Frontline Church, Liverpool 31st Oct 2010
Good morning. Its great to be back here - over a decade since I left as a student. It is great find you have lost none of your warmth, dynamism and energy.
I come here today with a simple message. It is this; that issues of justice are right at the core of the Christian faith and that the renewal of the church and our own spiritual growth depends upon the commitment we have to those issues. Social Justice is not an issue Christians can add as an optional extra - like ordering extra cheese on your pizza. It is the pizza.
I want to start with a story.
There was once a devout man who lived in a world where all religious belief was illegal. He was accused of being a follower of Christ, arrested and dragged before a court.
He had been under clandestine surveillance for some time and so the prosecution had been able to build up quite a case against him; photographs that show him attending church meetings, speaking at religious events, and participating in prayer and worship services; poems and journal entries concerning his faith; a well worn bible, with scribbles, notes, and underlinings throughout.
Once the prosecution had finished presenting the case, the judge looked deep into his eyes and began to speak;
‘Of the charges that have been brought forward, I find the accused, not guilty’. ‘Not Guilty?’. Fear and terror turn to confusion and rage. He demands that the judge gives an account concerning why he is innocent of the charges.
‘What about the poems and prose that I wrote, the services I spoke at?’ He said. ‘They simply prove that you think of yourself as a poet – evidence you are good actor perhaps - nothing more’. replied the judge. ‘But this is madness. It would seem that no evidence would convince you!’
‘Not so’ replies the judge. The court is indifferent towards your bible reading and church attendance. It has no concern with your worship with words or a pen. We exist only for those only for those who would lay down their life in an endeavour to create a better world – not describe it. They are a threat to our state. So until you live as Christ and his followers did, until you challenge this system and become a thorn in our side, until you die to yourself, then my friend, you are no enemy of ours..’
Peter Rollins
After leaving Liverpool as a student, I have had the real honour to travel across in Asia, South America and Africa and hear the stories of the poor; stories of great suffering, but stories of faith and a struggle for justice.
My first job after University was to work with the Foreign Office and the family of James Mawdsley – who was a 27 year old imprisoned in Burma for a peaceful protest against the military regime. I saw up close where a deep Christian faith and a belief in justice for the world’s poor can lead you. It’s a dangerous calling. For James, it meant 17months in solitary confinement with just a copy of the bible and Thomas A Kempis’ Imitation of Christ for company.
We eventually made ourselves enough of a nuisance that the Burmese regime released James. It was good to make use of my God-given gift to make a nuisance of myself! I had worked myself out of a job but found a vocation.
The concept of justice does not need explaining. We know it when we see its anti-thesis; injustice. I’ve seen it in the tears of my son when his Buzz Lightyear toy has been snatched from him; I’ve also seen it in the ashes of a Burmese home, burnt to the ground before an elderly grandmother had time to escape.
We need to get angry about injustice but not act in anger.
No issue of injustice is so endemic, so scandalous, so damaging than the issue of poverty. In today’s world there are a billion people living in conditions comparable to feudal Britain in the 14th century. The bottom billion of our world live in about 40 countries that instead of moving forward, are on a slow train that is decisively moving backwards. If you live in one of those countries, 14% of your children will die before they are four years old. Average life expectancy is 47.
I recently visited another of these countries. Sierra Leone only comes ahead of Niger and Afghanistan – in the UN Human Dev index. Sierra Leone is resource rich – it has diamonds, iron ore deposits, beautiful beaches. But the reason people live in poverty are rooted in its 15 years of civil war – a war that ordinary people did not ask. It is also rooted in the unequal playing field that allows Western companies to mine their precious natural resources without paying fair rates of tax that could be used to build schools, roads and hospitals. I met with executives of a mining firm in SL and they flatly refused to comply with SL’s own legislation about how much tax should be paid by mining companies. It is also rooted in the worsening climate that has seen more erratic weather conditions and lower yields for poor farmers. It complex but lets be clear. It amounts to a huge injustice.
We all need light bulb moment to shake us from accepting the world as it is. I remember that moment for me. I was visiting a village of Leffe in the Siltie region of central Ethiopia. It was the rainy season and on the surface at least, all seemed lush and fertile.
But the green vegetation flattered to deceive. The water table was dangerously low and access to clean water was a huge problem.
As I climbed up a bank, what confronted me needed to be seen to be believed. Half a dozen women are wading knee deep in turgid, brown coloured water. They were helping each other fill brightly coloured jerry cans as part of a daily routine to collect and carry the 20 litres of water they need. Buzzing mosquitoes surround them – this is a natural breeding ground for malaria, typhoid and water-borne diseases.
I spoke with one of the women, Fatima Ahmed, who was carrying her three year old daughter on her back as she collected water. She told me that she sometimes she sees worms swimming in her water but she has limited choice. The only alternative is a three hour round trip to the nearest stream. I asked her what she used the water for; she said, cooking, cleaning and drinking.
In the 21st century, women are still collecting water that could kill them.
As Bono said ‘Africa didn’t just blow my mind, it opened my mind!’ Poverty is a scandal – because it exists as a result of the active choice of the empowered and privileged. Did you know that there is more money spent on treating baldness than treating malaria? A million people die each year from malaria – 90% are children under 5 in Africa. I have to tell you that if a million American or European children were dying of malaria, we would find the money for treatment.
That is exactly why Christ gave us the prophetic mandate to address issues of justice. Christian are surely called to make choices that support the weakest not exploit or expose them.
And we know where different choices can lead. Revd Jesse Jackson was with us in London last week and he reminded me that the civil rights movement, led by the churches, created the reality in which he now lives. He now lives in a country where he no longer gets jailed for stepping into a public library. That’s justice.
There are over 2000 verses that point us to God’s view of poverty and justice. Psalm 82 3-4 is one; ‘Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy.’ So, the gospel is emphatically good news for society as well as the individual.
In Luke 4.18, in one Jesus’ first public pronouncements, he sets his mission statement for his ministry when he unrolls the scroll in the synagogue; ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed.’ This was a man with a vision of spiritual and social transformation.
Theologically, there is a danger of privatising salvation to an emotional experience which fails to fully lead us into the challenge of Christ’s calling on our lives. The mystery of the gospel is that it draws us inward to understand ourselves and God and pushes outward to love and act. This is the essence of faith captured in Micah 6 8;
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy (that’s the outward process)
and to walk humbly with your God (that’s the inner life)
My reflection of my own discipleship is that it majored on the inner journey to the neglect of the outer one. We need a clear theology of justice so that we ensure it does not become relegated to an optional extra. For me this comes with an understanding that relationships at every level, individual, local, national and international, are fractured. It is from these fractured and unequal relationships that creates much of the pain and injustice we see in today’s world. Christ’s redemptive mission was to restore right relationships between Himself and His people but also between people, communities and nations.
So the relational theology brings together the inner and outer journey – something that it elusive. The Franciscan writer Richard Rohr writes ‘All of us (every church) have evaded the unmistakable teaching of Jesus’ challenge on poverty. All of us have evaded his straightforward doctrine of loving your enemy. Jesus is too much for us.’
For me, the quest for a more just world is the defining challenge of our generation. I believe that the dividing lines between churches for the next generation will not be between Protestants and Catholics or between evangelicals and liberals; I think the great distinction will be between those Christians who build issues of justice into the very DNA of their faith.
So where to start? what can we actually do? Jesus wasn’t prescriptive about how to respond. No easy answers. His use of parables left his audience an active part to find their own conclusions. And that’s the same challenge for you today but here are a few hints.
1. Courage – it always takes courage to fight injustice because you will be exposing vested interest and powerful alliances. We need courage to decide to challenge our own self-interest and make choices that carry a cost
2. Creativity - there are many options to respond; to volunteer time, perhaps giving your expertise as a trustee, to give money, to review your own carbon consumption, to buy/invest and use your money more ethically, to learn about a specific issue, to educate and inspire others, to use your voice in protest. The key is to match your God-given talents and harness them in a just cause. If you are a teacher, teach the young to fight injustice, if you are an intellectual, use it to help shape policy that will benefit the poor, if you are a writer or muscian, tell the stories of the poor.
3. Commitment – we have to decide to do something. To reject indifference and align our values, choices and actions.
Just like the man in the story we have to make sure we are ‘not too busy doing church work that we fail to do the work of the church’.
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