The Long Work for Justice--October 10, 2023

The Long Work for Justice--October 10, 2023

"For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts

    is the house of Israel,

 and the people of Judah 

    are his pleasant planting;

 he expected justice,

    but saw bloodshed;

 righteousness,

    but heard a cry!" [Isaiah 5:7]

So, is all the work God goes to for our sake worth the effort?  And... how would you know?

I mean, I know that sounds rather presumptuous to ask whether God's choices are worthwhile. I know that questions about God's ways and will are above my pay-grade and everybody else's, too, but it does seem at least worth asking, because not all effort is useful effort in life. After all, if you insist on painting your walls with a Q-tip-sized paint brush and wonder why it is taking you so long to get the job done, it might be time to consider getting a larger size paint roller.  Or, to borrow that classic line of Jack Handey from an old Saturday Night Life "Deep Thoughts" bit, "If you go through a lot of hammers each month, it might not necessarily mean you're a hard worker; it might just mean you have a lot to learn about proper hammer maintenance."  

And so, when it comes to God's long-suffering, dedicated labor for us, the people of God, it's worth asking, "Is all of God's persistent work for our sake actually worth it?"  We saw yesterday in a few verses from earlier from in this passage in Isaiah 5, which many of us also heard on Sunday morning, that God had gone to great lengths to care for the people of Israel and Judah.  The prophet had compared it to the labor a farmer might go to in order to plant a vineyard--pulling up stones, planting the ground with good vines, building a tower and digging a wine vat, and surely a long list of other daily farm chores.  That's not an easy to-do list, and Isaiah's point was to say that God had gone to a great deal of time, trouble, and effort to care for the people of Israel and Judah.  In Isaiah's little analogy God, the farmer in the story, had been faithful and loyal with enduring love and dedication, and the farmer/God had been willing to do it all, for the sake of having the vineyard produce good grapes.

But when no good harvest came up, and instead the farmer gets wild sour grapes, well, the question goes begging: was it worth it?  And if this farmer in the story is really God, didn't God know it was going to turn out badly?  Why, then, would God go to all that trouble if God knew it would end in disappointment?  Why keep on loving the people and enduring with them if they weren't going to do what God wanted after all?

Hoo boy, that's a thorny question, isn't it?  But at least I hope now it makes sense why I posed it in the first place.  It sure seems like the Bible is here giving us a story in which God goes to a lot of effort, sticking it out with God's people with great labor and at great cost, and then the people don't produce the "fruit" God wants anyway.  And that really does make you wonder why God even bothered with the farm and vineyard in the first place.  Why not just put the ol' divine feet up and give up on humanity?  Why spend the time and effort and heartache over watching us fail to produce good fruit?

Or maybe, to put the question a bit differently, what is it that God intends to get from the whole enterprise that God thinks would make it all worth it?  What is the return God is expecting to get on the investment of all that enduring, persevering love?

Well... it turns out that God's not in it for the usual sort of stuff we might expect.  We tend to say a project is only worth the investment if we make money from it, or if we can somehow eat or use a finished product.  You make repairs on your home or have the kitchen remodeled, both for your own enjoyment while you live there, and so that it will sell for a better price when the time comes to put it on the market.  You put the effort into your job so that you can get a promotion or charge a higher rate for your services.  You expend the sweat and sacrifice the sleep when you are managing a farm in the hopes that it will mean a little better harvest, and maybe you'll make enough selling the corn or the milk or the hogs that the family can hold onto the old homestead for another harvest season and another year.  In other words, we are used to determining if labor is worth undertaking based on how much profit we personally will get from it.

But that's not what makes something worthwhile to God.  God, it turns out has always been interested (and invested) in justice.  When you finally come down to it, that's what the prophet Isaiah said that God was after all along: that the people whom God loves would live in just relationships with one another.  In the whole allegory of God-as-farmer with the people as the vineyard, the harvest that the farmer was working for all along wasn't money, profits, sacrifices in the temple, new converts to the right religion, or even a good bottle of Cabernet: God was always seeking justice from us, and instead the people keep responding with violence and oppression.

This takes all of our expectations about what is worth our effort and turns them upside-down, doesn't it?  Because it means God was never out to "get" anything that was profitable to God.  God doesn't need to be fed with our offerings, and God doesn't need fawning worshipers or a fancy worship space.  God has always been more interested in making us into people who practice justice than in making profits.  And justice and righteousness--the ways we treat one another well and decently--were what kept God committed to working the soil and tending the vines.  God's love and labor have endured, not because God was hoping to get a really nice Temple out of the deal or to make more money in the third quarter, but for the sake of making us into people who do justice.  And of course, as Cornel West puts it so well, justice is what love looks like in public.  In the Biblical sense, it's less about getting revenge on "bad guys" and more about making sure everybody gets to eat, and nobody gets cheated or stepped on.  It's about making sure people are paid enough to live on for their labor, and that nobody gets bullied or elbowed out of the way for good things.  And God has worked for all that, not because God needs it, but because God wants us to live in the fulfillment that comes when we practice justice.  God loves the people who would otherwise be victims of injustice (and who are still victims of injustice).  God loves the people who are hurt by our violence toward each other.  God seeks that we would come to maturity, like grapes ripening on the vine, as people who are more than just self-centered or profit-driven, but who care about the well-being of others.  In other words, justice is what would make all of God's effort worth the while.  And the hope of justice between us is what God has been willing to risk all that labor and enduring love for, even when we keep turning our back on God's wish.

That kind of work is, in a sense, never-ending.  But it is possible to see things change, and to see human beings move away from violence, vengeance, and oppression and toward justice, mercy, and peace.  And because it is possible--indeed, because God refuses to give up on the project of justice--it is worth the enduring commitment to keep at it.  Like the old line Dr. King would often quote says it, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  To believe that means we commit ourselves to the work of doing justice and becoming people of justice, even when it seems fruitless and futile, because we care about the people whose lives are stepped on when justice does not happen.  In other words, we are called to join God in the long-term work of justice because we are called to love the people around us who are harmed when justice is not done.

So we keep at it, even when the news on the headlines makes it seem very depressing and pointless, because love keeps pushing us onward, even through baby steps, and even when it feels like we take more steps backward than forward.  We keep at it because God is convinced that justice (love in public) is worth the effort, no matter how long it takes.

O God, give us your endurance to keep at the work of justice, which is your own heart's goal for us.