E15 “God’s Justice: Justice for Lily - James 1”

Imagine being betrayed, abandoned, sick, homeless, and destitute—and in your most vulnerable moments, the people who should help you help themselves to you instead, which is what happened to Lily before drugs led to addiction, then prostitution, then an HIV-positive diagnosis that was considered a death sentence, leaving her asking: where is justice? This episode uncovers a secret hidden in the Old Testament tabernacle that redefines biblical justice and religion. 

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Episode 15 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective. Whether we are joined by an insightful guest, or we just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all. Are we getting it right? This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Imagine being betrayed, hurt, abandoned, left sick, homeless, destitute, and in your most vulnerable moments, the people that you thought were going to help you helped themselves to you and stripped away your last bit of dignity you had left. That's what happened to a young woman named Lily. In desperation, Lily chose what so many people choose, and that's what we talked about in the last episode, the thorns, the things that seduce and trap us and brings death to everything beautiful in our lives. And for Lily, it was drugs. That was her berries that she went into the thorns for, which led to addiction. Addiction led to prostitution, and prostitution led to a diagnosis of HIV positive, which was considered to be a death sentence by most at that time. Where's justice for Lily? Where's her justice? I mean, if we're going to be honest, what is justice? It's like I've said in previous episodes, we get our idea of how we define good from social construct, which is refrain from hurting others. So it makes sense that we see justice as punishment. Somebody has to be punished for what was done to Lily, or she should have compensation. So you might be surprised at what James lays out as justice. In chapter one, verses 22 through 27, James does exactly that. He lays out justice. And in this section, we'll find the heart of not only chapter one, but the entire letter of James. So we're in the middle of a series on James, good religion, chapter one. And this is the fourth episode of four. This completes the series, and I think it's the most critical. We established that James used the four virtues of Stoicism: courage, wisdom, discipline, and justice integrated with faith to produce a very powerful and effective religion that serves us in helping us navigate adversity. So just a brief recap. Who is James? James is the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem, and why is he writing the letter? He is writing this letter to the very first Christians, and now they are refugees running from genocide. They're strangers in a strange land dealing with a tremendous amount of suffering. Now in episode one, we covered courage, verses two through four. And we said this represents East on our compass. This is suffering in things that we can't control, but the suffering has purpose. It defines us. Now in episode two, we covered verses five through eight, wisdom. And we said this represents West on our compass. The West represents suffering and things that we cannot control, but the suffering has no purpose. We just have to use wisdom to navigate it. Now on episode three, we covered discipline. And we said the discipline represents north and south on our compass. It's our inner fight, our duality. North represents our emotions, our needs, our wants, our desires, our fears, and emotions want immediate gratification. The polar opposite of that is south, and that is our discipline. And that represents us choosing to do hard things now to get to a better place later. Now, in this episode, we're going to cover justice. And this is what goes into our heart. This is what calibrates our compass. This ensures that north, south, east, and west are correctly navigated. Now, James starts off by saying this: to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only. Otherwise, you're just deceiving yourself. Now, when he says word there, he's not talking about the Bible. He's talking about Jesus, because in the Greek it says logos, and in John chapter 1, it tells us that logos is Jesus, the living word of God. And James says that if you aren't a doer of Christ's commandment, you're deceiving yourself. And you're like someone that looks in the mirror and sees who they truly are, but when they walk away, they forget. And I think what he's talking about here is comparative judging. Let me give you an example using myself. Let's say I look in the mirror and I see that I need to lose some weight. But as I go out into the world, I start looking at other people and I start comparatively judging myself to them. And then I start judging myself on a sliding scale based on the median. By comparing myself to everyone else, I might even come to the conclusion that I don't even really need to lose weight up until I go back in front of the mirror. So I'm deceiving myself. I'm not getting anywhere. So that's what James is saying: to be a doer, maintain what you know by looking into the mirror. What mirror? This is where it starts getting really interesting. So it goes on to say that we peer, and some translations say look intently into the perfect law of freedom or liberty. However, in the original Greek, it says that we stoop over and we peer intently into this perfect law of freedom, this mirror. So James is writing to Hebrew people. How would the Hebrew people have heard it during that time? This brings up imagery of things they would have held as foundational truths that go all the way back to the tabernacle, and then later the temple. So I think in order for us to understand this in proper context, we have to establish what's the tabernacle. So the tabernacle was constructed by Moses, and it was called the house of God. It was the foundation of their religion of Judaism at that time, and it was also the foundation and the cornerstone of their social construct. Now, the tabernacle was in three different parts. As you would approach the tabernacle, there would be a large fence around it. There would be a gate in the front. And as you went in through the gate, you would find yourself in the first part of what they called the outer courtyard. Now, towards the back of the outer courtyard, there was a structure that was separated into two parts. The first part of that structure was called the holy place. Towards the back of the holy place was another room, but it was separated by this very thick purple veil, and it was called the Holy of Holies. Now, in the Holy of Holies is where the Ark of the Covenant was, where they believed the Spirit of God resided, which is why they called it the house of God. Now, in order to serve at the tabernacle, you had to be of a certain blood lineage. You had to be a Levite. It's the same tribe that Moses came from, one of the twelve tribes. And their daily responsibilities were to take care of the grounds, make sure everything ran correctly, and serve the people. Now, the next tier of the Levites was the Levite priest. Now, the priest would give sacrifices on behalf of the people when they had committed a crime or a sin, because there's one and the same in that culture, in that society. So in the courtyard where people could come in and interact with the Levite priest, there's an item. It's called the bronze laver. It's essentially just a pedestal with a wash basin. But what makes it so special and significant is that in Exodus 38, 8, it says the bronze laver is made out of the servant women's mirrors who are at the gate of the tabernacle and later the temple. Who are they? Who are the servant women at the gate? I mean, if we think in modern terms, if you think of a church, if you've ever been around a church and they're going to put together a food pantry or they're going to put together a coke closet, they call them, or help people, the hungry, it's predominantly the women that come together and kind of spearhead that. So in that culture back then, if you were sick, if you were hungry, if you had need and there was no social programs, where was you going to go? Well, you was probably going to go to the house of God. And who would you meet at the house of God? You would meet the servant women at the gate. And the women at the gate would make sure that you were fed, that you were nurtured back to health if you were sick, that you had clothes if you were naked, that you had a place to stay if you were homeless and destitute. They were the salvation for the hurting. See, their mirrors that were made out of polished brass were all brought together and forged and made into one bronze laver, which was highly polished, highly reflective. See, every time a Levite priest, before they would perform a sacrifice, after they would perform a sacrifice, before they would go into the holy place, all day long they were at the bronze laver, the wash basin. And there was water in this basin, but it wasn't there to wash to get clean. It was there ceremoniously. And see, what they were supposed to do was they were to stoop over and peer intently into the reflection of that highly polished brass beneath the water. They would ceremoniously wash their hands in it and their feet, symbolizing that they were too a servant. Now, the other place that it mentions the servant women outside the gate, it's in 1 Samuel chapter 2 through 4. And I'm not going to go into the whole story, but I'm just going to give you a brief outline. But it tells the story of the tabernacle, and the high priest at that time was Eli, and he had two Levite priests that were his sons. Now, his sons and himself were a little corrupt. So a Levite priest was allowed to take a portion of the sacrifice for themselves to eat, except for the two priests was taking more than their share than they should have. And God had told Eli, talk to your sons, get this stopped. This shouldn't be happening. Get the tabernacle in order. The tabernacle is to serve, not be served. But God tolerated it up until the Levite priests started having sexual relations with the servant women outside the gate. And with that, Israel was plunged into war. As it went on, Eli separated himself and he went and waited from a distance. And then a servant came to Eli, basically with God's judgment for what had happened, and he told Eli three things. He said, Number one, Israel has lost the war. Number two, both of your sons are dead. And number three, the enemy has taken the Ark of the Covenant. In other words, the Spirit of God is no longer with you. And with that, Eli fell over dead. I think this speaks to what God saw as the most important part of that tabernacle, and later the temple, wasn't what everyone else thought it was. It wasn't the religious ceremonies. It wasn't the structure. It wasn't the Holy of Holies and the High Priest. It wasn't the Levite priest and the daily sacrifices and all the things that went on for the forgiveness of sins and crimes. It was the servant women at the gate. It was the servant women who fed the needy, who took care of the sick, that clothed the naked, that made sure the destitute had a place to stay. It represented the tabernacle serving the people, not the people serving the tabernacle. It was the tabernacle serving the people through the servant women, that if you had a need, that if you were hurting, that if you were sick, that if you were homeless, that if you were hungry, the servant women would take care of it. They weren't the part of the tabernacle that judged you for your sin and made sure that you gave your sacrifice for forgiveness. They were there to give to you on need versus deserve. They represented the love and mercy of God. Now, later on, when Jesus shows up, Logos, the living word of God, there's a couple of times that when he goes to the temple, he gets very angry and he takes a whip that there's merchants set up selling animals for sacrifice. They're making money. What was it that upset Jesus so much? Where are these merchants? They're at the gate. They're at the courtyard. Where's the servant women? They're gone. And in their place, merchants making money. Now in that society, if you're hungry, if you're naked, if you have knee destitute, where are you going to go? The most important part of the temple has now been removed. I think now we can see why Jesus was so angry. So Jesus is the living word of God, Logos, like the Ark of the Covenant in the flesh. He's also the high priest. He's also, it says, the king, all of these things, the Savior. So where would the Ark of the Covenant, the living Ark of the Covenant, the living word, where's its rightful place? And the Holy of Holies being served. Where was Jesus? Jesus made himself a servant outside the gate. Acts 10 38 says, Jesus went about doing good. What was Jesus' commandment to his disciples? Is that you love one another, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this the world will know you're my disciple. The very last thing he told them is go and make more disciples. Go make more servants outside the gate. Let's create the antidote to the poison. Now it says in 1 Peter chapter 2 that we're the royal priesthood, a holy priesthood, that we are living stones, that we make up the temple, that it's not a building, a structure somewhere, that Jesus' tabernacle, his temple, is made up of these living stones, that we are a part of the tabernacle. And as the royal priesthood, they understand that the sick, the needy, the hurting, the homeless don't have to go to the temple. The temple will come to them. Now, in James, where it says that we stoop over and we peer intently into this perfect law of freedom, it's talking about the bronze laver. We are seeing the reflection of the commandment of Christ in our own face in the water. And that is the image that we try to hold ourselves to. Not by comparatively judging ourselves to other people, but to the commandment of Christ, the servant outside the gate. James goes on to say, if you don't take care of the widows and the orphans, people in need, then your religion is in vain. In episode 11, we talked about becoming the antidote to the poison, salvation for the here and now. This is not about throwing yourself on the sword and sacrificing everything for everyone else. This is about taking care of people as you can when you have the opportunity, like Lonnie Fusen. Lonnie is a great supporter of the show, and I appreciate you, Lonnie, very much. And Lonnie shared with me this story that many years ago he deconstructed in religion, but he reconstructed in faith, discipleship of Christ, becoming the servant at the gate. So Lonnie decided he wanted to be a ground zero. He wanted to spend more time in helping and loving other people as a disciple of Christ. So he went and gave his time at a soup kitchen. And while he was there, he met Lily. Now Lonnie was very transparently honest with me. He said he was pretty frustrated with Lily, that he was in pretty harsh judgment of her, because he knew that she was aware that she was HIV positive, but yet she continued to practice her profession and spread the disease. Lonnie was reaching the end of his time at the soup kitchen, and on the last day he decided that he was going to confront Lily. He was going to tell her, you either have to stop or I'm going to go to the authorities and report you, but you can't knowingly spread the disease because you don't care just because you want drugs. So Lonnie paced anxiously waiting as he worked at the soup kitchen, going back and forth to the window, waiting to see Lily appear. And through the day his pacing and his anxiousness, it grew stronger and stronger, and he was ready. He was going to confront her and let her know. After all, this was what was just. But something happened. Lonnie told me as he watched her coming to the soup kitchen through the window, he had this overwhelming thing just well up inside of him. And rather than seeing her through the eyes of that judgment of justice and what is right, he felt compassion and love. And when she came in, he asked, Can we sit down and talk? I want to get you a sandwich, but I I need to talk to you. And Lily reluctantly agreed. I mean, she was very callous. She didn't particularly care for men. And as they sat, Lonnie finally told her that had welled up in him, this overwhelming need, this what he had to communicate to her. And he said, I I don't even know what this means, but I have this overwhelming need to tell you that God wants you to know that all he has ever wanted for you is for you to be his beloved daughter. Now Lonnie said they talked a few more minutes, and she did warm up a little, but not a whole lot. And that's how Lonnie finished his time at the soup kitchen. He finished it talking to Lily. Well time had passed and Lonnie had moved on. But he went back to visit some years later. And when he went back he was astonished at what he found. See, Lily was there working at the soup kitchen. She'd went into rehab for drugs and got better. She'd quit the profession of prostitution, and now she was helping others. And she told Lonnie what he had told her was the seed that started the healing, and now she had become the antidote to the poison. She was the servant outside the gate. Was that the justice for Lily that she was expecting? See, it's this idea of justice is what should calibrate our compass. To quote Alicia, who spent 23 years as a social worker, every morning she would pray, God, send me someone to help today. I think that's something we all should be praying as we look into the bronze laver. God, send me someone to help today. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, andor concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.