Adam J Christian Christmas & Justice Cedarbrook Covenant Church Given 12/16/18 Hello friends, it s great to be back here again. As Remy mentioned I work for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a national ministry focused on reaching colleges and universities with the good news of the Kingdom of Jesus. And in a couple weeks I ll be in St Louis for the Urbana missions conference where some 15,000 students and faculty will gather to hear about and engage in world missions. InterVarsity has been running Urbana since 1946 and in the years since that first conference 300,000 people have responded to the call they received at Urbana by entering world missions. Urbana is a transformative experience because it displays God s heart for the whole world and our call to join God in his mission to bring salvation, life, and justice to earth. And during the conference there s often a tension point that emerges as students realize that many of the speakers aren t simply talking about global evangelism but also about global justice issues like: human trafficking; refugee crises; racism; mass incarceration; pollution, climate, and care for creation; access to water, land and other resources; the disastrous global effects of western economic policies and practices; and so on and so forth. And so, a recurring question I get is: what does justice have to do with the Gospel? And this might be something you ve been wondering these past couple weeks as Remy has been teaching on justice. Because, sure, the Old Testament has a lot to say about justice, but we re New Testament people, right? What does all that justice stuff have to do with following Jesus? What do all these works of justice have to do with a gospel of grace? 1
Well the short answer is, everything. Justice and salvation are inextricably linked. Justice has been present in the gospel from the very beginning. The Gospel is the good news that God is restoring relationships between all things; and justice is the pursuit of right, holy, and God pleasing relationships between all people and all things in the world. So justice necessarily accompanies the Gospel. And we see this clearly in Jesus. Justice is prominent in all four Gospels. And today I want to show you that from his birth all the way through to his final teaching Jesus was concerned with justice. Christmas is the story of God entering the world. And this is a story that all of us are familiar with. God s Holy Spirit miraculously conceived Jesus and he was born to Mary and Joseph; a young teenage couple living in Palestine. And there was no room in the inn so Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger and angels and shepherds and wise-men all came and worshiped him, silent night, holy night, that s Christmas, pass the egg-nog, and let s open some presents. But there s more going on here than meets the eye, justice issues are all over this story. First, this whole story takes place with a backdrop of Roman military occupation. Mary and Joseph are Jews living in Palestine which means they are an ethnic and religious minority who s land and people have been violently conquered by an invading army and are living under an oppressive regime that regularly flexes its power by a combination of economic oppression and physical force. The society into which Jesus is born is in no way shape or form free, fair, peaceful, or desirable. It is a society of systemic of injustice enforced by state-sanctioned violence. 2
Complicating things was that Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph were married, and it wasn t Joseph s kid. And this was a time when women were regularly and legally killed for having children outside of marriage. There s a tension point in the Christmas story around gender and power which are common justice issues throughout history and in our own day. And then, as if that s not enough, Mary and Joseph are poor. Joseph was an unskilled worker who has a strong back and not much else; he wouldn t have had steady work and they would have lived day to day hoping to have a enough food to make do and get by; they were used to going to bed hungry. Joseph was a victim of an unjust economic system designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few landowners and prevent people like him from accumulating any meaningful resources. Jesus family was the lowest of low. He was born to destitute impoverished parents who were part of an oppressed and occupied people. I mean, the guy was literally born in a barn. I know we make cute nativities and everything, but think about what it really meant; there were animals wandering around and piles of fresh manure and the best place to put the new baby was in a food trough. Think how desperate and humiliating that must have been. And then some random shepherds wander in. And as if all that weren t bad enough, shortly after Jesus is born King Herod tries to murder him and orders a campaign of genocide and Mary and Joseph and Jesus have to flee to Egypt as refugees desperately hoping they can find asylum in a foreign land. And this is how God decided to begin his time on earth; among the poorest of the poor, among the oppressed, the dispossessed, the marginalized victims of empire, violence, and racial animus. Jesus is the one person in all of history who, because he was God, actually got to choose 3
his own parents and the situation into which he would be born. Jesus had a choice. He could have been born among the rich and powerful; the rulers of the world. But instead he chose to be born as one of the victims of those rulers. Jesus birth was an occasion of God declaring his allegiance, and his allegiance is with the poor, the marginalized, the victims of all kinds of injustice. Jesus birth is God s great act of solidarity with all people who are victims of injustice. Remy has been using the image of a scale, talking about how injustice is when someone puts their finger on the scale to give themselves or their group a benefit which comes at the detriment of another person or people. Well, just like today where 1% of the world s population controls 48% of global wealth and the bottom 80% controls a mere 5%, the scales were significantly tipped in Jesus day too. But Jesus doesn t join the 1%, he joins the 80%. In essence, he puts his weight on the other side of the scale. And that s one of the many reasons why Jesus s birth is good news! The gospel is good news to the poor, to the marginalized, to the victimized because the gospel proclaims that God is for the marginalized and against the oppressors. The Gospel is the announcement of a new king who has come to challenge the unjust kingdoms of the world and to set his people free from all tyranny. Injustice is sin. And Jesus has come to defeat sin. Not just in our hearts and in our private lives, but also in our systems, structures, and public lives! Jesus comes with a message of love. He sums up the whole Old Testament, all the Law and the Prophets, with two commands: Love God, and love others. Jesus is the incarnation of the God who is love, and he empowers us to be a people who love as he loved. And as Cornel West says, Justice is what love looks like in public. 4
And here s the thing. It s not that Jesus is just making a dramatic entrance or that justice was only important at the beginning of Jesus life. If you read through the gospels you see that this is a central concern of Jesus through his whole life. In Matthew s Gospel you see it most explicitly in Jesus final teaching. In Matthew 25 Jesus says this: When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me. Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, 5
I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. They will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you? He will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me. Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. This is a stunning passage. Jesus is teaching about the end of all things, when he returns to earth as savior, king, and judge. And he says that on that great day of judgment he will separate the righteous and the unrighteous, the holy and the unholy, the people who follow him and those who don t. And what s the criteria Jesus the judge uses? Justice. Jesus criteria doesn t include church attendance, listening to worship music, praying the right way, memorizing the Bible, or knowing all the right theological and doctrinal answers. It doesn t include powerful manifestations of the Spirit in acts of healing, prophecy, or tongues. And he doesn t seem too concerned with whether or not you ever drank, smoked, or swore. His question is, did you take care of the poor, the sick, the hurting, the foreigners, the vulnerable? Did you serve the powerful or the powerless? Did you love others as I loved them? The criteria is whether or not we lived justly. This is probably making some of you pretty uncomfortable, and it may sound slightly heretical at first but remember this isn t me talking, this is Jesus himself, this is straight from the Bible. Just because many Christians and many churches have trained themselves to overlook the centrality of justice to the gospel doesn t mean it s not there. Just because some of us have 6
forgotten about it doesn t mean that Jesus has forgotten about it. At the end of the day, at the end of the world, Jesus isn t going to be asking us if we prayed the prayer, he s going to be asking us if we lived out his love. Judgment is based on merciful actions and solidarity with the poor. And at this point some of you are wondering if I m teaching a false gospel, a sort of salvation by works rather than salvation by faith alone. After all, if judgment is based on how we lived isn t that us earning our salvation by our works? No. Absolutely not. First, let me make clear that even though Matthew unquestionably says judgment is based on how we live he never ever ever insinuates that we are able to live out a life of justice under our own power. It s quite the contrary, we are only able to live out the love of Jesus if we first receive the love of Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live out justice. Second, faith in Jesus is not a passive thing; faith is lived out as faithfulness to Jesus and to his commands. Belief in Jesus means actively following Jesus as a disciple. This is why the Apostle James says: What good is it my brothers if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. - James 2:14-17 It s why the Apostle John says: If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. -1John 4:20 There is no dichotomy here! Nowhere in the Bible are faith and works separated. Belief and action always go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Salvation frees us to live 7
as we were meant to live, if we live contrary to that we are returning to the captivity of sin. Being a disciple of Jesus means living like he lived. So you simply cannot claim to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, while also ignoring the plight of poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the dispossessed, disinherited, and destitute. Jesus commands us to love, to bless, to heal, and to forgive in his name. Therefore you cannot murder, kill, or otherwise carry out violence in Jesus name. You cannot oppress in Jesus name. You cannot be apathetic to suffering in Jesus name. You cannot ignore systematic marginalization of people in Jesus name. You cannot abuse Jesus name. You cannot hate people of another race, gender, or ethnicity in Jesus name. You cannot turn away foreigners in Jesus name. You cannot exploit workers in Jesus name. You cannot pollute and poison the earth in Jesus name. You cannot put your party politics ahead of the welfare of all people and do so in Jesus name. You cannot objectify people in Jesus name. You cannot break treaties and steal people s homelands in Jesus name. You cannot worship Jesus with your lips while serving money, power, or security with your life. Brothers and sisters, Jesus calls us to be a people of Justice. It s not enough that we don t actively oppress people, we are also supposed to actively free people from every kind of injustice. From Old Testament to New God s heart for justice is remarkably consistent; and it s not an optional add on to the Gospel, it s a core piece of how we follow Jesus. So where does that leave us? What are your practical steps as you leave here today? For some of you it s digging deeper into understanding God s heart for justice. I recommend the book Pursuing Justice, or checking out the Justice Conference website where there s videos and podcasts you can engage. 8
But for all of you it s learning to live out God s justice in increasingly real and practical ways. An easy first step is participating in the Advent conspiracy which you all are doing this winter. You can also grab a book like Everyday Justice which gives simple practical steps for learning to practice justice. Or you can talk to me or Remy about other resources. Brothers and sisters, let s celebrate this Christmas by remembering that Jesus invites us to love the least and the lowest in the world because when we do so we are loving him. 9