Sermon 1/14/2001

Sunday, January 14, 2001
Rev. James A. Todhunter

"Celebrating Justice"
Isaiah 62:1-5
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Jesus said "I have come that you might have life and have it in abundance." The Christian life begins and ends in joy. We are enveloped, infused, and transformed by a joy that is our response in gratitude for what God has done and for what God is doing to bring life. This said, what are Christians to do when we look at the world and find injustice?

The biblical text that speaks to us about injustice this morning is from the 62^nd Chapter of Isaiah. It is God’s word of hope to a band of beaten down and battered exiles far from home; strangers in the strange land of Babylon, mocked and derided by their captors. Yet it speaks of the liberation and restoration of Jerusalem. I find in this passage three important aspects of a biblical response to injustice. They are: indignation, vindication, and celebration. God’s voice is powerful here:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.

The Christian pursuit of justice always begins with indignation. Why? Because God is indignant. Indignation is a response to when you or someone else isn’t being treated as a human being. Think for a moment about an injustice that makes you feel indignant. Speaking for myself, I am indignant when somebody cuts in line ahead of me, or when a telemarketer interrupts our supper with a phone call. I am indignant about what happened with the elections in Florida, and how officials from that state presented themselves before the U. S. Civil Rights Commission last week. I am indignant about the nominations of Linda Chavez and Gale Norton and John Ashcroft for cabinet positions in the new government – and these from a candidate who pledged to unite us, not divide us. We have been told that Mr. Ashcroft is a nice, polite man. Well, they say that about Senator Jesse Helms. And by the way I am indignant about him, too – about how Sen. Helms now says he wants to abolish US-AID. I am indignant about the way Mr. Ashcroft connects his ultra conservative Christian faith and his politics – on issues like a woman’s right to an abortion, the rights of gays and lesbians, the death penalty and race. I am indignant about how so many people assume he speaks for the Christian Church. He doesn’t. Not for me, not for the United Church of Christ. Not for lots of people. That needs to be said clearly. Other things make me indignant. Spending billions of dollars for an unworkable missile defense program makes me indignant. It makes me indignant that another homeless person froze to death last week in a parking garage in the District of Columbia, when millions of dollars intended to help was never used.

I believe that indignation is a healthy and spiritual response to injustice. But one can’t stop there, simply mired in anger. Indignation leads to a yearning for vindication. Vindication is an attitude that leads one to say "The truth must be revealed. Things need to be made right and made whole. And something must be done about it." God through the Prophet Isaiah equates vindication with salvation. "…vindication shines out like the dawn,…salvation like a burning torch." Indignation fused with a passion for vindication makes for courage. I hope you have had a chance to see some of the Ken Burns’ JAZZ series on PBS. On one program a story is told of the blues singer Bessie Smith performing for black folks under a tent out in the countryside somewhere in the twenties. Somebody looked out and saw a group of hooded klansmen coming toward them. Fear began to sweep through the group. Whereupon Bessie Smith stopped singing, walked out of the tent, and boldly strode up to the klansmen – chewing them out, cursing them at the top of her voice, and threatening to have all the occupants of that tent descend upon them in a fury. The klansmen stopped in their tracks and turned on their tails and fled. Indignation powered a righteous wrath. And what happened was a vindication. The truth was revealed. Bessie Smith was brave. The klansmen were cowards. The story of what happened is illuminating – it shines like a light on the truth.

People who have trouble feeling indignation and demanding vindication are people who are not convinced of their own self-worth and the worth of others. Now let me say here that there are lots of people out there who are angry, and whose anger must be heard and understood. We are told, for example, that straight white males are angry. How do we to understand such anger? Well that’s why we have a Bible and we must read it well. That is why we have a Christian community, to help us listen and learn. That’s why reading and listening to people like Bishop John Shelby Spong is so important. We must discern that not every angry person is the victim of injustice – at least not directly. Justice is about inclusion, not exclusion. Justice is not about my anger and fear about what might be taken away from me. It is about my right to be seen as a human being, created in the image of God. Justice is about welcoming everyone in. Justice is not about my fear of getting bumped from my place of privilege at the table; justice is about my scooting over to make more room for another - or even enlarging the table. There are many angry groups in our society who are angry because of fear of what they might lose, not indignation at true injustice. In the all-white suburb of my youth the pervasive fear was that the blacks were trying to "take over." And I remember asking myself, "If someone doesn’t have hardly anything, including power, how are they going to take over?"

Indignation demands vindication. And vindication inspires celebration. Vindication is not vengeance. It is enlightenment and forgiveness. Vindication is illumination and inclusion. And that calls for celebration. I mentioned the series on Jazz. It is a wonderful study of the relationship between black people and white people. It is commonplace to say that jazz, which developed out of blues and gospel, was invented by black people, because it is so intimately connected with their suffering and exclusion. Therefore jazz is black music. But it wasn’t nearly that simple. Jazz grew out of the suffering and exclusion of black folk, yes. But how come jazz radiates such life? Louis Armstrong’s trumpet playing is described as having a quality of light in its tone and power. What appealed to whites in jazz music was not just its beauty, but its freedom, its wholeness, its integration of spirit and body. For whites themselves lived with the bitter consequences of segregation – they lived split off from their bodies, from their primal feelings.

While social integration between blacks and whites began much later (and is today is still not fully achieved), whites listening to jazz and learning to play jazz, experienced a greater sense of being alive. What the talking heads and the quotes on the program say repeatedly is that black folks did not invent jazz. Instead they discovered it. They embodied it. They expressed it. They gave birth to it. And, instead of black folk wanting to keep it and control it, they wanted to share it – with the whole world, including whites in America and in Europe. (Yes, I know there is the whole matter of black composers and performers being deprived of royalties and copywrites, and that continued even into the days of rock and roll). The fact is that white people could never have created jazz. But jazz was not the exclusive possession of one group – it was an invitation, a welcoming, and an inclusion. Black and white musicians yearned to play together, but white society would not permit it. And eventually it took the courage of people like Benny Goodman (a Jew who grew up in incredible poverty) to create interracial jazz bands. CCC’s own dear departed Bill Gordon repeatedly reminded us that Gospel is not black music. Gospel is music for everyone that is a gift born of the black experience.

The ultimate goal of justice is celebration – the celebration of life and the share in life that everyone is entitled to. Life is a gift of God to God’s beloved creatures. Amazingly, Isaiah captures this spirit at the close of the scripture when God says that this joy of vindication and inclusion is like the joy of bridegroom and bride. It is like a wedding feast: both God’s love for us and our love for one another.

For the Lord delights in you
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
And as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.

And let us see this inclusively. Gretchen Stiers has written a wonderful book based on her research on gay and lesbians partnerships. At a talk she gave at CCC a while back, she showed us many slides of same sex commitment ceremonies – weddings – and they were as joyous and fun and rollicking and serious as any male-female wedding you could imagine. And why not? Why not?

We read in John’s Gospel that Jesus’ first miracle was performed at a wedding feast – the wedding at Cana, where he turns water into wine. As Jack Spong reminded us about the miracle stories in the Bible – don’t ask whether it actually happened. Instead ask "What does it mean?" What does it mean that it was on such an occasion of celebration that Jesus chose to reveal who he really was? Often attention is given to the interaction between Mary and Jesus, or to the miraculous itself. But what is often overlooked is the nature of the water that was turned into wine. It was not usual, every day tap water. The water Jesus used was found standing in six large jars reserved for rites of purification. This water had presumably undergone strict and careful blessing. It was holy water - set aside for religious use – like the way we bless the water for baptism. What Jesus’ did was take something designated as religious and transform it into a central ingredient of a wonderful human, worldly, bodily celebration of love.

To me the story is saying that that is the kind of transformation we as religious people are to undergo in our own lives. This is important. We don’t become followers of Christ in order to become religious. We are already spiritual beings. We have been created that way. We are already sacred. No, by following Jesus we put this spirituality right into the middle of the world of human joy and suffering. We place our spirituality in the midst of life, not split off from it. Let us become the excellent wine served at human celebrations. What is the most perfect and wonderful toast of all? It is l’chaim! What does that mean? "To life!" Not "to religion!" Not "to sanctimony!" Not "to the church!" No. "To life!"

So how do we do this? We become what Jesus was: living water and the bread of life? We do it by embracing joy and by taking injustice seriously. We celebrate that it is God who heals division, God who brings life, and God who gives us strength in the struggle for justice and peace. So what are you indignant about and what are you willing to do about it? Or maybe you are already at work on it! God bless you! We are all different in temperament and vision, in energy and availability. This is not about laying guilt trips on anyone, but more about trusting that God will help you do what you are called to do. It is not about choosing between spirituality and social action – for there is no doubt that the deeper and more radical one’s spirituality becomes, the deeper and more radical one’s social witness will be. Many in our modern age have demonstrated this – people like Dorothy Day and Mahatma Gandhi and Thomas Merton. And no better example for us is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. St. Paul writes in First Corinthians:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

Paul is describes a variety of gifts, services, and activities; possibilities and choice. A vital Christian community will provide the widest possible range of opportunities – from walking the mall for Community Ministry, to walking the Halls of Congress; from advocating for the homeless in Montgomery Country, to advocating for the victims of crop destroying aerial spraying in Colombia; from appreciating diversity in Silver Spring, to supporting the work of our missionaries in Botswana in AIDS education. You can do it as an individual; as part of a small group right here; in support of Community Ministry of Montgomery County, as part of our Potomac Association, Conference, and the World Ministry of the United Church and Christ and our partner Churches. Whatever it may be, there is a call for you to be God’s hands and feet in this world. We’ll help you and equip you. You can do it. AMEN.

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