SPEAKER_00: Hey, good evening.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're gonna talk about justice today, which is like pretty simple, quick topic.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be in and out of here.
SPEAKER_00: So on the screen here is a picture of does anyone know where this is?
SPEAKER_00: Ferry Street Bridge all along the river trail.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's a highly trafficked place of Eugene.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's underneath Ferry Street Bridge, right by McMiniman's North Bank.
SPEAKER_00: And there is this Bible verse on it in this Pacific Northwest, like post-Christian town that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's Micah 6.8.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you just heard Courtney read.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds familiar to a lot of us.
SPEAKER_00: He has shown you, O man, what is good.
SPEAKER_00: What does the Lord require of you to act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?
SPEAKER_00: So these words were originally spoken 2,500 years ago, and I've seen them all over the place in the Christian stratosphere: t-shirts, coffee mugs, Hobby Lobby, bathroom art.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow, right, these this Bible verse from a long time ago to people halfway across the world in a different language, a different context, gets spray painted underneath Eugene's Ferry Street Bridge, which is a little bit of an ironic location, but no one's taken it down, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's I've noticed it for at least six months on my runs, and I just find it interesting because I could think of a lot of Bible verses that we could spray paint at a popular Eugene location that wouldn't last a day, right?
SPEAKER_00: But people like this verse.
SPEAKER_00: It's been there for a decade?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is why I need people to edit my sermons.
SPEAKER_00: Like I've noticed it for six months, anyways.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't used to run that far away from my house, but now I'm in a all right, and so somehow in our in our town that likes protests and activism and equity and sustainability, Michael, Micah's words remain um unvandalized.
SPEAKER_00: And so it raises an interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: Um, is doing justice a space where those who love the Bible and those who ignore the Bible like actually agree?
SPEAKER_00: Is this a place of overlap?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we talking about different things?
SPEAKER_00: And then another question is why do I know more Christians who don't like the word justice than I do non-Christians?
SPEAKER_00: So, what is it that we're talking about?
SPEAKER_00: What is justice?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to practice justice?
SPEAKER_00: And then I think the question that we all need to answer today individually is are we people who practice justice?
SPEAKER_00: Are you someone who practices justice?
SPEAKER_00: Like if your best friends were like, name someone who practices justice, would your name come to mind?
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we're in the final move final center movement of our series through the story of God and the practices of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: We've covered covenant, temple, and king, along with uh wisdom, communion, and now justice.
SPEAKER_00: So this practice justice correlates with the movement of the story that we call king.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as we follow the story of the Bible, we're gonna discover king after king who builds wealth, gathers horses and chariots, um, and marries for political allegiances and then promotes religious syncretism between these other gods.
SPEAKER_00: Um, remember we talked about that last week no horses, no wives, no gold.
SPEAKER_00: They're breaking all that.
SPEAKER_00: So the character of the king is influencing the condition of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not looking good if you're reading through these parts of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And so, despite this kind of core rebellion from covenant faithfulness, which we talked about, the people of God still have some of these trappings of religious worship.
SPEAKER_00: Things like the sacrificial system, fasting, and festival days.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just call these upward disciplines.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if we're keeping score, they're one out of two.
SPEAKER_00: So do they maintain some of these upward disciplines, the sacrifices, fasting, temple system?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But do their kings lead them in covenant faithfulness by trusting God?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So they're one for two.
SPEAKER_00: Good batting average, bad Jesus average.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a third major theme that comes up, and it's this conversation around justice.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this Hebrew word mishpat, and you say Mishpat?
SPEAKER_00: Mishpat.
SPEAKER_00: So in the widest sense, it just means to put things right.
SPEAKER_00: It was crooked, and now it gets straightened or repaired or back into the condition that it was designed to be, which we're God's talking about it, is right relationships in his created world.
SPEAKER_00: And so they missed the mark on this too.
SPEAKER_00: So we have a slide.
SPEAKER_00: They're over, they're one for three.
SPEAKER_00: Do they trust God?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Do they do religious worship?
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
SPEAKER_00: Do they do justice?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: And so what you'll find as you read through the prophets and the minor prophets is that when God's people go about living life with the upward trappings of fasting and sacrifices, but then go on to take advantage of others or not rescue the oppressed, especially if it involves not caring for the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Israel's prophets get fired up.
SPEAKER_00: When God's people fast and do sacrifices and celebrate festival days, while taking advantage of the marginalized or not stepping in to protect them, Israel's prophets, like they get off the bench, they're ready to like punch some people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why a lot of our verses around justice come from the prophets and the minor prophets.
SPEAKER_00: The one we read today in Micah.
SPEAKER_00: Micah confronts Israel's leaders who have become wealthy through theft and greed.
SPEAKER_00: Um, these leaders have intentionally created injustices and bribes to bend laws that favor the wealthy and to deprive the poor of their land and security.
SPEAKER_00: And so Micah gets all fired up and he's like, You need to do justice, you need to love mercy, you need to walk humbly with your God.
SPEAKER_00: The Amos verse that I was gonna read is a little more intense.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to make Courtney, you just always get the worst ones to read, Courtney.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so Amos, he confronts this king Jeroboam II, who's just he's just one of the worst kings, but he's super wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: He gains a bunch of mu money through military battles, but his wealth led to social apathy and injustice and neglect of the poor.
SPEAKER_00: So they were ignoring the poor, allowing them to be sold into debt slavery, all while attending their worship services, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the poor are over here, and then we're gonna gather and do the worship system.
SPEAKER_00: So speaking on behalf of God, Amos says, I hate, I despise your feasts, I can't stand the stench of your assemblies, even if you offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.
SPEAKER_00: I have no regard for your fellowship offerings of fattened cattle.
SPEAKER_00: Take away the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the music of your harps, but let justice flow like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream.
SPEAKER_00: Other translations say, Let justice flood.
SPEAKER_00: And so notice if this setup is happening, you're caring about the upward religious trappings, but you're neglecting to do justice, God says, I don't care about your singing, and I don't care about your worship services, and I don't care about your fattened calf that you sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: Go and do justice.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, let justice flow and flood out like a river, like a stream that never stops.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone listen uh to the band Switchfoot growing up?
SPEAKER_00: You have those like youth group experiences.
SPEAKER_00: Is it the I Dare You to Move song?
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: So many middle school tears.
SPEAKER_00: Did I cry?
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, John Foreman grew out of his boy band stage, maybe, and he uh has uh some solo albums, and um he there's a series that are kind of shaped through the seasons of the um weather calendar, and there's one on Psalm 23, there's one on uh the Sermon on the Mount, but there's also one on this Amos text.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Instead of a Show.
SPEAKER_00: So look it up.
SPEAKER_00: Um, John Foreman, Instead of a Show.
SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible song.
SPEAKER_00: I'll sing at the top of my lungs when none of you are here to listen to me do it, but it's a song about this text.
SPEAKER_00: And so we could go on for a while.
SPEAKER_00: We could look at a lot of texts from Isaiah, a lot of texts from Jeremiah, a lot of psalms.
SPEAKER_00: But the first point is this justice should characterize God's covenant people.
SPEAKER_00: This word Mishpat and its partner word righteousness, which is Sedakah, show up all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: They're just all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: God's covenant people are meant to be a social ecosystem that refuses to benefit from injustice and proactively defends those with the least economic and social power.
SPEAKER_00: And I know this is hard to believe for us today, but it's possible to become so focused on our worship services and our offerings that we miss this part.
SPEAKER_00: And God hates it when that happens.
SPEAKER_00: We always need to be careful of making big jumps from the Old Testament to today, but I actually don't think this jump is very big.
SPEAKER_00: Um, on the screen, you'll see a picture of a Zamboni.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you're expecting that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh these two words, justice, justice and righteousness, get paired all the time in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: They kind of go together.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they kind of their meanings overlap, but to kind of oversimplify it, justice is like the Zamboni.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's what goes out onto the unrighteous ice, that's all choppy.
SPEAKER_00: And what justice does is as justice acts, what's left behind is the smooth ice, which is right relationships and the way God designed it, that is righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: So justice leads to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what God tells Abraham he should care about in Deuteronomy 18 in the Abrahamic covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Abraham will surely be a great and powerful nation, all the nations will be blessed through him, for I've chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right, said Achah and just, Mishpat, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised of him.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham's job was to teach his kids and his household how to do justice and righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And this is because this isn't just justice isn't something that characterizes God's people, but it reveals the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: So God's people are meant to express God's character into creation.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what God says of Himself in Deuteronomy 10, 17 to 18.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord your God defends the cause, the the mishpat of the fatherless and the widow, and he loves the immigrant, giving him food and clothing.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 103, the Lord promotes righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: He made his ways known to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 146, 7-9, he executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, he lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves those who live justly.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord watches over the immigrant and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know when you think about who God is, and you're reading through the Old Testament, which we've already read some like weird-sounding Old Testament stuff today, and I have grown up with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But when you just read it, we find that all throughout the story, we find God showing his tender love, his and his close involvement with the socially weak.
SPEAKER_00: And God constantly reminds them with his people that they were once oppressed, they were once enslaved, starving, and hopeless, and God heard their cries and moved to the rescue.
SPEAKER_00: So this demographic that constantly gets mentioned throughout the story that is in need of Mishpat, is in need of justice, is known as the quartet of the vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: Do we know what a quartet is?
SPEAKER_00: Four people singing, yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Or just four things, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: So in the story of the Bible, these are the the orphan, the widow, the migrant, and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: The orphan, the widow, the migrant, and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and in that time, these demographics found themselves outside the current of society's flow of benefit.
SPEAKER_00: So these would be people that, you know, the culture in society is moving along, and they find themselves outside of the flow and the current of its benefits.
SPEAKER_00: And so some of these I think maybe more directly overlap for us today.
SPEAKER_00: I think the orphan is clearly pretty direct correlation.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we have a very different social structure today.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying widows don't need care and love.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of a different situation.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can ask ourselves: who are the people who stand outside of the flow of society's benefit?
SPEAKER_00: So God cares about this.
SPEAKER_00: And when humanity does not trust God, if there's greed, there's jealousy, there's insecurity, and power plays, someone's going to absorb that.
SPEAKER_00: Some human is going to absorb the consequences of someone else's greed or jealousy or insecurity.
SPEAKER_00: So I know this is a lot.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get to some fun stuff here.
SPEAKER_00: Justice should characterize God's covenant people.
SPEAKER_00: Like just take away what you know about justice.
SPEAKER_00: It's very clear.
SPEAKER_00: And justice reveals the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is who God is, he cares for people that are outside on the margins.
SPEAKER_00: And then point number three: justice arrives in the compassion of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Justice arrives in the compassion of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When he is kind of um in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 23, he's giving these woes to the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this text just goes straight back to Amos and Micah, but here's what he says: Woe to you, teachers of the law, teachers of Torah and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you tithe your spices like mint, dill, and cumin.
SPEAKER_00: Not a bad tea combo, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: So you've you're tithing, you're doing like this tithe of your spices like you're supposed to do, but you're neglecting these things that matter so much more, that carry so much more weight, justice, mercy, faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to pick, you can do both.
SPEAKER_00: James says, pure and undefiled religion is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so in Jesus is revealed God's both uh it's called retributive justice and restorative justice.
SPEAKER_00: So retributive justice is like um the bully on the playground needs some consequences, right?
SPEAKER_00: There needs to be a stop to the evil person.
SPEAKER_00: Retributive justice is restoring the person that was on the downside of that action.
SPEAKER_00: And so we know that in Christ, we are all guilty, we are all promoters of injustice, we are forgiven, and the the righteousness, the justice of Jesus is brought onto us and we are made new and forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And now we can go out as people who live the justice of Jesus and care for those who are on the margins.
SPEAKER_00: So that was that all sounds kind of fun, right?
SPEAKER_00: Cool?
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we should just care about this.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh point number four justice is part of the whole gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is where it's gonna get a little fun.
SPEAKER_00: Justice is part of the whole gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to just take um a second and talk about why is it that some Christians don't like this?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why do some Christians not like social justice?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we not like to talk about justice?
SPEAKER_00: Or why do we why do some and some others don't?
SPEAKER_00: So I want to just talk about that for a second.
SPEAKER_00: So we go back through human history, we recognize that Christians generally don't have a very clean slate.
SPEAKER_00: We've been complicit in a lot of injustice.
SPEAKER_00: If you've studied world history, you should know some of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we could we're gonna talk a lot about that over the years.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just know that we do that.
SPEAKER_00: But also, followers of Jesus have an incredible history of justice.
SPEAKER_00: So for centuries of the early church, Christians became known for caring for the sick, the abandoned, and the vulnerable and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Christians are responsible for the world's first hospitals and orphanages and shelters.
SPEAKER_00: Christians help establish care centers for the sick and the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Monasteries through the Middle Ages preserved learning and fed travelers and offered medical treatment.
SPEAKER_00: Over time, Christians played major roles in founding universities, hospitals, charities, abolition efforts, disaster relief organizations, and humanitarian work.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see that Christianity has been part of leaning into justice and care in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we find throughout history is that Christians care a lot about the kingdom of God coming to earth and then also proclaiming the good news of the king.
SPEAKER_00: Both life-giving forgiveness, but then also Jesus' kind and compassionate care.
SPEAKER_00: And these two are just coexisting.
SPEAKER_00: And so then, in a very recent development, and one that's mostly found in the United States, um uh these oh gosh, okay, I lost my place in my notes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Christians have become divided over this word social justice.
SPEAKER_00: Some Christians get excited when they see justice on the church's website, and then others cringe and think this church has gone off the rails.
SPEAKER_00: So why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to show you this picture of children.
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
SPEAKER_00: So just let's just jump back into the late 1800s in America.
SPEAKER_00: This is on the heels of what's known as the Industrial Revolution.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone alive during okay, no?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Um and urbanization.
SPEAKER_00: So this led to suffocating cities and working conditions.
SPEAKER_00: So by 1900, get this, 1.75 million children between the ages of 10 and 15 were working full-time, employed in buildings with poor sanitation and little safety, often working the most difficult jobs and long hours.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's hard to believe.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that long ago, child labor laws were not a thing, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So put them up the chimney, right?
SPEAKER_00: We can't do that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So um, they were commonly given the most dangerous jobs, and a lot of this industrial revolution was coming out of New York.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, our biggest cities, so pastors in New York, they see these conditions, and this is just like a small snapshot, they begin to take notice.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this guy, Henry Emerson Fosdick, he was the pastor of New York's Riverside Church, and he says this any church that pretends to care for the souls of people, but is not interested in the slums that damn them or the city government that corrupts them and the economic order that cripples them promotes a dry, passive, do-nothing religion.
SPEAKER_00: And so these pastors in New York that started to say, like, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this to children, they became known as social gospel reformers.
SPEAKER_00: And they helped workers and immigrants improve their lives by offering services like daycare, education, and health care to the poorest of the poor living in the neighborhood slums.
SPEAKER_00: And so the key guy that we need to know in this movement is this guy, Walter Raushambush.
SPEAKER_00: Walter Raushambusch.
SPEAKER_00: He's a pastor in Manhattan in Hell's Kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone familiar with Hell's Kitchen?
SPEAKER_00: All right, I'm an East Coaster, so okay.
SPEAKER_00: So it's the west side of Manhattan, and this time it was crowded, it was working class, it was rough living conditions, dense poverty.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of hell on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where this guy is pastoring, right?
SPEAKER_00: West side Manhattan, hell's kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: And so he became so frustrated that the church and its theology had just moved into otherworldly concerns, talking about spiritual things and heavenly things, and he believed Christianity was meant to redeem society and the entire person, not just the soul.
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts to be part of these social gospel reforming pastors in New York.
SPEAKER_00: But what's important though is that alongside this conviction to love these people, Rausch and Busch is reading a lot of theologians in the world of German higher criticism.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know that kind of stream of liberal theology, he eventually lands by not really trusting the truthfulness or the historicity of the Bible, and then kind of viewing Jesus less like a Messiah and more just like a really good social advocate.
SPEAKER_00: So big on social justice, low on the Bible and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so this fired up a lot of other Christians who, between 1910 and 1915, they wrote 90 essays that outlined Orthodox doctrine and they attacked what became known as liberal theology.
SPEAKER_00: These publications were called the fundamentals, the fundamentals, which is where we get the term fundamentalist.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can see here a split.
SPEAKER_00: Are you a pastor who cares about the social gospel, or are you a pastor that cares about orthodox doctrine?
SPEAKER_00: And these two groups didn't like each other.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are right now still in Eugene downstream.
SPEAKER_00: And this is like a very oversimplified Christian history.
SPEAKER_00: Go look into it more.
SPEAKER_00: But we're downstream of this.
SPEAKER_00: And if you drive around Eugene, it's not hard to know.
SPEAKER_00: Is this a church that cares about social justice, or is this a church that cares about preaching the gospel of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Is this a church that plays loose and fast with Bible and doctrine, but has gardens to feed the poor and emphasizes God's kingdom breaking in and caring for the marginalized?
SPEAKER_00: Or is this a gospel preaching church that views social work as secondary to preserving sound doctrine and ensuring that we preach a message of forgiveness of individual sins?
SPEAKER_00: And here, social work without the gospel is a waste of time and resources.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good to feed someone and care for their immediate needs if you're not giving them something that's going to save their soul or meet their eternal needs.
SPEAKER_00: We're smart.
SPEAKER_00: I know you guys are aware of this.
SPEAKER_00: This is the tension that we're living in.
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is I read global theologians, this dichotomy isn't nearly as strong.
SPEAKER_00: But in America, our kind of dual partisan system is kind of tied to this way of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And that, since that system is so politically charged and polarized, Christians kind of get swept into this polarization between these types of Christians and those types of Christians, and we're like out here lobbing grenades at each other.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a question: do you think the most important thing is telling people how their personal sins can be forgiven?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you think the most important thing is caring for the poor and disenfranchised?
SPEAKER_00: And if you're like me, it just sounds like an oversimplification and a false dichotomy, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, do we have to pick?
SPEAKER_00: Do we have to be one or the other?
SPEAKER_00: And what if really good Orthodox theology leads to really proactive and thoughtful social justice?
SPEAKER_00: And then working with people that God made within the mess of the world He made drives us back to the Bible for more answers.
SPEAKER_00: And our theology and our practice work hand in hand.
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think we need to be on one side or the other.
SPEAKER_00: I think we need both.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the resolutions to this split comes from out of something called the Luzon movement, which, if you've been on our website, if you've been kind of in the early church forms, this is this is one of our doctrinal kind of um pillars along with the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_00: So the Luzon movement came in the 1970s as a global evangelical network of leaders.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Billy Graham was in there, John Stott was in there, Christopher Wright, a lot of other good theologians that uh appreciate and love.
SPEAKER_00: And um, they came to clarify positions on theology and global mission.
SPEAKER_00: And what I really like about these statements are they're they're made around the gospel and social justice and missions in the church all throughout the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have people from pastors from all over the world, not just America, speaking into these.
SPEAKER_00: And part of what I love, most of what I love about the Lazanne documents is that all throughout, they're like apologizing, they're like confessing.
SPEAKER_00: As a global church, we confess that we have done this wrong, and so we want to do this better.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the only doctrinal statement I know that has like, yeah, we've actually been bad at this.
SPEAKER_00: We need to do better.
SPEAKER_00: And there's sections in they've had four councils since then, and there's sections that talk about the gospel and social justice, and it's really well worded, it's really balanced, um, it's still very conservative in a lot of ways, and I think it's a great, great middle ground and a space where I want to land on.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're bored, you know, SNL had its season finale last night.
SPEAKER_00: So if you got nothing to do on Saturday nights or Saturday nights anymore, read uh the Lausanne documents.
SPEAKER_00: You can go and find the link on our website.
SPEAKER_00: And so this all sounds nice.
SPEAKER_00: Cool, we should care about justice.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: God's people has always should have always cared about justice.
SPEAKER_00: It's part of God's character.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean we don't believe in the Bible, we can hold these intention.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does that look like for us?
SPEAKER_00: Like someone's gonna go to the citizens' website and look at our practices and say, we practice justice.
SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
SPEAKER_00: Are we people who practice justice?
SPEAKER_00: The last point is this is that justice requires sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Justice requires sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: That we lift up others by lowering ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: The hungry are actually fed from food in our refrigerators.
SPEAKER_00: The poor are supported from dollars in our bank accounts.
SPEAKER_00: The orphans are cared for by sleeping in our beds.
SPEAKER_00: The low wage workers overseas are loved by our thoughtful purchases.
SPEAKER_00: The disabled have access because we built the ramp.
SPEAKER_00: The elderly are known because we take the time to sit and listen.
SPEAKER_00: The unborn are dignified because we are willing to adopt them.
SPEAKER_00: The students in our neighborhoods can learn because we volunteer in their schools.
SPEAKER_00: And as our community moves towards justice, you and me, real time, we have to get off the hamster wheel of the American dream.
SPEAKER_00: And we lay down our finances and our time and our future security for the sake of the vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, sometimes justice needs to flow through our votes, sometimes justice needs to flow through our protests, sometimes justice needs to flow through our activism, and sometimes justice needs to flow through our partnerships with the local nonprofits.
SPEAKER_00: But voting is easy, it really costs us nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Protesting takes some poster board and a marker, posting a hashtag takes a few seconds, and sometimes justice does flow through these channels.
SPEAKER_00: But biblical justice, Christian justice, is costly.
SPEAKER_00: In his book, The Mission of God's People, Christopher Wright writes about justice and righteousness, and here's what he stresses.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament thinking, righteousness and justice are actual actions you do, not just concepts you reflect on and dream about.
SPEAKER_00: Living right by God and restoring circumstances to God's standards are not just ideas we should talk about, but concrete decisions that we need to schedule into our lives, places we go, people we talk to, initiatives we create and drive to completion.
SPEAKER_00: Because I believe a really good theology of justice without the practice of justice is actually not justice at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question for us today as a church, and then like honestly, each of us individually, are you someone that practices justice?
SPEAKER_00: Is that true of you?
SPEAKER_00: And just to give us like a first step, I want to talk about a place that we can go with this.
SPEAKER_00: And here it is immerse.
SPEAKER_00: Immerse.
SPEAKER_00: To immerse means to enter the ecosystem of brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: Enter the ecosystem of brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: So you enter it, you proactively and intentionally share space with the marginalized.
SPEAKER_00: And then the ecosystem is the environment, the whole feel and history of that situation.
SPEAKER_00: And the brokenness is wherever the world has become crooked, and whoever that crookedness has oppressed or enslaved or stolen blessing from.
SPEAKER_00: When I was in undergrad, I went to a Bible college in Chicago.
SPEAKER_00: And I was there for three years, sophomore junior, senior, and we had to do something called a PCM, a practical Christian ministry.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're training for ministry, you can't just sit and learn about it.
SPEAKER_00: You have to go and do it.
SPEAKER_00: And so a sophomore year, I signed up to work in this place called Cabrini Green.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a neighborhood right west of campus, right north is like the Gold Coast, like Ditka's restaurant, and like nice, really fancy cars.
SPEAKER_00: And right west is Cabrini Green, which is project housing.
SPEAKER_00: And the more I read into Chicago's housing history, the more I was like, wow, this is dark.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we would do is we would go there and there's an after-school program called By the Hand Club, and I would just tutor these inner city kids who lived in these project houses and give them tutoring after school.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was like a fun, wild time.
SPEAKER_00: It was like stepping into a whole other world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I did it for three years.
SPEAKER_00: I grew to like love these kids, just the time of my life.
SPEAKER_00: And through that, got connected to this family, and there was this mom, Linda, who had these two little kids.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and she lived in the Chicago Project housing, um, up on this floor, and a few of a few other students and I befriended Linda, and she had the two cutest little kids.
SPEAKER_00: And we would go up into her apartment, and it was like up a real nasty elevator, down this hallway, into this one bedroom, and it was just a bed, and there was a TV, and there was always Judge Judy was always playing.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm I watched a lot of Judge Judy episodes, and we would just go and just be with Linda and her kids.
SPEAKER_00: We would take them out to ice cream or take them to parks, just kind of it's a long story, but befriended this woman who lived in the eighth story of a Chicago Project house that was nothing like anything I've ever lived in.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't like solve anything, um, but I put myself in a position to just see and be near the vulnerable and the oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: And what is this like?
SPEAKER_00: And it grew my heart, and I loved these kids, and this is just one of many kind of situations in my life where just from the bottom of my heart, the times, the times that I feel most full in Christ and most just overjoyed is when I'm pouring out and spending time with people on the margins.
SPEAKER_00: Just like doing the American dream just doesn't do it for me.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to invite you to just immerse where are there places where you can be near people on the margins?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be Chicago Project Housing, it doesn't need to be the San Diego Tijuana border, it doesn't need to be low-income housing in North Portland.
SPEAKER_00: We have plenty of brokenness in our own town, and I wonder, are you and are your kids, are you immersed in spaces on the margins?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know people in different economic and social classes?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we just kind of give our money and stay in our safe Christian bubbles?
SPEAKER_00: There's this quote by Tim Keller, which, as I was studying justice books for this sermon, I think every book quoted this.
SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty cool, pretty important.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying this, and there's this picture of these threads you can put up, or that, yeah, that works.
SPEAKER_00: Um, what this means is that you must not just be a thread next to the other threads.
SPEAKER_00: When you see people falling out of the social fabric, people who don't have the goods, people who are being told to fend for themselves and don't have the power to do it.
SPEAKER_00: It's your job.
SPEAKER_00: It's your responsibility to get involved with them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it means to thread yourself.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be involved.
SPEAKER_00: We're so busy, but we have to.
SPEAKER_00: We have to thread ourselves, our time, our money, our love, our effort into the lives of people who are weaker than we are.
SPEAKER_00: So, citizens, how much time do you spend in social spaces with people in a lower socioeconomic level than you?
SPEAKER_00: How many meals do you share with those on the margins and the fringes?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to invite us to expand our level of concern beyond just me and my tribe, but the community's tribe.
SPEAKER_00: Not just how can my kids have a good education and thrive, but how can the kid down the street have a good education and thrive?
SPEAKER_00: Not just how can I secure a good future for myself, but how can I secure the good future for my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to love our neighbor like we love ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And this is costly.
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely costly, but it's where true life is found.
SPEAKER_00: I have so many good quotes, but we're going over time.
SPEAKER_00: There's 630 kids in foster care right now in Lane County.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll end with this.
SPEAKER_00: I have a really good Amy Sherman quote, but I'll put it on the Discord for you guys.
SPEAKER_00: There's this proverb that's always stuck with me, and it's Proverbs 14, 14.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you probably just read over it, but here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: But abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
SPEAKER_00: Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of an ox.
SPEAKER_00: I think we've been sold an American narrative that we can have a clean stable.
SPEAKER_00: We want retirement accounts, we want the best schools, we want the best life for our kids, we want nice houses, nice cars, awesome vacations.
SPEAKER_00: And we just want to stay in a nice, safe Christian bubble with our clean manger.
SPEAKER_00: But this proverb says the only way to get abundant crops is to have an ox.
SPEAKER_00: And what is that ox gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: It is gonna mess up your stable, it is gonna put a mess in your stable, and may our lives be messy stables, that out of which come a flood of justice, and not just preserve our neat little lives.
SPEAKER_00: I've been doing my best to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to continue to do this, and may you uh may we be people who do this, who practice justice.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Uh God, that was a lot of words.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we don't want to feel guilty right now, but we want to feel convicted, and we want to be a church that doesn't just say justice on our website, but actually is willing to count the cost.
SPEAKER_00: These are absolutely awesome people who believe this and want this and know this.
SPEAKER_00: And for each of us, we have big decisions to make around our time, our money, our kids, the way we go about our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And we need your wisdom to know which people and which areas need our concern.
SPEAKER_00: May we be people with big hearts and expand our level of concern so that um your kingdom may come in Eugene as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.