The Spirit and Justice

Micah 3:5-12 | 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 | Matthew 23:1-12

Jeremy Richards

Awhile back, someone I’ve gotten to know a little bit but don’t know well, and who is a Christian but has never been to Grant Park, asked me something like, “Do you think your congregation focuses on the gospel enough, or do you think they care too much about justice and the gospel just kinda gets pushed aside.” 

I was kind of speechless for a minute. The question came out of nowhere and seemed so unfounded. As I mentioned, this person has never been to our church. They’ve never met most of you. There wasn’t anything super justice-y that we’d done recently, at least not to their knowledge. So I wasn’t sure why they would ask that. Why would they make that assumption? And why would they see a commitment to justice as somehow in conflict with the gospel?

But this question assumes a dualism that I have seen in both progressive and conservative churches alike, and a dualism I’ve felt in myself, a dualism we’ve talked about quite a bit here at Grant Park. And that is the false duality between social justice and individual piety, between the communal and the personal, between spiritual and bodily, between the internal and the external. In more traditional Christian language, we might say between faith and works. It’s not uncommon for a person or a community to stress one at the expense of the other. I’ve been to churches that see personal faith as the sole focus of the gospel: “Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Are you saved?” These are the only questions that matter.

At the same time, I’ve been to churches that talk a lot about God’s concern for the poor and the marginalized, who see the powers of death working through systems and politics that lift up the rich and powerful and trample on the poor and oppressed, but who say little to nothing about spiritual growth or personal transformation, who place little faith in God and a lot of faith in human action.

To put it in terms of Jesus, one camp emphasizes the divinity of Christ: Christ is God and since scripture says “God is spirit,” they are primarily concerned with the spiritual realm. The other camp emphasizes Jesus the human, who was as a poor, Palestinian Jew born to an oppressed people in an occupied land, who was ultimately killed by the state as an insurrectionist.

The problem is not that either of these understandings is wrong. The problem is that both are incomplete in and of themselves. Neither fully addresses the human condition, and neither fully reckons with the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the message of scripture as a whole, for that matter.

It was not surprising that this acquaintance, after asking me if our church cared too much about justice, then directly started talking about personal responsibility without acknowledging in any way the realities of systemic injustice. They talked about racism strictly in terms of personal kindness toward people of other races. Also, they knew black individuals who were really successful, so clearly this whole Black Lives Matter thing was overblown. They actually critiqued the anti-abortion activists, which surprised me, but their solution to reducing abortions was not that as a society we should collectively do things like provide better sex education, provide financial support for single parents and low-income households, provide free childcare, and aggressively address and dismantle rape-culture. No, their answer was that individual Christian families should adopt more kids. They simply could not see the way that systems work. They could not see the responsibility of the government, and of our political leaders. 

Awhile back, I met with Ledayne Polaski, the former Executive Director of the Bautistas por la Pas / Baptist Peace Fellowship, and she said the primary difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives can’t see systems. Everything comes down to personal responsibility and individual morality. Which is a problem, because it let’s those in power run roughshod all over the common folx with no accountability. It’s like trying to purify contaminated water downstream, without ever asking what’s contaminating it upstream.

I grew up with this understanding of faith, so I understand it to an extent, but how people can persist with this outlook throughout their life is, honestly, a bit confounding, especially since many of the Christians with this mindset claim to be “Bible-believing.” The Bible explicitly addresses the political and the systemic. In fact, all 3 of our readings this morning are about leadership, and two are words of judgement against those who abuse power and take advantage of the vulnerable.

Micah’s words are a scathing critique of both the religious and political leaders of Judah. The prophets say “peace” when they have food for themselves, regardless of the poor who go hungry around them, but as soon as they are deprived of anything they declare war. The political rulers “abhor justice and pervert all equity,” they “build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong.” “It’s rulers give judgement for a bribe, it’s priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money,” Micah says, “yet they lean up on the Lord and say, ‘Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come to us.’”

Similarly, Jesus, in our gospel reading, speaks against the scribes and Pharisees who “tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”

Scripture is full of teachings like these. Just yesterday, the newest edition of the Christian Century came in the mail, and the title is “A Time for Christian Protest.”

[excerpt from article “Why do Christians Protest?”]

Speaking out against political and social evil is part of our Christian heritage, and it’s our responsibility.

To be honest, the last thing I wanted to talk about this Sunday was corrupt leaders and politics. In fact, I wrote the majority of a sermon about something else, because, at this point, talking about corrupt leaders who tie up heavy burdens and place them on the backs of the poor, who abhor justice and pervert equity and proclaim “peace” today while Covid ravages our nation, disproportionately affecting people of color, the poor, the elderly, and those already medically vulnerable just seems redundant. We all know how messed up it is. We all know how our leadership has failed us. I’m tired of talking about it, tired of thinking about it, tired, honestly, of preaching about it. It’s exhausting.

So I was tempted this morning to preach on something more “spiritual.” To focus on the internal power of the gospel instead of the social power of the gospel -- to focus on the ability of the gospel to change individual lives, and not the ability of the gospel to change society. But then we had our book study on Thursday, and I heard again and again from that group -- all of us fairly privileged -- that they were nervous about the election that takes place this week, but as nervous as they were, they knew that this was much scarier for those who were less privileged than them. 

And I realized a few things. The first is how privileged I am to get to choose if I focus on politics or not. The second is that, to not address corrupt leadership today of all days, right before the election, is like being one of the religious leaders Micah so brutally criticizes, who cries “peace” because I personally have food to eat and a roof over my own head, but who would surely be “declaring war” if my own family were not taken care of. And third, I was falling into that dualism between social and personal, spiritual and bodily, that I so often criticize. 

I was thinking that either I preach a sermon about justice or I preach a sermon on spiritual resilience. I was bifurcating the gospel. I wanted to talk about the spiritual, personal power of the gospel which Paul says in 1 Thessalonians is “at work within you believers,” but didn’t want to focus on the teachings of Jesus, who is the gospel embodied. And I didn’t want to preach on the words of Micah, who lived before Jesus but who perhaps stated the gospel message the most succinctly and clearly a couple chapters after our reading today when he said, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God,” which is so completely non-dualistic, so wholistic. Micah, Jesus, and Paul knew that the gospel can’t be split up and parsed out. It can’t only refer to the spiritual or only to the political. It’s all or nothing. 

If I were, this morning, to simply rally against corrupt leaders, it would be redundant I think. At the same time, if I were to ignore the social and political implications of this morning’s clearly political and social teachings, it wouldn’t be the gospel. It would be false peace.

But if the two can come together -- the spiritual and the bodily, the individual and the communal, the internal and the external, faith and works -- then maybe that’s the real gospel, or at least something closer to the real gospel. Maybe that’s the gospel that really can “work within us” to use Paul’s words.

On Friday, I watched a fairly new documentary by Patagonia called Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Public Lands (because all I needed was another crisis to worry about). The documentary is really well done, very informative, and I would say equal parts troubling and inspiring. I highly recommend watching it. 

The documentary is about the very real danger of public lands being given up and sold to the highest bidders to be exploited for minerals, oil, and any other resources that they contain. The documentary makes it clear that the vast, vast majority of Americans are pro-public lands. It’s one of the few things that liberals, moderates, and conservatives agree on for the most part. But there is immense pressure from powerful corporations and lobbyists to get rid of these public treasures so that they can make a quick buck. There are politicians who try to insidiously work against the wishes of their own constituents without them knowing, and remove protections from public lands, all for their own financial benefit. As I watched the documentary, these politicians were, for me, a perfect modern depiction of those Micah spoke against almost 3,000 years ago.

But, in contrast to these corrupt politicians, I was inspired by the activists who were highlighted over the course of the film. One woman, Bernadette Demeintieff, a native Gwich’in activist in Alaska, says a prayer at one point in the film and ends the prayer “in the  name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” It was powerful for me to see how her faith, which is also my faith, is connected to her conservation activism.

Another scene that moved me was when a young native activist in Utah, Angelo Baca, shares how devastated he felt when protections for Bears Ears National Monument were rolled back by the current administration after being put in place by the previous administration, but how his elders provided a model for him to deal with his disappointment.  I want to show you that clip really quick (1:18): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGjnIG7puzY&t=4747s

Angelo says that his elders told him that in every generation, in every leadership, in every government, you will always face someone who represents greed, who represents hatred, who represents discrimination. This was true in Micah’s day. This was true in Jesus’ day. It was true in Paul’s day. It’s true in our day. It will be true in our children and grandchildren’s days.

But Angelo says that his elders show him “how to be.” He says that they are characterized by...what? Grace. So Micah, so Jesus, so Paul, tell us how to be. Micah says of himself, “But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might.” Jesus says not to do as the Pharisees do, but “the greatest among you will be your servants.” Paul encourages the Thessalonians to “live a life worthy of God, who calls them into God’s own kingdom and glory.” And Paul rejoices that they have accepted his words not as human words but as God’s word, which is at work within them.

This is where the spiritual and the physical, the social and the personal intersect. The outward work of justice, of activism, of service is fueled by an inner...grace, which is from God. Micah says that being filled with the Spirit of the Lord fills him with justice and might.

This goes back to the gospel reading from last week, when Jesus said the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and the second, the one that follows quickly on it’s heels, is to love your neighbor as yourself. We first love God, we first seek God, and this leads us into the work of justice, the work of loving our neighbor. The spiritual pushes out, breaks free, overflows into the social and the political.

This week is a week full of both fear and anticipation. There is the possibility of celebration and of mourning, or perhaps a little bit of both, as there are many candidates and causes on the ballots. But we should take Angelo Baca’s elders’ words to heart. In every administration there will be those who represent greed, who represent hate, who represent discrimination. In every race there is surely a better candidate, but there is no perfect candidate. There will always be those who will gladly line their pockets at the expense of the poor, at the expense of the marginalized, at the expense of creation. No matter who wins on Tuesday, our work will not be done. 

Thanks be to God that we do not work alone, that we do not work without hope. Because just as in every generation there are those who represent greed, so are there in every generation those who fight for life, for dignity, for inclusion, and for justice. We do not fight out of our own strength. One who is greater than us fights with us and for us and in us. Despite the enormity of the world’s problems, it is in this One that we hope, trust, and pray. David, the ultimate underdog, when facing the giant Goliath said with confidence, “The battle is the Lord’s.” 

So, regardless of what happens on Tuesday, let us declare this morning with the prophet Micah: “As for us, we are filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might.” 

May it be so. Amen.