Tenacious Justice - The Rev. Brenda Sol

Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. If our timing was right, you received your pledge packet in the mail this weekend with those words in vibrant, rainbow colors. Acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God has also been the implied motto for our fall programming, as we look for ways to deepen our faith and make more explicit that we will not let God’s message be co-opted by those who would have us keep quiet about the injustices we see in our world.

This theme comes from one of my favorite bits of scripture, which is Micah 6:8. Like Jeremiah, Micah was another one of those tenacious prophets who continued to rally God’s people to stand up for those who are oppressed by the corrupt. A little trivia…because Micah prophesied in the 8th century BCE, and Jeremiah around the middle of the 7th century BCE,  they never met. But, there is a reference to Micah’s prophecies in Jeremiah.

This morning’s Jeremiah reading has a shift, from him chastising to offering the people hope. Using the image of planted seeds being sown, Jeremiah reminds them that God’s primary desire is to have a relationship of mutuality. So, after years of exile, he encourages them to look forward to reaching the other side of this horrendous situation by focusing, less on all that they've endured, and more on actively embracing God's promise of a new way of being together—a way that isn’t burdensome, but rather, life-giving to all. And, he communicates for God insisting: “I will write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

As you heard in the video, some people here at St. Andrew’s held up that same kind of hope for Garrett. They saw for him the possibility of a new future—that the situation he’d been enduring of being oppressed by some unjust family members would not define him.

Volunteers from Showers of Blessing and other Saturday programs banded together to give Garrett enough hope to seek other options. Some of them even accompanied him to Toronto to plead his case with the university president. With their support, encouragement—and a lot of tenacity—he was granted a multi-year, full-ride scholarship! Talk about acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly!

We see the same tenacity in the widow in Luke’s Gospel. But before exploring that parable, let’s put her situation into context. In that time and place, a widow was pushed to the edges of society. There were no options for generating income, because women weren’t allowed to work. And, since she hadn’t remarried, she would’ve been shunned by her family and forced into the streets to fend for herself.

So, the kind of “justice” the widow is seeking, is probably not the kind we would imagine for ourselves. The justice she needs is to be treated like a legitimate member of society. She wants to be seen. She wants to be cared for. But that’s not the kind of justice a judge can give her. The only thing a judge would’ve been able to do is to forgive her debts, which she surely had all over town.

Jesus lifts up this woman’s tenacity…her insistence that she deserves to be seen, to belong, to be cared for, and infers that this is the kind of justice a rude judge can never grant, no matter his false sense of power. God, however, is always at the ready to grant this kind of justice. In the kin-dom of God, everyone is granted mercy, grace and love.

Sitting with the disciples, after having agitated more religious leaders, Jesus is preparing them for when they will carry on this work without his physical presence. Using this parable, he’s trying to explain that, though there will be days when they feel isolated, untethered—even destitute—God will not abandon them.

At the same time, it seems that Jesus is also guiding us toward tenaciousness—to being willing to strive for justice in the world—even when it seems like an uphill battle. Positive efforts can seem pointless, because humans keep messing things up. We were given free will, and, when that gets used in selfish ways, laced with greed, fear and false power, it leads to corruption.

Which brings us back for our need of prophets, because as Deacon Gigi and I have been illustrating through our past several sermons, prophets head directly into the suffering, name it, then speak truth into the world about it. The way of prophets—the way of Jesus—is to guide us into being for and with those suffering, instead of attacking others with our own false sense of power.  All the great movements—the civil rights, anti-apartheid, disability rights—have all been led by prophets. We don’t call them prophets these days, but that’s what they are.

A few weeks ago, I saw a musical about some of the prophets who led the suffragette movement in the U.S. Almost every song in this show called, “Suffs”, reiterated that any goal worth achieving takes time, comes with setbacks and is never fully achievable. In that sense, I found the final number really inspirational and a lot like the promise we find in Jeremiah and Luke.

In that song, women on the stage declare: “the work is never over…the path will be twisted, and risky, and slow, but keep marching.” The song reminds listeners: “your ancestors are all the proof you need that progress is possible, not guaranteed. It will only be made if we keep marching.”

Focusing on the years leading up to 1920 when women were granted the right to vote, the musical explains that although they achieved a lot, they were only able to get white women the right to vote. And that was only the privilege of voting, the fight for women’s equal rights was still to come.

So, the closing song continues, “You won't live to see the future that you fight for,” and then—and here’s where the message became really prophetic for me—that we have to “make peace” with what the song names “our incomplete power”.

Which brings me back to Garrett's video. If only seeking justice were always that easy! But, as the song says, we have incomplete power. Only in God do we find the real power of love. Often the best we can do is be tenacious in the way we help people feel seen, welcomed and cared for. So, the song insists, we have to use our incomplete power “for good, 'cause there's so much to do.”

As the entire “Suffs” cast marches in place, they belt out, “the gains will feel small and the losses too large,” but that we have to “keep marching”. Finally they add, “Don't forget you're merely one of many others on the journey [that] every generation makes. We did not end injustice and neither will you…but still, we made strides, so we know you can too.”

As we strive to bring God’s hope to a hopeless world, may we all remember that our job isn’t to be successful, it is to be faithful. Act justly, love mercy and walk—perhaps march—humbly with our God.

-AMEN