The Promise of Justice--March 15, 2022

The Promise of Justice--March 15, 2022

"Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be condemned.  See, the Judge is standing at the doors!" [James 5:9]

There's a line I've heard attributed to John Lennon that goes like this:  "Everything will be OK in the end.  If it's not OK, it's not the end."  You know, for a guy who once dared the world to imagine there's no heaven, he sure did have a keen sense of faithful imagination and confident hope.  He sounds rather like another poetic English voice, who lived about six hundred years before any of the Beatles, remembered by the name Julian of Norwich, who famously said, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be made well." 

What John and Julian both seem to have in mind is a hope--or more than that, a deep conviction--that at the last, everything will be restored, set right, and mended.  And it's that idea I think we need to start with, at least if we are going to talk about God as "Judge."  I fear we are predisposed to hear the word "judge" and immediately become either fearful or vengeful.  We live in a culture, after all, where we think of judges' work primarily in terms of setting punishments, determining guilt, sentencing people to prison, or imposing fines.  We have a way, either of fearing what a judge to could to us, or of salivating at what a judge could do to others we think should be locked up with the key thrown away.  But what if that's not ultimately what a judge should be--much less "The Judge" of all things, God?

What if the true work of a judge is to--wait for it, wait for it--restore justice, not merely to slap punishments on people?  What if a judge's job is to sift through the broken shards of a situation and sift out how to put things back together again, so that the ones who are hurt can be healed, those who have been wronged may see things repaired, and even the ones who have caused harm can be corrected and changed so they don't cause harm to others again?  If that's what justice is, and if that's closer to what a judge is meant to do, then the announcement of a judge standing at the door isn't so much a threat to scare us into good behavior, but a promise that someone really is going to make things right.  And when you really do believe that what is broken will be mended, you are a lot less likely to think you have to take matters into your own hands to get revenge as a substitute for justice.  When you really do believe that in the end, everything will be ok--that "all will be made well"--the thought of a judge appearing isn't something to be afraid of, but a reason to hope for justice to be restored where it is lacking.

I want to suggest that this is how to make sense of James' leap from warning us not to grumble against each other to his pronouncement that "the Judge (God) is standing at the doors."  I think this is less about James threatening that if God catches us grumbling, there will be lightning bolts and hellfire to zap us, and more about saying, "Because we believe that God, the righteous and good judge of all things, is here, we don't have to go picking fights with each other."  If I really do believe along with John Lennon and Julian of Norwich that everything will be set right before the end of the great cosmic story, then I don't have to nurse petty grudges or attack other people in the name of "getting what's mine."  

So often, we have been ingrained with the notion (taught to us by teachers of Respectable Religion) that calling God "Judge" is supposed to make us afraid. We're supposed to be afraid of a vengeful God whose righteousness requires us to be sentenced for our sins, or we're supposed to be relieved that Jesus has come on the scene to show us a "nice" God who doesn't care about justice and only says nice things.  But to be truthful, both of those make the fatal error at the outset of assuming that we are supposed to be opposed to "justice," rather than longing for it.  And that's because we let ourselves get conned into buying a hollowed out, threadbare, and empty understanding of "justice" as merely zapping rulebreakers because the rules demand punishing, rather than "justice" as restoring what is lost, setting right what is out of joint, and making things "OK" that aren't yet "OK."  Once we realize we've been stuck with an anemic understanding of justice that way, we can see that there's more to hope for than just condemning sinners in God's vindictive courtroom.  There is the hope of restoration... of reparation... of reconciliation.  There is the hope of putting things to rights.

And once that happens, once we really do see God as the One who is committed to putting things right, then I don't need to spend quite so much time or energy complaining about piddling little things that annoy me about my neighbor.  I don't have to cast myself as judge when I trust that God really is capable of putting things right--and that God is acting to do that.  When my kids are most at each other's throats and hardest to settle down, it's in the moments when they are convinced for whatever reason that their mom and I won't put things right in whatever matter they're fighting about.  When their envy or jealousy or childish ambition tells them that Mom and Dad aren't going to give them each equal sized pieces of cake for dessert, or when they convince themselves that their sibling is getting easier treatment, they grumble and tattle and harass each other.  But when they can see that there will be justice all around--cake for all, comparable consequences, and rules that apply equally--they tend to settle down.  I guess the question is whether they really can trust that the judges (parents) in the household are going to be just with them or not.

For the people of God it's much the same.  When we forget that God will put all things right, we tend to give ourselves permission to "take matters into our own hands," which usually means revenge rather than justice.  When we trust God's promise to make all things well, we can unclench our fists and let God do the work of restoring and repairing.

So today, whether you take it from James, Julian, or John Lennon, know it to be true:  all will be made well.  And if it's not OK right now, it's not the end.  Maybe we can give one another a break and trust that God is committed to justice--that is, to setting things right and making us whole.  That's the reason it's actually good news in the end that the judge is standing at the door.  

Lord God, may your justice flow like rivers.  May your goodness repair what is broken in us, and may we no longer be afraid of your promise to put things right.