When I went to seminary in Washington D.C., I did
so partially because of a man named Bruce Birch. Now to you all, Bruce Birch doesn’t represent anything too
important. That’s ok, but Bruce Birch is
one of the foremost authorities in the world on the Hebrew Bible. He is perhaps only less brilliant than
another man who I sometimes reference named Walter Brueggemann. And when you are in that category of
discussion, you know you’ve made it in this field.
Bruce Birch tells the
story of being a squirrely 22 year old seminary student starting at Yale
Divinity School in the late 1960s. Bruce
had been given a chance to study under some of the most famous theologians at
the time, but was flat broke and needed a job.
He was told by the school administrator that the chaplain had a position
open. But he didn’t know the
chaplain. As he walked down the hall, he
say that he walked in, was looking for the chaplain, and encountered a person
unlike any other. His name: William
Sloan Coffin. Over the next three years,
Bruce would study under the man once called the White Protestant MLK and would
frequently find himself bailing him out of jail, unchaining him from buildings
after protests, and simply traveling with him around witnessing a man who would
not relent on his concerns for the poor, those whose voices are unheard,
anyone. Coffin was a modern day prophet
in his mind.
And this fire, this
focus, this call to become a prophetic voice and a prophetic actor of the
gospel, this is where the realm of social justice begins. And it where Love and community and
discipleship make a distinct difference on the world. It is what our mutual action in the world
creates.
And it is so difficult
for us to understand this. Going way
back to the Hebrew Canon, the Israelites struggled to figure out how to
live. What they thought God was
demanding of them was their first born child, their sacrifice of being, their
very livelihood through crops and cattle.
And God says NO, despite the fact that you think that is what I want of
you, all I want is you to LOVE GOD, DO JUSTICE, and LOVE KINDNESS. That’s it.
Remember, LOVE is all you need.
And know that when you love like that, you manfest justice. And that’s all I want from you.
Now we’ve spent plenty
of time talking over the past two weeks about discipleship and what it means to
be a community in action. Social justice
is the result. And social justice
simply becomes what we are about, not some program that we do. Perhaps that’s the great difference between
service and justice. Right now, we go
out and pick apples, do feed my starving children, host blood drives and bone
marrow drives. And all of those things
are what we need to be doing. But they
can be seen as programs. They are acts
of service. Making social justice who we
are is the next step. It combines what
we learn from the Bible with our hands and feet action. It combines are authentic sense of loving
one’s neighbor with the call that all are welcome in the community that we
strive towards. It means looking out at the homeless person on the street and
bringing them into our community, feeding and caring for them and then stopping
the systemic hunger issues by advocating and protecting each person we
meet. And it’s hard work, but it’s
everything we are called to be.
Social Justice is what
happens when we get out into the world and bear witness to the problems with
our neighbor and work to change that. It
is what Isaiah was talking about when he says, is this not the fast that I
choose….when you see the naked, to cover the, and not to hide yourself from
your own kin. We can write a check and
give a dollar to someone on the street, but then we want them to go away. Do we want them to be made well. Do we want them to be satisfied or us to be
satisfied. Social justice is not about
what makes us feel good, but about what makes us all good.
And I want to speak to
that a little. Charity is something that
is often easy to fall into as educated persons.
Each of you in this room will probably make enough money to do pretty
well in the world. You’ve been offered a
gift: a chance at higher education. But
here is my education for you: the degree you receive, the money you will someday
earn because of the job you got because of that degree, it all started because
somebody gave you a chance. Some people
say we pull up our bootstraps and to a degree I agree with that, but there are
no self-made persons. Each of us need
each other, and to those who have offered much, much is truly required. And so we give. We, those who have money, we are called by
charities and we write checks out to people far away who we never meet. We tell people about how we stopped and gave
this guy on the street corner bread and a sandwich from burger king. But do not be mistaken in your sinfulness
that this is the call of the gospel.
Because while it may appear to be, we know that much of those actions
are done to satisfy guilt in our own hearts.
The gospel is not a
story about people being guilted into giving of their money to a cause they
will otherwise never be involved with.
The gospel is a story of giving up things that are precious and valuable
to themselves, selling everything, and following Jesus. The Gospel is not a story where God wants us
to remain in our penthouses and give enough to change others lives so much as
it doesn’t change us. No truly we are
called to love and live and act out a gospel that truly gets us uncomfortable,
but only for the sake of making all truly able to thrive in the world. And God will ask us perhaps one day, were you
there when I was hungry, where you there when I was naked, did you seek me out,
did you change the situation. Did you
change it for yourselves or did you see yourself in the other person, the
neighbor that is you, and did you act as you would pray and hope they would act
on your behalf.
Social justice is not
able simply giving of money. It is about
giving your blood and your sweat and your time to change the lives of others
because we are all in this together.
That’s why this gospel is so hard.
We are ALL in this together. From
the Christians we are frustrated with to those who don’t care about each other
to those who would present us with quite an intriguing dinner date, we are all
in this together. Justice happens when
all of humanity stops acting as individualistic and tribal horders of equity
and starts persuing what is right.
Now you are going to
wonder if I sound like a Socialist here pretty soon. Well…look at Jesus. If you are here at the University of
Minnesota to get a nice degree so you yourself are set for the rest of your
life, I beg you to consider that the paycheck you make some day, it could be
used in a lot of ways to help others just as much as it helps you. At home, I have a desktop, a lap top, an I
phone, my wife has a lap top, an ipad, and I have an ipad that I got through
work. Now I don’t need all of these things.
There is no doubt about that. I
have a library of over 2000 books. And I
could probably share them. To whom is
given much, much is required. You are
making a way possible for many others.
You might become a millionaire.
Will that million dollars be better served by you in a mansion or you
sharing with others so that they might live a life where they can have food and
still get your perspcriptions or pay their heating bill too.
William Sloan Coffin
understood that to be a Christian nation, we might have to be better than we
certainly acted. That’s why he was so hard on the government, who often times
in his life would act so unjustly toward others it sickened him. That’s what led Coffin to March with king at
Selma and Montgomery, that’s what led him to chain himself to buildings over
environmental destruction, that’s what led Coffin to speak out against nuclear
arms, even being tried to treason by the U.S. Government in 1976. And nowadays there are those among us who
call us beyond the simplicity of our faith and into the complex moral issues of
our time. Perhaps you have heard the
quote from Stephen Colbert from a couple of years ago…
“If this is going to be a Christian nation that
doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish
as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor
and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to
do it.”- Stephen Colbert
The
reality is this isn’t a Christian nation, not even in name. But what it can be, what I believe it should
be, is a nation where we truly care for one another and change the injustices
that will send some of the poor house and others to Plymouth. It’s great to pull up yourself by your
bootstraps….except some people don’t even have any boots.
We love, because we were loved. We are living beyond community. We are disciples of Jesus, called to action. And when we come out of this core, we because
advocates for justice. And we do so not
for ourselves, but because in the end, God might just ask us….were you there to
serve me. Amen.
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