What is Justice?

On July 15, 2013 By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

The Triumph of Justice by Gabriel Metsu.

I was talking with an old college friend about the Zimmerman trial, race, Martin Luther King, and the concept of social justice. My friend expressed some discomfort with the term social justice because it seems to get thrown around quite a bit without ever being specifically defined. His last written statement was “Justice = ???”

I think that’s a fantastic question. I can’t claim to answer it once and for all, but I’ll present my angle on what I mean when I use that word. I’m a Christian and so is my friend, so I’ll be speaking in Christian terms and making primary use of the tools of our tradition to develop my ideas.

For me, on the most basic level, Justice = Being in Right Relationship.

My understanding of right relationship involves things like fairness, equity, informed consent, reciprocation, empathy, compassion, trust, and shared responsibility.

The term justice can be broadly applied to the interaction between any collection of two or more moral agents (e.g. person-person, person-object, person-planet, person-society, society-society, person-God, etc.). Wherever one of these relationships is broken or violated, injustice exists.

Social justice is simply the concept of right relationship applied to the political and economic connections between people in large groups.

Speaking as a Christian, I believe there are plenty of texts in the Bible that speak on this subject. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Psalm 9; Psalm 12; Isaiah 58:6-10; Amos 5:11-12; Matthew 25:31-46; James 5:1-6

Before you read on, take a minute to click and read those links. Let those words sink in a bit. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Fairness in political and economic relations is a big deal. Our hyper-individualized consumerist society does its best to shield us from witnessing the effects of the unjust relationships in which we participate. We are actively discouraged from examining the real human and environmental costs of our way of life. Those who pursue ethical integrity in these matters are typically ostracized as weirdos or else canonized as saints.

The particular model of justice to which I subscribe is the model called Restorative Justice. This theory of justice was used by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his work with the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa.

The opposite of Restorative Justice is Retributive Justice (quid pro quo, and eye for an eye, etc.). Under Retributive Justice, justice is served when an offender is caught and made to “pay the price” for what he/she has done. To me, this is a dead-end street. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye and eventually the whole world goes blind.”

Restorative Justice, on the other hand, says there can be no justice without mercy and no mercy without justice. Under Restorative Justice, a relationship has been damaged when an offense is committed. Punishment and reparations may be part of the mending of that relationship, but punishment is only ever a means to an end. Justice is served when right relationship is restored. Reconciliation, not punishment, is the proper end of justice.

Erotic Justice

On April 24, 2013 By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

An adequate sexual ethic does more than insist that no harm be done to others. It strengthens people’s well-being and self-respect. Good sex is good because it touches our senses powerfully but also because it enhances our self-worth and deepens our desire to connect more justly with others. The key concerns of this ethic are how power is shared and the quality of caring. Sex is not something one “does to” another person or “has happen” to oneself. Rather sexual intimacy is a mutual process of feeling with, connecting to, and sharing as whole persons. We enhance our sense of self-worth by attending with care to what is happening to the other person as well as to ourselves. In the midst of sexual pleasuring with a partner, we do not “lose” ourselves as much as we relocate ourselves in the in-betweenness of self and other, as we receive and give affection and energy.

–Dr. Marvin M. Ellison, Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality, p.89

Stillness: Hearing God’s Voice

On August 12, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn God Has A Dream, Sermon1 Comment

Psalm 131

Excerpt from God Has A Dream:

God is available to all of us. God says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Each one of us wants and needs to give ourselves space for quiet. We can hear God’s voice most clearly when we are quiet, uncluttered, undistracted—when we are still. Be still, be quiet, and then you begin to see with the eyes of the heart.

One image that I have of the spiritual life is of sitting in front of a fire on a cold day. We don’t have to do anything. We just have to sit in front of the fire and then gradually the qualities of the fire are transferred to us. We begin to feel the warmth. We become the attributes of the fire. It’s like that with us and God. As we take time to be still and to be in God’s presence, the qualities of God are transferred to us.

Far too frequently we see ourselves as doers. As we’ve seen, we feel we must endlessly work and achieve. We have not always learned just to be receptive, to be in the presence of God, quiet, available, and letting God be God, who wants us to be God. We are shocked, actually, when we hear that what God wants is for us to be godlike, for us to become more and more like God. Not by doing anything, but by letting God be God in and through us.

As many of you already know, we’ve been making our way through this summer with Desmond Tutu’s book, God Has A Dream. Last week, we read the chapter entitled “Seeing With the Eyes of the Heart” and we talked about the way in which you and I are called to look past our present life-circumstances and deep into this present moment in which we find ourselves. It is here, in the very essence of this moment, that we find the loving presence of God: creating and sustaining us moment-by-moment. We took a look at the lives of those remarkable individuals who, through their own “seeing with the eyes of the heart”, were able to bear witness to God’s ongoing redemption of the world. We talked about Joseph from the book of Genesis, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely imprisoned for a crime that he did not commit, and eventually elevated to a high office in the land of Egypt. He looked with the eyes of his heart and saw God at work in his life, drawing light out of darkness, order out of chaos, and life out of death. When his brothers came back, groveling and begging, he seized the opportunity for reconciliation instead of revenge. He said to them, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”

We also talked about Nelson Mandela, who went to jail as an angry young man in the 1960s and emerged to become the first black president of South Africa and a moral leader of the free world. Finally, we also talked about Jesus, who suffered an ignoble death by torture and execution as a failed nonviolent revolutionary under the thumb of corrupt political and religious leaders, but whose life continues to shine as a beacon of hope for over two billion Christians in the world today, two millennia after his birth.

This week, we’re going to talk about how it is that we too can learn to see “with the eyes of the heart” and become the kind of people who see past surface appearances and into the very essence of reality. The key element in this process, according to Archbishop Tutu, is the practice of stillness.

We North Americans, on the whole, tend to be suspicious of stillness. Personally, I have a three year old at home, so I usually equate the sound of silence with trouble. There have been many times when I’ve emerged from an extended period of pleasant silence only to discover the bathroom sink decorated with lipstick or a dining room chair entirely slathered with diaper cream. Silence is not golden. Silence is suspicious. Tell me, parents and grandparents, am I right?

But, even without the presence of our tiny little bundles of destruction, we North Americans still tend to be suspicious of stillness. We prefer to keep the radio or TV going at all times in order to keep the stillness at bay because the bottom line is that, at heart, we’re afraid of stillness.

Why? What is it about stillness that scares us so much?

Based on what I’ve seen in myself and others, I think it’s two things. First of all, we’re afraid that if we surrender to stillness and allow ourselves to just sit in silence for a while, we’ll be overwhelmed by that haunting sense of loneliness and isolation we carry inside us. This is true for all of us, without exception. Deep down, we are all afraid of being alone. So we try to keep moving with the herd and keep up with the pack of our fellow homo sapiens.

The second thing that scares us about stillness is the way that our own thoughts tend to creep up on us when we’re not constantly overloading ourselves with information. Specifically, I’m talking about that inner voice of criticism and self-hatred that follows us around. You know the one I’m talking about: it’s the voice that says things like, “You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not pretty enough. You’re not successful enough. You don’t work hard enough. You don’t make enough money. Your house isn’t clean enough. You don’t spend enough time with your family. You don’t spend enough time at the office. You don’t pray enough. You don’t go to church enough.” It could be any or all of those voices that you hear inside your head. It could even be something else that pertains specifically to you, but you get what I’m saying. We feel guilty because there’s always something more that we could or should be doing. It’s really too much for any one human being to manage, so we just try to stave off the guilt by drowning out that inner voice with noise… any noise will do, so long as we don’t have to be left alone with our thoughts.

Aloneness and self-criticism, those are the two things that scare us most about stillness. Together, they form the reason why we fill our lives with endless amounts of what Shakespeare called “sound and fury”. Our fear keeps us running from our true selves and, ironically, the source of our power to overcome our fear, change our own lives, and maybe even the world around us.

Most of my heroes in this world points to their respective practices of prayer and/or meditation as their primary source of energy and inspiration for the extraordinary work they do. I’m thinking of my usual list: people like the Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, and yes, Desmond Tutu.

Archbishop Tutu says:

The Spirit of God sends us into the fray, as it sent Jesus, but we must observe the sequence in his life and we will see that disengagement, waiting on God, always precedes engagement. He waited to be anointed with God’s Spirit, which made him preach the Good News to the poor and the setting free of captives. He went into retreat in the wilderness. He had experience of the transfiguration and then went into the valley of crass misunderstanding and insistent demand. If it was so vital for the Son of God, it can’t be otherwise for us. Our level of spiritual and moral growth is really all we can give the world.

So you see, not only is the practice of stillness essential for Desmond Tutu in his work, but it was even essential for Jesus himself. There is something about the stillness itself that empowers us to overcome the fear that keeps us from stillness.

There are several scenes in the gospels where Jesus deliberately takes time away by himself or with only a few close friends to pray and commune with God. I like to imagine that it was in these moments of quiet contemplation, as he observed the world around him with the eyes of his heart, that he received the inspiration for most of his parables and teaching. Maybe there was a day when he was struggling with how to explain the Kingdom of God to his students. Then, looking around on the lonely hill where he had gone to meditate, he spotted a mustard bush with a bird’s nest in it. And that’s when it hit him: “Aha!” he says, “That’s it! The Kingdom of God is like this mustard bush. It starts as a tiny seed, but then grows into a great, big bush where birds can come and build their nests.” Maybe the same kind of thing happened for those times when he compared the Kingdom of God to crops growing in a field, a woman kneading bread dough, or farm workers calling it a day. I can easily imagine that it was through his practice of meditation that he came to realize the truth of God’s abundant providence as it was revealed in the natural world. With the eyes of his heart opened through prayer and meditation, he was able to look around and see God’s love in the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Birds and flowers don’t drive themselves crazy running rat race or keeping up with the Joneses, yet God feeds and clothes them so well that we hold them up as our highest standard of beauty. Think about it: what do people do at weddings and proms when we want to look our best? We decorate our clothes, our dinner tables, and our churches with flowers. It’s like all our finest fashion designers and interior decorators just give up because nothing they make can compete with the beauty of what God has already made. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

Jesus’ practice of prayer and meditation gave him the eyes to see that. And I think the same can be true for us as well.

The great prophets, mystics, and sages of the world’s religions drew spiritual power from their cultivation of stillness in the practice of prayer and meditation. Like each and every one of us, each and every one of them probably wrestled with the same fears and insecurities. They too probably had times when they were afraid to be alone or were haunted by the inner voices of criticism and self-hatred, but they bravely faced the darkness, the silence, and the stillness rather than running away or trying to fill every moment with some kind of noise or activity. And the amazing thing is this: they found what Jesus found in the stillness. The eyes of their hearts were opened and they began to see another, deeper reality. They began to hear another voice in the silence.

Instead of that haunting voice of criticism and condemnation, they began to hear the voice of love and acceptance. You are loved. You matter. Paul Tillich, the great twentieth century theologian, described that voice like this:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

Likewise, instead of the loneliness of which we are so afraid, the great mystics, in their stillness, experience a deep sense of belonging and interdependence. I am not alone. My life is connected to and dependent on yours. We belong to the trees, the animals, the earth, and they belong to us. We share this one planet in common. All life has its origin in the heart and mind of God. Therefore, all life is significant, important, and worth preserving. Everything and everyone belongs in this web of existence. We can never truly say “I don’t need you” to anyone and no one can truly it to us. We affect each other. We are a part of each other.

My favorite illustration of this truth comes from science itself: Did you know that most of the atoms in your body could only have been formed during the superhot explosion of a supernova? Do you know what that means? It means that, at the most basic level, the very substance of our bodies is made of the remnants of old, exploded stars. You and I are literally made of stardust. Isn’t that amazing? And, since matter cannot ultimately be destroyed, it makes me wonder what the atoms of my body will be part of in another four billion years. Who knows? Maybe these very oxygen atoms coming out of my lungs right now will one day be breathed in and out by another preacher in another kind of church on another world where she is telling her congregation about this same reality of interconnected existence.

I’m sorry if this is starting to sound a little too much like science fiction for you, but I get really excited about it because it’s just so amazing. We are never alone. We are all connected. We are part of an interdependent web of existence. Within and around us all is that great, eternal mystery that we Christians call God.

This mystery is the ultimate reality that the great spiritual geniuses of the world have discovered in their practice of stillness. Instead of the voice of criticism, they discovered the voice of love. Instead of being alone, they discovered that they belong to the great community of life. That dual sense of acceptance and belonging is what gives them the power to stand up, speak out, and overcome all kinds of wrong and injustice in the world. Archbishop Tutu, Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama were all able to face the darkness because they knew from their practice of stillness that injustice was doomed to fail because it goes against the grain of nature. Exclusion and inequality based on something as ridiculous as ethnicity or skin color is not only offensive, it is ridiculous. There’s no way it can succeed because that’s just not how the universe was designed. Martin Luther King, quoting the Unitarian minister named Theodore Parker, once said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

When we are troubled by the evil we see in this world, we can laugh in its face. We can know that it’s ultimately doomed to fail and disintegrate. Just as sure as the law of gravity, the wrong in this world will one day fall to the ground. This promise woven into the very fabric of space and time. When we cultivate the practice of stillness through our own exercises of prayer and meditation, we can learn to hear that voice and trust that promise as well. We, like our prophetic heroes, can be empowered to become world-changers.

All that is required of us is nothing. We must simply be. As someone once told me, we have to remember that we are human beings and not human doings.

If you have never taken the time to cultivate a practice of stillness, I would like to encourage you to do so. Take fifteen or twenty minutes out of your day and just sit in the quiet. Just be. Many of us have heard the urgent phrase, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” Right now, I want to encourage you to do the opposite: “Don’t do something, just sit there!”

With your eyes closed and your back straight, focus your attention on rhythm of your breathing. Whenever you notice your mind beginning to wander, just gently bring your attention back to the unconscious rhythm of your breath. If your mind wanders a thousand times, just gently bring it back a thousand times. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Try this for twenty minutes a day and see what a difference it makes in your life. If you can’t find twenty minutes, then do it for fifteen, or ten, or five. Any practice is better than no practice at all. Believe me, I have two jobs and two kids, so I know how hard it can be to find twenty quiet minutes to yourself in a day. But if I can do it, anyone can.

Stillness is frightening, but it is also your friend. Within its bosom, we find the power of acceptance and belonging that can set us free from what we fear most. In silence, we can hear the voice of God reminding us that we are loved and inspiring us to love the world as God does.

MLK on Moral Responsibility

On April 18, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Flying the Friendly Skies

On January 30, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

This is a re-post from Facebook. Just for fun.

This happened on TAM airlines.

A 50-something year old white woman arrived at her seat and saw that the passenger next to her was a black man.

Visibly furious, she called the air hostess.

“What’s the problem, ma?” the hostess asked her

“Can’t you see?” the lady said – “I was given a seat next to a black man. I can’t seat here next to him. You have to change my seat”

– “Please, calm down, ma” – said the hostess
“Unfortunately, all the seats are occupied, but I’m still going to check if we have any.”

The hostess left and returned some minutes later.

“Madam, as I told you, there isn’t any empty seat in this class- economy class.
But I spoke to the captain and he confirmed that there isn’t any empty seats in the economy class. We only have seats in the first class.”

And before the woman said anything, the hostess continued

“Look, it is unusual for our company to allow a passenger from the economy class change to the first class.
However, given the circumstances, the commandant thinks that it would be a scandal to make a passenger travel sat next to an unpleasant person.”

And turning to the black man, the hostess said:

“Which means, Sir, if you would be so nice to pack your handbag, we have reserved you a seat in the first class…”

And all the passengers nearby, who were shocked to see the scene started applauding, some standing on their feet.”

God is Generous to a Fault

On September 18, 2011September 18, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Here is this morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Matthew 20:1-16

Do you remember what it feels like to be picked last for a team in school? Most of us do. The excitement of playing a new game quickly gives way to fear as the number of other kids around you starts to dwindle. Fear then becomes shame as you are left standing alone in the vast emptiness of space in between the two teams while the captains argue over whose turn it is to have the “loser” on his or her team. Your confidence is shot before the starting whistle blows, making it that much more likely that you will mess up at a critical moment, drop the ball, and thus increase your chances of being picked last again next time.

It’s a bitter feeling. And it’s a feeling that each and every one of us carries around inside of us. Whether we admit it or not, whether we even realize it or not, it’s there. And it stays there for most of our lives. Inside each and every one of us is that scared and hurt little kid who just doesn’t want be picked last again. So we do whatever we can to prove our worth to ourselves and everyone else around us. We get up early and work late. We work hard to become the strongest, fastest, smartest, prettiest, wealthiest, most popular, most powerful, or most “successful” (whatever that word means). The saddest cases are those that involve bullies who are only too willing to step on and hurt their fellow human beings in order to reach the “top” and stay there. They might play it tough, but inside each and every one of them is another scared and hurt little kid. We all just want to “be somebody”.

We might fool ourselves into thinking that we’re really beyond all of that nonsense. We might think we’ve grown up and taken on a more mature view of ourselves, the world, life, and reality. But, as I have often observed, the politics of the professional board room and the politics of the high school locker room are one and the same. Here’s a famous example: The Enron Corporation. Enron had a policy of firing the least productive 15% of their employees each year. It didn’t matter how well you did in previous years. Honestly, it didn’t even really matter how well you did that year. What mattered is whether or not you did better than the person in the cubicle next to yours. All you had to do was stay out of the bottom 15%. Rather than fostering a spirit of camaraderie in the pursuit of quality service, this firing policy created an atmosphere of ruthless competition and backstabbing that eventually led to the moral and financial ruin of the company. In a very real sense, none of these professional adults wanted to be picked last for the team!

This phenomenon is hardly unique to 21^st century Americans. We can see it the Bible too. Jews and Christians in the first century had a rough time of things. They all lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire, which wasn’t so bad as far as empires go, but it still wasn’t the kind of freedom, prosperity, and security they had longed for. And even these supposedly progressive and tolerant Romans had a nasty side. Those who were accused of inciting a rebellion against Caesar had a way of getting flogged and crucified as a deterrent to others.

Before Rome, the Jews had suffered under the brutal Seleucids, the Babylonians, and Egypt’s genocidal Pharaoh in Exodus. It seemed to them like they were constantly struggling to preserve their culture, faith, and dignity under the thumb of some other oppressive regime. This ongoing fight gave them a sense of national and religious pride. This fight kept them together as a people.

This is why there was so much conflict between Christians and Jews in the early days of the church’s existence. Christians were seen as traitors who abandoned the traditions of the Torah that were preserved by generations of Jews who suffered under the yoke of oppression. As for the Christians themselves, they didn’t know what to think. They saw themselves as faithful Jews whose faith in Jesus as the Messiah fulfilled God’s plan for the salvation of the whole world, Israel included! The fact that their faith was rejected by most mainstream Jews was very painful for the early Christians. They suddenly felt very alone, like the odd one out or the last one picked for the team. How were they supposed to maintain any sense of self-worth and dignity? The temptation would have been to strike back with their own counter-rejection of Judaism. They could have easily come to see themselves as spiritually superior to their Jewish neighbors. After all, didn’t the Jewish religious leaders reject their own heaven-sent Messiah and conspire with the Romans to have him killed?

The author of Matthew’s gospel saw this conflict going on in the hearts and minds of Christians at that time. Their struggle for significance brought to mind something that Jesus had once said.

It all started one day when a well-to-do young man came up to Jesus one day and asked him, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus told him about following the commandments of the Torah, which is what anyone would expect of a good rabbi. But something inside that young man still felt empty. He intuitively knew that there must be more to life than that. He responded, “I have kept all these [commandments of the Torah]; what do I still lack?” So Jesus upped the ante, saying, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The rich young man got exactly what he asked for but it was too much. He had found his limit. He didn’t have the strength in him to do something that drastic. It just felt impossible for him.

Meanwhile, Peter and the disciples were watching this exchange take place with smug smiles. After the young man left, Peter walked up to Jesus and said, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Yeah, Peter felt pretty sure of himself. That brash young kid just didn’t have what it takes to roll with Jesus and his crew! But Peter and the twelve had already done everything Jesus asked of the young man. They had left their possessions, their jobs, their families, and everything else to go and follow Jesus. Peter figured that put him and his buddies in a class above these other half-hearted people. He thought he had all the right stuff, which is probably why God picked him as part of the Messiah’s entourage.

Jesus picked up on Peter’s smug attitude. In fact, he was able to look past it and see that scared and hurt little kid hiding deep down in Peter’s heart. Maybe there was a time when little Peter got picked last for a team. Maybe somebody once told him that he was a worthless good-for-nothing who would never amount to anything. Maybe that’s why Peter felt the need to puff his chest out and flash his spiritual credentials around for all to see. Just like the rich young man, he thought he had to do something to earn a sense of dignity and self-worth.

So Jesus spoke directly to that little kid inside Peter and told him a story. It’s a story about who God really is and the way life really works. He told him about a vineyard owner who had some pretty inefficient business practices. He didn’t seem to know how many workers he needed for his grape harvest. Most farmers would hit up the day-labor pool just once in the morning during harvest, hire whatever help they needed, and go to work for the day. But this person kept going back to the unemployment line again and again. Every few hours he was going back out to see who was there. He kept on doing this right up until five o’clock, as the workday was coming to an end. The only folks left to hire at that point were the rejects and losers who nobody else wanted to hire. These workers were weak and scrawny. Bored and ashamed, they kicked at the dirt in front of them as the sun got lower and the shadows got longer, wondering how they would put food on the table that night. Then that same old vineyard owner showed up again, wanting to hire them. It didn’t make any sense. There was only an hour left until quitting time, but they figured that a little work was better than no work at all, so they got to it, hoping that somehow the vineyard owner would make it worth their while.

An hour later, as the shift was ending, people started lining up for their pay. The last-picked hires lined up first, expecting maybe half a crust of stale bread. They just wanted to get a little something for their trouble and then shuffle off in shame. The vineyard owner smiled as they walked up and put a full denarius in each of their hands. A denarius was a full-day’s pay. They couldn’t believe their eyes! They looked at each other, then they looked back at their boss. He was either really rich or really stupid, but they weren’t about to complain. They tipped their hats and went off to buy dinner. Before they got too far away, they heard shouting and turned around to see what was the matter. One of the first-picked hires was losing it at the vineyard owner. They heard their own names, followed by all kinds of unrepeatable slurs. Apparently, their boss was giving everyone the usual daily wage. The first-hires didn’t like that one bit. But the boss just looked back at them and calmly said, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” The first-picked workers stormed out in a huff.

Amidst all the shouting, there was one phrase that had stood out to those last-picked workers: “You have made them equal to us”. Equal. Suddenly, something dawned on them. They figured out what their boss was up to all along. He didn’t need extra hands that day. He didn’t even care about turning a profit after that harvest. This boss cared about people more than profits. Their value to this boss wasn’t based on what they could do for him. Because of his graciousness, the social barriers between first-picked and last-picked were momentarily destroyed. The pecking order had been dismantled. Because of the boss’ generosity, the losers and rejects had been made equal to those other “successful” types.

Jesus ended the story there. Peter and the other disciples looked at each other uncomfortably. They understood the story’s meaning: Their sense of dignity and self-worth didn’t come from their ability to keep the commandments of the Torah or even their faith in Jesus. God, like that vineyard owner, is generous to a fault. That hurt and scared kid inside of them can come out to play now, because, from the perspective of eternity, every player gets picked first. Trying to earn your place in the kingdom of heaven is ludicrous and can only end in frustration, because you are trying to earn that which has already been given to you for free. You’ll be a whole lot happier if you can just embrace the gift and be thankful.

The author of Matthew’s gospel wrote this story down in order to remind those Christians in the early church of this incredible truth. The way to overcome that fear and pain of being rejected, outcast, or picked last (for any reason) is to recognize the unconditional grace of God as the great equalizer. Then we can all let go of our constant striving to be the best and beat the best. It doesn’t matter if we get picked last because on God’s team, the only one that really matters, there are no first and last picks. We are free to be ourselves and try our best in life without the urge to be constantly working or productive as if our sense of self-worth depended on it.

You don’t have to try hard to “be somebody” because you already are “somebody”. You matter. God loves you and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. So you might as well just accept it.

Farting My Way Toward Hope

On July 1, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I was having a conversation with someone after worship last night. This friend is a longtime worker for peace and justice in this country. We were celebrating the passage of marriage equality in New York state and simultaneously mourning our governor’s immediate turnaround to lift the ban on hydrofracking.

I’m enough of a Calvinist that I believe there will always be something wrong with this world. We’ll never get it totally right. There will always be one more reason to march on the capitol, call your senator, write an editorial, or practice civil disobedience. That’s what “total depravity” means to me.

On the other hand, I also believe that victory is inevitable for the cause of goodness and right.

Why do I believe this?

Not because I “have faith in people”. I don’t. Trying to make a left-hand turn without a stoplight onto Black River Boulevard during rush hour will destroy that for anyone.
Not because I trust the spineless Democrats or the heartless Republicans. I don’t.
Not because I “believe in America”. I don’t. It’s a country like any other. There are some wonderful things about it and some horrible things. If you want to know what happens when people uncritically “believe in their country”, just look at the Third Reich.

I believe the final victory of goodness and right is inevitable because I believe in God. With my Christian coreligionists (among others), I accept the biblical tenet that “God is love” (that’s 1 John 4:16, in case anybody wants to look it up). This means that love is the “Ground of all Being”, to borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich. Love sits at the center of the universe. Love is the source of the Big Bang and all subsequent nebulae, quasars, galaxies, and planets. The “invisible hand” of the cosmic economy is love (apologies to Adam Smith).

If this is true, then all that is not love is destined to dissipate into nothingness. This goes for all ego-centricity, injustice, exploitation, prejudice, and death-dealing. The Jewish prophet Isaiah sang his Dylanesque folk song: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the whole earth will be full of the knowledge of Yahweh (lit. “The One Who Is”) as the waters cover the sea.”

I shared this idea with my friend, who continues to struggle with this faith. She lamented the fact that, for the moment, evil seems so present and powerful. How do we know it won’t win or last forever? In a flash of T.M.I. insight, I thought of a helpful (if gross) analogy:

Have you ever been in a closed room when somebody ripped a really really smelly fart? It’s over-powering. You can’t even think straight. You feel like you’re going to die. But what happens when you crack a window or step outside? The smell goes away. In the context of the larger scheme of things, the fart has less substance and less reality than the world around it. So it is with the evil we see in this world. If love exists at the center of the universe, then all that is not love is destined to disperse into nothingness once somebody opens a window.

We can even get biblical with this. Here’s a line from Psalm 68. When I read this, I interpret “enemies” and “wicked” to mean “evil itself” rather than individual human beings. As it says in the New Testament, the struggle of faith is not against “enemies of blood and flesh” but against “spiritual forces of evil”. Disclaimer aside, read on:

“O God, arise, and let your enemies be scattered; let those who hate you flee before you. Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away; as wax melts at the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; let them also be merry and joyful.”

Hopping Hadrian's Wall

Tag: justice