God of Justice and Peace

It's been awhile....  I've been writing, just more for school than for fun.  As a resurrection post of sorts, here is a sermon I preached a few weeks ago:

Emily Ripley
Sermon: 11/13/16 – Grace UMC

Isaiah 65:17-25  --  God of Justice and Peace

I love the week after Halloween. No, not because of the abundance of sugary treats everywhere I turn, but because I can partake in watching the best Halloween pranks of all time unfold: Jimmy Kimmel’s “I told my kids I ate their Halloween candy.” In case you haven’t heard of this Internet phenomenon, television comedian Jimmy Kimmel has challenged America’s parents to deliver the worst news possible to their children on November 1st, that all the previous night’s treasures have been consumed, leaving no more sugary snacks for the kiddos. As I’m sure you can imagine, this news is devastating to some little ones. Some kids cry, loose all bodily capacity and just fall to the ground (I’m not sure what this is about, but perhaps parents of toddlers know better). There are some kids who try to reason with their parents, presenting solutions such as going out to get some more, or other kids who scold their parents for eating so much sugar and warn of the impending bellyaches. And then there are the kids who just shrug it off, moving along with their day as if nothing has happened. But my favorite response comes from the kids who hear the bad news, then try to processes the disconnect between the way the world should be (with Halloween buckets overflowing) and the way the world is (candy all gone). Here is a clip to show you what I mean:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOwEwJD_p2w]

Watch 4:22 to 4:41

What I love about this child is she is wrestling with a question that I often wrestle with. She is trying to reconcile her feelings as she discovers that the way the world should be is not always the way the world is, and she is working through how to respond to such a contradiction. This is kind of what I feel like when I read this passage from Isaiah. Isaiah presents a vision of the world as it should be, and yet, it is far from the reality that we find ourselves in today. How do we take this news? How do we live in the space between hope for peace and justice that God envisions and the reality of the violence and hate that is so prevalent in our world today?

Isaiah begins “Look! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth!” To which I wonder, what’s so bad with the old one? But of course, I don’t have to wonder for very long to figure that out. Because before I look beyond my own family I see my mom who has been blocked from attending meetings because she is a woman. Before I look beyond Ponce de Leon I see homeless men and women in search of work, food, and shelter. Before I look beyond the United Methodist Church I see a denomination that refuses ordination and marriage to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Before I look beyond most of Atlanta’s infrastructure I see design that excludes people with disabilities. Before I look beyond the United States I see closed boarders to refugees and others. No, I don’t have to look far at all.

And the Israelites didn’t have to look very far either. This passage in Isaiah comes after return from exile, after nearly 70 years of living as refugees in a foreign land, after the heartbreak of war and violence at the hands of the Babylonians, after struggling to maintain their identity and faith in a foreign world. And then, when the exile is over and Cyrus, the King of Persia, lets the Israelite people return to Jerusalem with the hope of starting anew in the land of milk and honey, things don’t go quite as planned. Political tensions are high (can you imagine?). The Israelites go forward with dreams of freedom, joy, and peace and instead are met with opposition, injustice, and fear. They came with hope of flourishing, and once again their hopes are dashed. God where are you? God why can’t you see us? Why don’t you ease our pain? Where are your streams of justice and righteousness? How long, O Lord, how long? And as the people are experiencing this despair, God comes in with this promise of shalom: 

“Look! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth. Past events won’t be remembered; they won’t [even] come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, because I’m creating Jerusalem as a joy and her people as a source of gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad about my people. No one will ever hear the sound of weeping or crying in it again... They won’t hurt or destroy at any place on my holy mountain.” 

God comes in with a promise, indeed with a beautiful promise. The Hebrew word “bara’,” used three times in the opening lines of this passage in Isaiah is the same word that is found in the book of Genesis, when God creates the world and “saw that it was good.” Bara’, meaning to create, shape, or form is specifically used when God is the subject, that is, when God is creating, shaping, or forming. When God creates a new heaven, a new earth. When God creates and the people rejoice forever! When God creates Jerusalem as a joy, and when God creates the people as delight. This return to the language of Genesis suggests that in this vision in Isaiah the state of the world is returned to Eden, when God creates, and it is good; when all is right; all is just; all is at peace.

Now, I believe that God is always creating, and that God’s creation is always good. However this does not mean that everything that happens in creation is good. And this distinction is important. There is a difference between God’s good creation and the sin that we introduce into that good creation. Ah yes, sin. Outright, this passage from Isaiah does not seem to be about sin, however I think that in order to adequately address and understand this passage, we have to talk a little bit about sin. You see, the story is repeated many times in the Old Testament (and perhaps perpetually in our lives): The people sin, God sends a sign (usually a prophet) to tell the people they are sinning, eventually (sometimes it takes awhile) the people repent, immediately God shows mercy and grace, and what seems like two days later the people sin, God sends a prophet, the people repent, God shows grace... This story is about relationship with God. It is about our propensity to turn away from God time and time again, to sin, to worship false idols, to loose faith in the Holy One. But while these patterns of sin are prevalent, God constantly calls for renewed relationship, all the while God stands beside us, waiting for us to return to communion with our Creator.

This passage in Isaiah is about sin. The entire middle section of the passage, between the “creating a new earth” opening and the “wolf and lamb together in peace” closing is a section where God reverts society and life to the state it was in before sin entered the picture, that is, before humans in their pride and fear dictated their own lives rather than relying on God, before humans in their pride and fear put their faith in elected leaders rather than in God... It is a reversal of the curses the Israelite people brought upon themselves by turning away from God. This is even more evident when we consider that verses 1 though 16 in this chapter of Isaiah, immediately before this new vision, focus on God’s judgment to those who worship false idols and turn away from God. Isaiah 68:1 begins with God in a somewhat snarky tone saying, “I was ready to respond to those who didn’t ask. I was ready to be found by those who didn’t look for me. I said “I am here! I am here!” to a nation that didn’t call on my name.” Contrast this with the language in verse 24 in the passage about a new vision where God says “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” When we turn from God, God yearns for us to return like a mother in search of her lost child.

This turn away from God is not necessarily a conscious decision, but rather a facet of human life as fundamentally self-centered. It is rooted in how we understand our finite selves in relation to our infinite Creator. To claim to know the will of God, for our world, our nation, our lives, regardless of the content of that will, is to put ourselves in the place of God, to turn away from our relationship with God our creator, and to assert our own power over our own lives and the lives of other people, and in doing so, upend the created order and introduce brokenness into our world. And that brokenness is experienced in many ways. The passage in Isaiah reveals that it is experienced as people labor in vain, bear children for calamity, plant food but still go hungry, build shelter only to not have a place to live. Likewise, we experience that brokenness in our world today. We experience it in the social systems that systematically oppress women, LGBT persons, people of minority races, and people who are poor. We experience it in the hate and division currently circulating in our country. And because of this brokenness, people suffer. Because of this brokenness people are hurt.

Although the brokenness of the world causes suffering, we must resist blaming individual suffering on individual sin. This construction of sin as the cause of suffering has historically been used to further marginalize people who are already marginalized in our society. The most striking example of this construction of sin is to blame disability on the sin of that person with disability or that person’s family. This conception of sin is harmful and inadequate. However, aspects of sin do cause suffering. The ways in which society separates people with disabilities from community are oppressive, sinful, and causes of suffering. In this way, the social constructs that disable people are inherently sinful, inherently not as the world was created to be.

In this worship service today we are focusing on ways to make worship inclusive to people with disabilities, and to celebrate the many gifts that diverse members of our community bring to the table. Aspects of the service were designed so that people who worship differently than “most people” could also feel welcomed in this space to experience God’s grace and love however they desire. Additionally, this service is meant to provide an avenue for conversation, what do you need to bring your whole self to worship? But these questions and this worship service cannot proceed in honesty if we do not truly examine ourselves and our inability to form relationships with people who are different from us, often including people with disabilities, people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, and more.

Mary McClintock Fulkerson, a Presbyterian minister and professor at Duke Divinity School, writes about being in situations where she is the minority in race and ability. She writes, “On my first visit to Good Samaritan UMC there were more Africans and African Americans in attendance than whites, and I became acutely aware of the whiteness of my skin and my unfamiliarity with the experience of being a racial minority. When I approached two of the group-home members, one with Down syndrome, the other sitting twisted in a wheelchair, I felt uncomfortable, not knowing where to put my body or how to communicate with them.” She later reflects that her bodily reaction, her physical discomfort to the situation, revealed a deeper conscious about what she considered as “normal” and her fears about who didn’t fit into that description. She describes this as obliviousness to people who are different from her “normal.” And she names this obliviousness as a sin and a cause of injustice. The title of this piece, “A Place to Appear,” suggests that interactions with those who are different from us cannot be occasional instances of good intentioned inclusion, but rather real, deep, empathetic relationships that shake our foundations of what we, those in power, have defined as normal and right. It requires a return to relationship with each other and with God, a humble return that acknowledges God as the giver of justice and peace.

I read a story recently in a literary text. It was a short story about a little girl walking home from school with her best friend. She was late getting home, and her mother, both annoyed and worried, asked impatiently where she had been and why she was late. The little girl replied that on her way home she had passed her friend sitting on a step, crying because her doll had broken. “Oh,” replied her mother, “so you helped your friend fix her doll?” “No,” said the little girl, and with the wisdom of the universe she replied, “I helped her cry.”

God’s justice and peace on earth is not dependent on anything that we do to help or fix the brokenness of the world. The passage in Isaiah is clear about that. It is bara’, God creating a world of justice and peace. As much as we go out with good intentions to bring people what we think they need, God presents a different narrative. God challenges us to put aside our pride and our intellect, our desire to say that we are in control and that we can fix injustices and bring peace to the world, and instead to be in relationship with God and with each other. To cry with each other. To truly love someone without trying to provide for them and fill their needs, as if anything that we have isn’t already from God. To sit with someone who is different and not be the one who saves, but to love them empathetically as a whole beautiful body created by God. With much of our country in turmoil and division following the election last week, this becomes even more necessary. We must love each other, truly, passionately, and without restraint... in the same way that God loves us.

Living in the new vision that Isaiah presents is to live with the realization that the world is not as God created it to be. It is to recognize our own sin, our own propensity to turn away from God, our own pride and fears that perpetuate the brokenness in the world, while at the same time seeing ourselves and all those people around us as beautiful whole bodies created by God. To live into this vision is not to “fix” people or to “give” them what they need, but to live into relationship with them and with God. Because through relationship we see each other’s needs, and we see each other’s gifts. We become inter-dependent with each other, needing people in our lives just as much as people need us in their lives. And then we come together in worship and praise of God. This is all that is required, as the prophet Micah so reminds us: but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Amen.