Oh yeah, Justice

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

I just returned from accompanying the youth on a trip to Washington, D.C. The week prior, our young people had left The Portico to travel about in the inner city of Charlotte. They engaged in a unique ministry that allows participants to see and meet and work directly with some of the poverty missions within the city. At the end of the week, the group boarded a train and headed to D.C. for something called "The United Methodist Seminar."

The seminar takes place at the United Methodist building. The first thing that strikes you about the building is the location. It sits across the street from the US Capitol and a stone's throw from the Supreme Court, offering a bird's eye view on all things moving and shaking. No mistake here. When the United Methodist women bought the land and paid for the building back in 1923, it was a clear statement to the powers that be that they would be watching. And they would be speaking, especially on behalf of those who had little voice in the decisions effecting their lives. And for almost 100 years now, the UM church has sought to be a voice of justice to the powers of this land.

The seminar itself was a take-no-prisoners look at homelessness. The presenters explained how common it is to look upon poverty rather than behind it. With a brief nod to the importance of pity and generosity, our teenagers were quickly told that charity is not enough. The Church needs to be a voice of justice on behalf of the poor. The Church needs to act, to work on the root causes and seek to eradicate the factors that give rise to the conditions that we are so good at feeling bad about.

The focus of the seminar fit well with the sermon that we had heard the day before. At Asbury UMC, we listened as Fred Smith likened our time to the days of the prophet Amos. Citing everything from interest rates to global warming, Fred noted the apocalyptic tones ringing all around us. Like Amos, the preacher denied any confident credentials in the matters of God, simply noting, "I'm just saying..."

For me, the trip was a bit of a trip down memory lane. This was Christianity as I had known at an earlier point in my life. In college, I used to gather with a group of people who would get together specifically to pray about peace and ways to work for nuclear disarmament. During seminary, my roomate volunteered a couple of times a month at the men's shelter in Durham, staying overnight with the homeless men who took refuge there. When I first entered the ministry, I worked with two inner city organizations in Des Moines, Iowa. My closest friends were people that Micah and Amos would have been happy to hang out with. These were pastors who worked in the farm-workers movement and met regularly with city councilmen to make sure the poor had a voice. They seemed to have boundless energy, fighting for every justice issue they encountered.

It's not that I no longer believe in such things, it's just that it all seems so much harder now and maybe a little more complicated. While the seminar leaders and our youth director, Matt Smith, kept using the word uncomfortable, the word that kept coming to my mind was overwhelming. There is just so much to do--so much need. Like eating the proverbial elephant, I am not sure where to take the first bite.

Meanwhile, the signs of tempest swirl around us. The preacher's analogy to Amos and his time was a fair warning to any of us who might be listening and who might be able to figure out what we might do. And perhaps the most challenging part of all this is the subtlety of it all. No one intentionally sets out to be unjust. People are not trying to purposely ignore or disenfranchise the folks on the fringe. Nobody plans to tear up the planet. It just sort of happens. Maybe it's a by-product of our broken humanity. Not to offer an excuse but some kind of explanation. The self interest, the ambition, the excess...it adds up. And it does do damage, even if unintentional.

I like the words from Micah. I like them because, unlike the overwhelming nature of injustice, the Lord's answer to the question here actually seems doable. Perhaps we can commit ourselves to something as simple as this--to doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly... Perhaps this is something that we can keep in front of us as well--maybe write it on our hands or stick it to the regrigerator with a magnet. So often justice seems to be a monolith--an impossible problem that we all have to fix. And perhaps that's part of the problem. Rather than trying to eat the entire elephant in one bite, maybe we just have to hear and respond to these words from Micah. Each of us hearing and committing ourselves to a simple formula that invites us to live a little more lightly, a little more decently. I think I might be able to do that.