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"The Last Word on Justice"

You would think, by the amount of attention we pay to it in the mainline churches, that sex was the most important issue in all of Holy Scripture. All in all, I can only think of a dozen passages or so that concern matters of sexual behavior. In contrast, book after book in the Bible addresses itself to matters of justice and righteousness, poverty and wealth. It’s in the prophets, like Zechariah, when he says, “Administer true justice...do not defraud the widow and the orphan, the sojourner and the poor.” It’s in the Psalms: “Give justice to the weak and fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” It’s in the letters: “What good is it if you say you have faith but do not have works? If a brother or sister is naked or lacks food, and you say to them, ‘Go in peace, and keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet don’t supply for their needs, what is the good of that?” And it’s in the mouth of Jesus himself, as we read in the Gospel of Matthew:

The righteous will say, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.”

Our Biblical mandate is to love righteousness, to protect the poor, to care for the vulnerable. The Old Testament points to four particularly vulnerable kinds of people: the widows, the orphans, the sojourners, and the aliens in the land. Now, in their society, they had no rights, and they were at the mercy of others to protect them. Jesus expands the circle of care to include everyone in need, anyone who is hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or sick, or imprisoned. Even this is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, beyond which we’re off the hook. No, Jesus’ goal is to expand our vision to look beyond categories, to look with compassion on real human beings in very real human need. Jesus invites us to care.

The great Catholic writer Henri Nouwen taught a class in our seminary that he titled, simply, “Compassion.” Compassion, he reminded us, is a simple compound word that literally means, “suffering with.” To have compassion isn’t to pity, or look down, or try even to rescue someone in grave trouble. No, compassion begins by “suffering with” our neighbor in need, putting ourselves in their shoes.

The greatest civic leaders have known how powerfully compassion propels us into action. One community organizer confessed, “There was a time when I believed that the basic quality [I] needed was a deep sense of anger against injustice, and that this was the prime motivation that kept [me] going. I now know that it is something else: this abnormal imagination that sweeps [me] into a close identification with mankind and projects [me] into its plight. ...[The great lawyer] Clarence Darrow [put it this way]: ‘I had a vivid imagination. Not only could I put myself in the other person’s place, but I could not avoid doing so.’”

Jesus calls us to care, to have a compassionate imagination, to suffer with our neighbors. But where do we start? Maybe the reason we avoid these passages of Scripture and focus on things like sex instead is that it is so very difficult for us to know where to begin. How do we address the enormous problems of the poor? The World Bank estimates that 1.5 billion people live in abject poverty, on less than $1 a day. Millions in the U.S. try to get by without health insurance. Thousands of African babies die every day of AIDS. It’s mind-boggling. And it’s tempting to throw in the towel, to turn our backs and forget about it. But that’s not an option for those of us who follow Jesus.

So what can we do? The reality is we can’t do everything, you and I. We’re not going to eradicate hunger or rescue all the children from war this evening. But we can do something. It may feel like a drop in the bucket. It may seem like Don Quixote, thrusting at windmills. But Jesus invites us to do what we can anyway. His promise is that whatever we do, it will add up. It matters.

“When did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you drink?” the righteous asked him. And Jesus said, “Whenever you did it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” Instead of focusing on what we can’t do, Jesus urges us to focus on what we can.

My conviction is that we can do a whole lot more than we give ourselves credit for. Even little kids can bring a book to send to someone poorer than they are, or stick up for the underdog on the playground. Imagine what we can do as adults. We have unprecedented resources in America today: of money, of expertise, of political power, of passion. We live in a free democracy, in which we can vote for leaders who we believe will do justice, and we can pressure them with our will to remember the most vulnerable. We can decide as a society that there’s a bottom line of poverty below which we will not let our brothers and sisters fall. We can decide to open our eyes and see the crushing weight of poverty, as was revealed to us when Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans. We can decide as consumers and investors and as leaders to make the hard call to make morality our bottom line. We can decide that justice isn’t only for the wealthy, but it’s for all.

And in the meantime, we can be rolling up our sleeves for the little things—the daily things—that all of us can be a part of. Stacking cans in a food pantry. Writing a letter to the editor. Tutoring a child. Taking soup to a shut-in. Sending money to the victims of a natural disaster. Visiting a prisoner. Sticking up for the weak, or the helpless, or simply the invisible.

There’s a novel that I turn to whenever I’m discouraged, whenever my own compassion fails me and I’m tempted to avert my eyes from sorrow. The novel is called Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver. And towards the end the hero of the story, Hallie, who is helping the poor in Central America, writes to her sister Codi back in the States. Hallie does her best to try to explain her choices and in the process, she reminds us all what a difference every simple, daily choice can make. For compassion. For caring. For justice.

“You’re thinking of [justice] as a great all-or-nothing,” she says. “I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the undersides of leaves to see what’s been there, figuring out what to do that won’t clear a path for worse problems next week. Right now that’s what I do. You ask why I’m not afraid of loving and losing, and that’s my answer. ...The daily work, that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children’s bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don’t get lost.

“Codi, here’s what I’ve decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is to live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I’m living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”

“When did we see you hungry and give you bread, or thirsty and give you something to eat?” “Whenever you did to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did so to me.” All it takes is a little compassion, a little imagination, the will to see the suffering when it’s tempting to avert our eyes. And the hope—the victorious hope—that every large and little thing we do will matter.

Interview with Christine Chakoian

Lydia Talbot: Christine, your wonderful message on justice reminds me of a vision for justice that most people learn in Sunday school. How was your own vision shaped?

Christine Chakoian: I did learn it in Sunday school and I learned it at my parents’ knees. And I learned it from my Armenian grandmother whose family suffered so much in the genocide. I learned that every single one of us is neighbor to each other and that every little bit of caring really matters.

Talbot: Solidarity in the suffering is essential there.

Daniel Pawlus: Absolutely. What jumped out at me was this idea that we struggle with comfort in our society today when we think about justice. We value comfort a great deal and it helps us avert our eyes for lack of a better way of saying it. What are your thoughts about that challenge with comfort versus justice?

Chakoian: I think it’s easy for us to find compassion fatigue when there are too many things facing us and the desire, the lure of comfort in our own lives. And justice is never at the expense of joy. I think our own comfort and joy are things that the Lord also desires for us, but it’s a matter of sharing those things so that everyone is welcome into the Kingdom.

Talbot: You say comfort. It’s been said that if we take the faith seriously and authentically that we must be about comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable. How does that work for you as a pastor, Christine? What do you say to parishioners who don’t want to be disturbed?

Chakoian: That’s a great question. I think that as they come to appreciate the deep love that God has for them, they are more able to let go of those things that they think will give them ultimate comfort. They’ll begin to open their hands and share those things because they know that their real comfort lies in a love that’s so much larger than anything they own or anything they can have. There is an appreciation, a thanksgiving, that comes with that love of God that I think allows us to love our neighbor.

Talbot: I love the Henri Nouwen quote that you used. Compassion, a compound word: “suffer with.”

Pawlus: Absolutely. I related to that a lot. And the other beautiful insight you had from the story at the end of your message about how we can look at justice in a smaller lens rather than thinking about it as large and about big things all the time. It really resonated for me as well.

Chakoian: Right. It’s at both ends: the large things that we look at and participate in and own, and also the little things that we do that can add up, that don’t go away.

Talbot: How do you begin to talk about justice with your daughter, Anna. Of course she’s now in high school, but what is that process for a parent?

Chakoian: Well, for me the church helps a lot. In my last church we had a homeless shelter downstairs every Saturday night and so it was easy for her to make the connection about God’s love for her and our love then for the poorest of the poor. Our youth groups help us connect with people that might not normally be on our radar screen. I think the church can be a help to all parents and we can get past some of the isolation that we have in our little communities, wherever we live. We think our own little area is the only one that is.

Talbot: You quoted the World Bank: 1.5 billion folks on this earth living in abject poverty, earning less than a dollar a day. I’m thinking of The Eyes of the Poor, a short story by Charles Baudelaire, the French writer, where the family with children outside the restaurant window looking in and he does not read his own thoughts in the eyes of his wife because she wants them to go away. Isn’t that the attitude that we often face, look away?

Chakoian: Right. And that is the temptation. I really do think that is precisely the temptation for all of us, either because we feel helpless to face those big questions or because we are afraid that our comfort is going to be dislodged. It’s going to demand too much of us so we don’t want to look at it at all. So it takes some effort to keep facing the questions and not to try to do it alone but to be in community with one another asking those things. And I think many people of good will really want to do the right thing.

Pawlus: We are so glad that you’ve been with us today and wish we had more time to share you message with us.

Chakoian: Thank you.

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