'To do Justice'
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on the 8th October, 2006 by Rev Arlington Trotman
Readings: Isaiah 5: 1 - 7 & Matthew 25: 35 - 46
The Song of the Vineyard, Isaiah 5:1 - 7
1. I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
2. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
3."Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
4. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes,why did it yield only bad?
5. Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled.
6. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it."
7. The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress
Introduction
The Song of the Vineyard is a timely reminder of our call to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God; but it also calls attention to our fragility and propensity to do injustice.
The Song of the Vineyard is also a reminder to us as individuals, communities and nations at a time when suspicion and violence permeate modern life, interpersonal and international relationships. It challenges the spectre of injustice, wherever injustice occurs.
This text uses plays on words. The Hebrew words for justice, tsadaq, and bloodshed, netsach, sound very similar, as the words for righteousness, tsedeq, and distress, tsarah. That God's chosen nation will bear fruit focuses on the question of justice. Indeed, the chosen nation bore fruit, but the fruit was bad. History is replete with evidence of this. Great thinkers recognise the importance of justice in any moment. Martin Luther King Junior famously reminded us that `Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere'.
Samuel Johnson wrote: 'To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction between good and evil.'
In his voluminous work concerning human understanding, David Hume reflected: 'The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and it enforces the motives of morality and justice.'
To do justice, therefore, demands our attention. It is the mark of the highest calling of our humanity, the key the bearing good fruit. The Gospel declares: 'No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me'. (John 15:4). To do Justice is to bear good fruit, which demands Respect, Responsibility and Reparation.
1. Respect
i) A vital feature of our lives together in this global village is our ability simply to respect: to show esteem; to have honour to; to look to; to face towards; to relate to; to refrain from violating and treat with consideration.
ii) Respect is the core value of individuality and diversity, in regard to individuals, communities and nations: environment, natural resources, and all human life. This is true regardless of our culture, ethnicity, beliefs, choices, nationality, citizenship or social status.
iii) Respect also entails social action of a vicarious nature: The key to social action takes seriously the call to act justly, and love mercy: The command to social action is central to the Scriptures:
When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat
When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink
When I was as stranger, you invited me in
(Matt 25: 35-36).
Ghandi once said: 'Often respect for the person and disrespect for their deed is the responsible option.' Social action in terms of respect often costs something: Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation, and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed whether good or wicked always deserve respect or pity as the case may be.
Doing justice is rooted in mutual respect, not as a political weapon or a fragmentary system of economic value, but a transforming and redeeming deed would bind humanity such as to expunge all forms of destructive violence and bloodshed. But doing justice also entails responsibility.
2. Responsibility
The Song of the Vineyard reminds us as God's chosen people, that we are the branches. Our purpose is to uphold justice. It seems however that when injustice gains priority in human affairs, the human spirit manifests its intrinsic good.
i) The trigger for responsible action. It is often only as a result of great human tragedies that we exercise most clearly outstanding examples of responsibility. We there take responsibility for the other, regardless of visible or other differences.
Perhaps the most memorable example of a great tragedy in recent times, largely because it was played out live in the mass media, was the atrocities of September 11, 2001. We learned that people took responsibility for the stranger that day. The heat of injustice appeared to have liberated the human spirit to act fairly and justice. But human community was always meant to do justice.
There is a level of responsibility that even children understand, and justice is expressed by children in powerful ways:
He frequently told the story of the young girls, 10 years old, who understood the principle of justice. He received a letter from her amidst the thousands of messages from all over the world when he was in danger of losing his life after being stabbed by a woman in 1964. The White Plains primary student said that she heard about his injury, and that had he merely sneezed, he would have drowned in his own blood and die. She said: 'while it should not matter I am a white girl. I heard of your misfortune, and that had you sneezed, you would have died. I am just writing to say that I am so glad you didn't sneeze.'
ii) Our ability to take responsibility also determines our freedom. When we take responsibility for brothers and sisters, we transcend the narrow confines of our selfish interests, and ensure a high degree of freedom. It is illustrated by the following vicarious action, taking responsibility for the voiceless, which is consistent with biblical truth:
When I need clothes, you clothe me
When I was sick you looked after me
When I was in prison you came to visit me.
(Matthew 25:35-36)
But to bear the fruit of justice also requires the act of reparation.
3. Reparation
i) Reparation presupposes damage, division and fracture. It is seen most notably in intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships and in relation to our Creator. We are often damaged and divided along the lines of culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, social status. A just act is an act that brings about repair.
ii) But to repair entails love, the love with which God cares for and loves us. Love here is not as an affectionate emotion, but as King said understanding goodwill, love which exists at the core of our being, our infinite ability to move beyond our existential situation. Love here is understood also as reconciliation. Dr King said:
The self cannot be self without other selves. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his ethnic origin, or his social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God.
The sound of the Hebrew words for justice and bloodshed may be similar, but, as Ghandi says: 'Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred. The flawed principles upon which injustice is based seek to invert the imperative of God's just act and stress dualistic and contradictory conceptions of the world. But as Amos declares: 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream' (Amos 5:24).
iii) Reparation is a key aspect of reconciliation which means that in order to bear good fruit, pursuing justice and peace we must never fear the consequent struggle. In his inaugural address as President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela urged:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and famous?"
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Marianne Williamson).
Respect, Responsibility and Reparation are just acts, and are, therefore, what people do in bearing good fruit whilst remaining faithful to the new gift of freedom to do justice.