Chaotic Justice

Today's readings: Psalms 51; 148, Isaiah 42:1-17, Ephesians 3:1-13, Mark 2:13-22

Justice. To twenty-first century, Western sensibility, the word "justice" implies a certain type of order: punishment for wrongdoing, restitution for injury, protection and recovery of one's belongings and well-being. We use it in an almost exclusively legal sense. Phrases like "economic justice" spark debate about wealth redistribution  and who is deserving and who is not. We want justice to be blind, orderly, and swift.

God may take issue with that. When Isaiah describes the arrival of God's justice, the scene he paints is chaotic. God's justice lays waste to mountains, cries out like a woman in labor, and turns rivers into islands (Is. 42:14-15). As the representative of God's justice, Christ turns expectations upside down. He dines with tax collectors and other "undesirables." He eats and drinks to excess (as defined by those whose primary interest is not justice). He tells crazy stories about patched cloth and bursting wineskins. He doesn't behave at all like the messiah the Pharisees would have him be. When challenged about the company he keeps, Christ tells them straight up he is here for the sinners, not the righteous (Mark 2:17b).

If we broaden our understanding of justice beyond its strict legal interpretation, how is justice playing out in our modern world? Often it requires acts of civil disobedience -- acts that are seemingly the opposite of what is legally "just." Think of Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, and Mahatma Gandhi. Each participated in great civil unrest in the name of justice. Not all were Christian or even acting from religious motivation, yet each helped move their corner of the world into a little better alignment with the kingdom of God, where the last are first and no distinctions are made on gender, social status, or ethnicity (Gal 3:28, Col 3:11).

We tend to think of blessed lives as quiet and orderly, but God's justice will upend our carefully crafted plans and lives. Followers of Christ spend a good deal of time on the margins of society, living with and working on behalf of the disenfranchised. According to each of our means and talents, we work for the type of justice that seeks to include rather than exclude, to practice mercy rather than revenge, and to raise to messy life systems that are orderly but deadly to the soul. Justice does not lock things down; it cracks them open.

Evening readings: Psalms 142; 65