Social Justice & the Gospel

Jul 26

Back in 2005 Chris and I found ourselves traveling from Uzghorod, Ukraine to New Orleans, LA. Actually, that first summer we stayed in a back room in a church in Baton Rouge, LA driving two hours into the city of N’awlins, each way, each day, but that isn’t particularly pertinent to this story.

When I graduated high school and followed Jesus to the mission field, I knew I wanted to make a difference and in typical people pleaser fashion I wanted to be perceived as a “real” missionary. You know, the kind who really suffered for Jesus. Eastern Europe and Bahamas wasn’t the back jungle of Africa, but the rats and sewage issues in our apartment complex in Port Lucaya coupled with tangible spiritual darkness in Ukraine, I felt I was hitting the marks of being a missionary. More importantly we were building relationships with our students during the school year and had opportunity to pour into American teenagers on short-term missions trips during the summers. So far, my missions experience had been impactful. It was a sweet time for me.

The Spring of 2005 brought Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf Coast of the United States and with it between $81-$150 billion of damage to Louisiana and Mississippi. As we sat in our apartment in Ukraine with its slow dial-up internet I knew in my spirit we would be going to New Orleans. Sure enough, Chris and I went the following Spring to start a base for our missions organization for flood and disaster relief teams to aid in the recovery efforts.

As we were flying back to the states, I felt let down. In my limited understanding of living life for Jesus I somehow thought the super Christians were overseas missionaries, suffering. I felt going to New Orleans would ruin my image, I worried our supporters wouldn’t understand we were still doing what God had called us to do. Maybe they would stop supporting us financially. I realize now these attitudes and thought processes are off, but I am committed to keeping it real and in order for you to hear where I am going you have to know where I was.

The church we were privileged to partner with when in New Orleans was an Episcopalian church. Deacon Milton and his wife Beth became like surrogate parents to Chris and me, bringing us into the fold of their double-wide trailers as they worked tirelessly to aid the community that surrounded them while their own church and homes were in disrepair. I was newly pregnant with our first born, Aimee, and by doctors orders I wasn’t allowed to do the heavy lifting that gutting houses required. Also, I was making mask wearing cool way back in 2005 as apparently mold isn’t great for pregnant mothers either. Because of all this, I got to go on excursions into the city with Deacon Quinn.

Deacon Quinn was endearing. His light hearted, easy-going nature won me over immediately. We would ride in his truck, which was packed with coolers filled with ice cold bottles of water, packs of cheese crackers and cans of Vienna sausages. We traveled into the hardest hit parts of the city, which also happened to be the poorest before the storm, and in an old Walgreens parking lot set up our tables often alongside a Loaves & Fishes truck. The people would come, the line formed and we stayed until we ran out.

I learned a valuable lesson those long hot days in New Orleans riding with Deacon Quinn and unpacking cans of Vienna Sausage. I learned the value of a bottle of cold water. In Mathew chapter 10 verse 42 Jesus says,

“And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”

And as I handed out those bottles of water to people who had lost not only their homes and all of their worldly possessions, but also in too many cases their family and loved ones as well, I learned to serve Jesus is to serve people and to follow him with my life had very little to do with me.

It didn’t matter if I was in Ukraine, Bahamas, Africa, Guatemala or New Orleans. People are people and there are people everywhere who need to be seen, loved and given a bottle of cold water.

Those bottles opened up doors for me to sit with people and listen to their stories, and was maybe the first time I learned the power of listening to someone’s story. I had opportunities to pray with people. I asked and they were more than receptive. What else did I have to give these beautiful people who had lost everything? A bottle of cold water and a conversation bringing them to the feet of Jesus. It is all I had and somehow, in that moment it was enough.

Jesus spoke to my heart in many ways that summer but maybe the most valuable thing he taught me was; if we call ourselves Jesus Followers , we are missionaries. The Great Commission clears this one up for us. It doesn’t matter where he asks us to go or what he asks us to do, he does the work and we are the vessel. When we care about a person’s physical thirst just as much as their Spiritual thirst, then we are living the gospel.

_are+we+really+accomplishing+the+great+commission+or+are+we+just+_+%281%29.jpg

It is funny in an ironic sort of way, no one stopped supporting us because we did Hurricane Katrina relief work in the Gulf Coast that summer, yet my fears of being not “missionary” enough were fulfilled years later when I learned about human trafficking and began the journey to be a missionary in my own hometown. My bottles of water look different now, more like advocating for those who are being exploited and creating space for collaboration. Tim Keller in “Generous Justice” says this about his experience and I resonate.

“Why, I wondered, did the nonreligious people believe so passionately in equal rights and justice, while the religious people I knew could not have cared less?”

I have heard from too many Christians to count that because I wasn’t doing work explicitly giving people the opportunity to “ask Jesus into their hearts”, what I was doing wasn’t good enough. Oh, they didn’t say it exactly like that, they didn’t have to. I got their message over and over again. American Christians (especially those with the ability to give money) wanted proven results that the work I was doing was turning out more people like them. In the church climate I am accustomed to we have lost the value of a cup of cold water with no strings attached.

We learn through the Gospel that Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life to make our relationship with God right again. We were created to be in a garden-walking relationship with our Creator, but when we choose to break trust with him and go our own way, our relationship with him is no longer right. Jesus righted that by taking the consequences we very much deserve on himself when he died. He experienced injustice so that we could be made right. He took our case and made it his own.

We crave justice as human beings because God is a God of justice and we are made in his image. He requires things to be right, for us to respect him and each other. He satisfied his own need for justice and then he empowers those who have been given a right relationship with him, through Jesus, to step into situations of injustice and try to make those right as well.

We cannot separate justice from the gospel. They are one and the same. To care about the gospel is to live out justice. Tim Keller in his book “Generous Justice” defines Mishpat, the Hebrew word for justice in Micah 6:8, as “rectifying justice”. He goes on to describe the Hebrew word for “being just” or “being right” (tzadeqah) as primary justice. It is out of a right relationship with God that we can, by the power of his Holy Spirit, go into the world and attempt to live right with others. This primary justice (tzadeqah) is defined by Keller as treating all others with generosity, fairness and equity. If we are living in a right relationship with God, the natural overflow of that relationship will be fighting to live in right relationship with each other by both rectifying wrongs (mishpat) and living “right” (tzadeqah). He goes on to say when we find these two words combined together, over 12 times in the Bible, they can be translated as being “social justice”. For example:

“The Lord loves social justice, the earth is full of his unfailing love” Psalm 33:5

The very nature of living out justice, both rectifying justice and primary justice (rightness), is social. There is no separating the two. We see over and over in God’s word, to live out justice, or “do justice” means acting on behalf of the vulnerable, marginalized, orphan, immigrant and widow. And this “doing justice” comes out of a gospel experience with Jesus Christ, recognizing the rightness (justice) he has brought to our own lives.

I handed out bottles of cold water and cans of Vienna Sausage that summer 13 years ago and learned that people and their stories matter to God and when I choose to make my life about rectifying justice (mishpat) doors open for me to lead them to him.

We don’t care for people to put another notch in our Christian belts or get another rose for the piano. We care for people because Jesus cares for people, because God mandates us to make our lives about social justice. This glorifies him.

Last week, Chris and I were in a hotel at the North Shore of Minnesota and as we were getting ready to leave for the day. Chris had a sports channel pulled up on the T.V. There was an injustice that had come to light with female employees in a professional football program and the commentators were discussing it. I was in the bathroom but at one point I said to Chris, “Who is that guy talking?” He told me he was a well-known and well-respected sports commentator. He caught my attention because he was so passionately advocating for the women who had been wronged. It was like he himself had been wronged. He took up their cause as it was his own. It was powerful.

This is what Jesus did for us on the cross. He took up our cause as if it was his own. He took the consequences that we have earned and went to the cross, satisfying the requirement for God’s justice. It is in recognizing this, and the humility that comes with it, when we can then go and take up the causes of others as if they were our own and live lives marked by justice.

The opportunities are endless for you and I to do justice as an out pouring of our righted relationship with God through Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit. The stories around us are riddled with injustices if we will only take the time to listen.

If you have told yourself you don’t have to know about issues of justice because you have believed that the Gospel is all you need in your hand to follow Jesus in this world - or if you have convinced yourself missionaries who suffer in Africa are super Christians and you aren’t one of them - I pray you can learn with me the lesson I first learned in New Orleans and have learned over and over again. We are all called to walk out into our world with bottles of cold water, both to rectify injustices and so our lives are marked by justice. Doing justice in this way will open doors for each and every one of us to talk freely about our Savior Jesus Christ, and friend we can trust him to do the rest.