Justice and Advocacy Micah Regional Consultation on Justice & Advocacy Pune, India, May 29 June 1, 2004 Steve Bradbury National Director of TEAR Australia Chairman of the Micah Network Chris Marshall, a New Zealand New Testament scholar, was a keynote speaker at the TEAR Australia National Conference in 2002. At the beginning of his first address he commented: I would not have thought it possible to come to a conference organised by evangelical Christians on the theme of Biblical Justice and see 400 people. mostly young adults, gathered together. I am enormously encouraged. And here we are in India at a conference on theme of justice & advocacy, and one of the 3 main organising partners responsible for bringing us together is the Evangelical Fellowship of India. This is enormously encouraging to me. But there are still many evangelicals around the world who do not believe that a passion for Jesus should go hand-in-hand with a passion for justice. And so, that is one of 3 issues I wish to address in this, the first Micah Network regional consultation to be held on the Indian sub-continent. I want to talk about: 1. a message to the evangelical neighbourhood of the Church 2. a message to political leaders and decision-makers 3. a message to ourselves A. A Message to the evangelical neighbourhood In the past I have been both a student and teacher of Church history, and church history can be both wonderfully inspiring and extremely depressing. Take for example the Church in England at the time of the 16 th century. In 1559 the Protestant Church of England was established by Parliament in what came to be known as the Elizabethan Settlement. Amongst other things it marked the beginning of an intense verbal warfare between the moderate reformers and those who were more radical. It was a spiteful, take-no-prisoners kind of debate. And do you know what it was about? Was it about the divinity of Christ, or the reality of the resurrection, or about the mission of the Church? No, believe it or not, it was about the type of clothes clergy should wear when officiating at religious ceremonies. These men were convinced that the spiritual health of the church depended upon the outcome of the debate! Now, I for one, am not impressed when I see a bishop all decked out in their regalia, with their fancy brocades and their ancient medieval pointed hats. I don t know whether to laugh or cry! But I do know it s not an issue that I am going to die in the trenches for. I m not even going to waste my time in futile debate over the matter. 1
One of the great tragedies of the church is how easily and how often we are distracted from our core business by controversy over lesser matters. But as you know, this is not a new phenomenon. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their capacity to obsess over the minor matters of the minutiae of the law, while carefully ignoring the fundamental principles that under-girded all of God s law. Jesus words, of course echo the words of the Prophet Micah: You re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees. Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God s law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment the absolute basics! you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life s story that wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons? Mat 23.23. I have a minister friend who once described his success in finally persuading his church eldership to allow the pulpit to be moved form the centre front to the side front. Most of the people in his congregation would have had no idea why the pulpit had been placed in the centre of the front in the first place (Theoretically it was to do with ensuring the centrality of the word of God, and the preaching of that word. In practice it has often been more about the centrality of the preacher.) For many Australian evangelicals the conflict over the ordination of practicing homosexuals has become a key issue about which they believe there can be no compromise. This debate is absorbing huge amount of attention and energy. And in a society that rarely takes any notice of the Church, it is attracting much interest from the mainstream media. How much space does the Bible give to the issue of homosexuality? There are barely more than half a dozen unambiguous references! Compare that to Biblical teaching on justice, compassion, the distribution of wealth, freedom for the oppressed, and the disenfranchised, and evangelicals have to be asked why those issues are too often given low priority in our churches! Just 2 weeks ago there was a major conference on evangelism in Melbourne. 500+ evangelical leaders came together. It was reported in the Melbourne Age, that evangelicals are identifiable as those who are committed to the conversion of non- Christians, not the social gospel. In my country, the largest Christian Conference is an annual one organised by our country s largest church Hillsong AOG which is located in Sydney s Bible Belt. The focus of the conference is worship. Thousands flock to it from all over the country, hoping to learn the secret of how to organise their Sunday worship activities in such a way as to attract and hold on to large number of participants. In evangelical conference after conference, workshops on worship attract far greater interest than those focusing on mission of any sort, but especially mission of justice and compassion. Why am I labouring this point so much? 2
Very simply, because I believe those of us who are responding in mission to the neglected, the disenfranchised, the forgotten, oppressed, exploited in our societies, have a responsibility to remind the church of God s longing that his people be a people of justice and kindness, and that this responsibility ought to be at the centre of our church agenda s and budgets. A couple of weeks ago the Australian Treasurer delivered the annual budget, and the media has been full of analysis of this nationally important document. While most of this analysis is of an economic kind, the budget is first and foremost a moral document. It reveals the true state of a government s commitment to the poor. But what about our church budgets? They are also moral documents, but above that they are theological documents, because more than any mission or vision statement they reveal a church s true doctrines and priorities. And what do the budgets of so many of the middle class and wealthy churches reveal? An ungodly absorption with the needs of the congregation and staff. Let me illustrate. A church in a wealthy Melbourne suburb turned down the request of an enthusiastic youth and young adult group to run a special restaurant in the church lounge as a way of raising funds for a community development programme in a low income country. The reason, the church s elders were worried that such a project might cause damage to the new carpet! For this, they rejected an innovative project that has deepened the commitment of these young people to justice and mercy. A poem by English poet Steve Turner took on a new meaning for me: "The Lord God says: 'Share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house, cover the naked.' Dear Lord God, We have got new carpets, so this will not be possible." Can you see why the Micah Network has as one of its 3 core objectives the critical task of helping shape the mission agenda of evangelical churches all around the world? The Statement on Integral Mission produced at our first major international consultation held in Oxford, 2001, is a very helpful resource for this. Let me read a small part of it. If we ignore the world we betray the word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the word of God we have nothing to bring to the world. Justice and justification by faith, worship and political action, the spiritual and the material, personal change and structural change belong together. As in the life of Jesus, being, doing and saying are at the heart of our integral task. 3
We call one another back to the centrality of Jesus Christ. His life of sacrificial service is the pattern for Christian discipleship. In his life and through his death Jesus modelled identification with the poor and inclusion of the other. On the cross God shows us how seriously he takes justice, reconciling both rich and poor to himself as he meets the demands of his justice. We serve by the power of the risen Lord through the Spirit as we journey with the poor, finding our hope in the subjection of all things under Christ and the final defeat of evil. We confess that all too often we have failed to live a life worthy of this gospel. The grace of God is the heartbeat of integral mission. As recipients of undeserved love we are to show grace, generosity and inclusiveness. Grace redefines justice as not merely honouring a contract, but helping the disadvantaged. I find real inspiration in the example of a Ugandan colleague of mine, Rev Grace Kaiso. His commitment to care for a large slum community bordering on the parish he was then responsible for resulted in a series of initiatives that made a huge difference for the people living there. There is now a school serving the educational needs of the children. Several of the women have been trained as community health workers. There is a very busy health clinic, and an AIDS Counselling Centre. The community now has safe water, which as you know is an essential step in reducing sickness and death. New drains have been built, some by the community with the help and support of the church, and even bigger ones by the local government as a result of Grace s persistent lobbying. As we stood one morning in the health clinic, I asked Grace why he had initiated so many of these amazing activities all of them on top of the normal program of a parish minister. He said: After I had been in the parish only a short period, I discovered that 25% of the children I was baptising were dying before they reached the age of 6 months. And I was forced to ask myself, What does it mean to represent Jesus in this place? Without hesitation or embarrassment, Grace proclaims the truth of God s love uniquely shown to us in the person of Jesus. He shares the message of God s offer of forgiveness and of a loving relationship through Christ. And at the same time, also without hesitation, Grace works to serve the poor in his community. He doesn t just speak of God s love. In the most down-to-earth ways he demonstrates that love. I often think of the appropriateness of my friend s name, because it is God s grace, and our response to it, that is the essential motivation for integral mission. I can appreciate that most of you work for agencies that are hard-pressed to find the resources, time and energy for your direct work among the poor in your communities. Nevertheless, I am urging you to accept the added responsibility of alerting the wider church community, of which you are part, to Jesus great love for the poor, and God s great longing to see his people utterly committed to the work of justice and kindness. Who is better qualified than you for this task? We need to develop strategies and resources that will effectively alert the leadership and members of our churches to the depth of God s heart for the poor. We need to bring them the stories of men and women like Grace Kaiso, and explain the theological and missiological understanding that informs their work. If we don t do it, who will? 4
B. A message to the political decision makers In my country whenever a political party wins an election, Federal or State, the leaders triumph speech often refers to the mandate they have just been granted by the voting population. We have campaigned on these issues, we have spelled out our policies, and you have voted us into power. You have given us the mandate to pursue those policies. In my country it is also possible for a party that did not gain the majority of votes to still get elected into power. So, the so-called mandate can be pretty flimsy. But what if political leaders were to ask the God of all creation what their policies should be? What answer would they get? In Psalm 82 we have a profound prophetic vision that answers this question. It portrays an occasion when all the world s political leaders are gathered by God into a global forum, but it is starkly different from what we normally see when political leaders meet together on an international stage. There is no posturing, no pontificating, no points scoring, no photo opportunities - God is in charge. He has but one question to ask of these powerful men and women: How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? He does not ask, What sort of economic growth have you achieved? Or, How secure are your borders? No, he asks How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Without waiting for their answers for he already knows the truth of every situation - the Creator of the Universe gives these leaders their instructions: Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. It s not every day of the week that Indian politics hits the front page of major Australian papers, and grabs the attention of TV and radio. But the result of the recent national elections has, I think, stunned political observers all around the world. What I have read is that it was the vote of the lowly and the destitute that overthrew the last government. Praise God that India is a democracy where it is possible for the voices of the people to be heard! Since arriving here at the beginning of the week I have also heard that many Christians all over India and beyond had been praying and fasting for such an outcome. Now we must continue to pray that the new political leadership will indeed deliver policies that serve the interests of the poor. Indeed, the Psalmist is telling us that this is God s mandate to all governments, regardless of their political ideology or religious persuasion. All political leaders are 5
accountable to God for their performance in delivering policies that respond effectively to the needs of poor and oppressed communities. Underwriting this profound prophetic utterance in the Psalms is the fundamental theological conviction that we are all made in the image of God. We each bare the stamp of the Creator and he values and loves each of us equally. A consequence of this belief is that the way we behave towards others reflects and affects our relationship to the Creator. In a paper presented to the Micah Network at its consultation in Mexico in September this year, Sri Lankan Theologian Vinoth Ramachandra stressed: It is God s love for all human beings that authorizes the poor and oppressed to stand up and claim their rights to sustenance and freedom. Injustice is a violation of God s own being. Both the Bible and Christian tradition have taught that the poor and oppressed have legitimate claims on us, so that striving for economic, social and political arrangements that help them secure their rights is a matter of doing justice, not merely engaging in acts of compassion. Thus the Church is called to bring before the public gaze the forgotten people in our societies- the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the outcast - both in its public proclamation of a different understanding of humanness and its demonstration of it in the Church s own social practices. The Micah Challenge, which we will learning much more about later in the consultation, is one tool, one strategy to help you join with Christians all around the world campaign with and on behalf of the forgotten people. An Aside and a warning: There are times in the history of the church when it has entered into unholy marriage with the state, often in the misguided belief that by sodoing it could control the state and its policies. Tragically, the result is inevitably the opposite, and it is the church that is subverted and made a tool of the state. We must be mindful of this when we work to influence the policies of government. At the Micah Network international consultation on globalisation in Mexico last year, Jim Wallis put it this way: the church should not seek to make the state its servant, nor should it be a servant to the state. The role of the church is to be the conscience of the state. C. A Message to Ourselves I m not sure if you are familiar with the saying, If you are going to talk the talk, you must also walk the walk. The saying is a reaction against the hypocrisy that is so common in the world, the kind of hypocrisy that led Jesus to say to say to his disciples, and the crowd that had gathered: The religion scholars are competent teachers in God s Law. You won t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don t live it. They don t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behaviour. It s all spit and polish veneer. (Mt 23.1-3, Peterson translation). 6
It would be a terrible tragedy if we ourselves failed to live out the values and priorities of God s justice and mercy. Quite frankly, it would strip of us of any authority we might have to speak into the church, or to speak to government, with and on behalf of those pushed to the edges of society. It would, in fact, leave us with nothing to say. I don t think it is any coincidence that this morning, several hours after I had finished preparing this address, I was reading the passage set down for this day in my Iona lectionary: Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Don t be impressed with charisma, look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. (Mt. 7. 15-16, Peterson translation). In a fascinating book Thomas Cahill asserts that the radical society of friends, of free and equal men and women that came forth from the side of the crucified was quickly overwhelmed by ancient patriarchy and has been overwhelmed in every era since by the social and political forms of the age (But) whenever an individual or gathering has had the courage to confront the gospel anew, the society of its time has experienced transformation. 1 Pray that we will have the courage, the integrity, and the faithfulness to be catalysts for such change in our societies. I want to conclude by telling you a story in the life of a Javanese pastor TEAR has been supporting over many years. It s probably best if we preserve his anonymity. His church is the base for many development and evangelistic initiatives, but it is the pastor s commitment to human rights I want to highlight. Some years ago the pastor received a delegation from a nearby village that, for good reason, feared for their lives, and sought his protection from the violence of the army. This he offered. For several weeks the villagers lived in the church compound, and some in the pastor s home. After this they returned to their village, but because they still felt unsafe the pastor offered to sleep in their village, each night in a different home, as a further discouragement to anyone who might want to do them harm. Some time after all this, when the pastor had been back in his home for some time, a delegation from the village again visited him. His heart sank when they arrived at his door! But this time they said: This Jesus you follow, we want to follow him as well. Courage, integrity, and faithfulness! 1 Thomas Cahill, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Lion, Oxford, 1999, p 303-4 7