recognize the Kingdom of God on earth by seeking justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with your God.
Like all of the pathways, we are all called to partake in the justice pathway to some degree, but those shaped directly for the justice pathway serve the specific and important role of calling the church back to relevancy in the world. There’s a song that we sing around here that begins, there is peace and contentment in my Father’s house. But, then goes on to remind us that the fields need some tending. It is the burden of the woman or man on the justice pathway to shake us out of that and remind us to go work in the fields.
Within these two stories of healing that we read this morning, we see where the tension between appropriate liturgical law and life giving ministry gives. Namely, for Jesus, compassion always wins.
Jesus is passing through the crowds and he feels the touch of a woman who needed healing. She was hemorrhaging, and therefore unclean. She had plan to go unnoticed but he stops to seek her out. He seeks her out, not to rebuke her, as we may suppose, but to seek relationship with her. She reveals herself and the next thing Jesus says is ‘daughter.’ Not- hey woman, or any of the other words that we use to refer to outcasts when we are not in polite company. Jesus says daughter. Jesus is telling the crowd, and his disciples, and us if we are listening that this woman is a part of the family of God, regardless of what society may have told her. For 12 years, 12 long, horrible years, everyone had told her that she was permanently unclean. In the eyes of the men that added to God’s law, all women were unclean for at least part of the month, but for this woman, she bled for 12 years, so in a sense, she was less than human for 12 years, in their eyes. Being reminded constantly, she must have believed it in some sense. But Christ showed her that she had sacred worth because she was a daughter of God, not because of what the law said about her. Justice trumped law.
“Daughter,” Jesus says, “your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.” If we are going to take seriously the idea that we are the Body of Christ - that we are the hands of Jesus - then we need to follow His example. We need to seek out the poor, the marginalized, the outcasts, the unclean, the ignored, the embarrassing. We need to offer healing. We need to help awaken the desperate to the beautiful reality that the Kingdom of God actually is around us. We need to welcome them into the family. Son, daughter of Christ, you are our brother, sister. We need to affirm one another’s faith. We need to send one another off in peace.
At the base of it, this is what the spiritual path of justice is pointing us toward. You don’t have to look hard or far for injustice in this world. From oppressive regimes, to the neighbor being bullied by her husband. From sexist religions to a nation that has so much abundance and yet cannot manage to feed and give adequate health care to all of its children. From a society that only allows desirables in to a church that does not allow today’s unclean to participate fully in the community – at least not without imperfect judgments of their walk with God. From here to anywhere, you will encounter injustice.
In the Kingdom of Man, here in America, we depend upon our laws to protect us from one another, but in the Kingdom of God, the law melts away to irrelevancy because compassion wins out. We might be tempted to think that this is impossible pie in the sky sentimentality, but if we truly believe what we proclaim, that our Lord is able to heal the sick and raise the dead as we do proclaim this morning, than what is a little justice among humanity. If gone can create everything out of nothing, surely God can handle the full redemption of earth.
Once we begin to recognize the Kingdom around us, we can see how we can bear witness to that same Kingdom by loving even when it is ridiculous to love. We can have faith that our witness of love will be contagious. At twelve years of age, Jarius’ daughter in this morning’s Good News would have been considered to be at a marriageable age. She would have been able to bear children. Likewise, for the woman who was healed. We are not given her age, but she could have conceivably been in her early twenties. At any rate, they both have a life giving capacity that they didn’t have before encountering Jesus. From their life comes more life.
When the temptation comes to us to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of injustice in the world, we can depend upon this maxim that life brings life. If we simply offer help to one than they can offer help to another and so on until our simple act has awesome consequences. It is in these concrete actions of love, not in our recitations of the law, that transformation happens. To be a Christian is not to be one who believes this or that about Christ, but one who is willing to sacrifice in order for God’s Kingdom to come and God’s will be done. In 1 John 3:17-18, we read, "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a person in need and yet refuses to help? Children, let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action".
Listen to this observation that John Wesley made commenting on the last line of our text, “He commanded something should be given her to eat” He did this – “So that when either natural or spiritual life is restored, even by immediate miracle, all proper means are to be used in order to preserve it.” We are called to be the bearers of “all proper means”.
This fourth of July as we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, lets celebrate our interdependence in the Kingdom of God. Let us seek out injustice, and then extend ourselves to heal them, so that we might be for the world the Body of Christ redeemed by His blood.
[insert spirit led 'by all means' exhortations here]
Amen?
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