21 March 2013

Jesus and Justice

Written by 
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University http://askquestions.tv/speakers/wolterstorff/

In the first lecture I touched on political justice as theorized in the works of philosophers John Rawls and Agnes Heller. But far from locking us into theoretical considerations, their thinking helped us reflect on the current turmoil in Egypt. In the midst of the specific historic challenges Egyptians face in 2013, its leaders have to find a just balance between the drive to give equal political access to all (the democratic ethos) and the mission to ensure that minorities also have a voice (the liberal ethos).

I had agreed with Heller who stated that beyond the need for good institutions to be in place, justice in politics can only be served by “good and decent” leaders who follow high ethical values recognized universally. In this lecture, turning to Christianity, I focus on this personal dimension of justice, which always runs parallel to the wider issue of justice on a collective scale.

We will use as our guide Nicholas Wolterstorff (b. 1932), Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University (retired 2002), who devoted the last decade to the issue of justice, both in the Bible and in today’s political arena. In particular, we will look at his widely acclaimed 2008 book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs. His philosophical grounding of justice in humanity’s “inherent rights” stands in contrast to mainstream ideas of justice as “right order.” Philosopher Richard J. Bernstein claims that “Wolterstorff’s Justice is the most impressive book since John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.”

 

Background

But first, a little background is called for. In a couple of chapters on the Old Testament, Wolterstorff had summarized his findings in two simple phrases:

 

1. God always acts justly and seeks to bring about justice in human society

2. God holds people accountable for doing justice

 

Coming to the New Testament he declares, “Justice, along with its negative, injustice, is one of the main themes in the New Testament . . . In this world of ours, persons are wronged, justice is breached. That is the ever-present context of the New Testament writings” (96).

So the Hebrew Bible theme of God’s jealous love for the poor and his calling the oppressors to account continues in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The new Pope Francis I is surely in line with his Master’s vision as he calls for a “Church of the Poor.” God’s justice is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, but with a deep irony. Jesus is God’s Messiah sent to inaugurate God’s reign of justice; yet God’s messenger falls victim to injustice -- an injustice willed by God as his Son’s ultimate sacrifice, through which he sides forever with all the world’s victims. More on this later.

The word used in Greek philosophical literature for “justice” (like in Plato’s Republic) is dikaiosuné, and for “just” dikaios. It is the same word used in the Septuagint (Greek version of the Old Testament known in Jesus’ day) and in the New Testament to translate two different yet related concepts: righteousness (a personal quality) and justice (a wider concept involving relationships between people). But Christians have tended to translate this term in either case as “righteousness.” And that creates a distortion of Jesus’ message.

Look at how the term is used in the Beatitudes (Jesus’ eight “blessings” at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount). The first instance is this, ““Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (dikaiosuné), for they will be filled.” Many translations use “justice” instead of “righteousness.” But in the second instance, “righteousness” doesn’t make sense at all: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 5:6, 10). Why would you be persecuted for being devout and God-fearing? It’s more likely that you had defended the rights of the oppressed and thus stepped on the toes of the mighty.

Wolterstorff says that dikaiosuné can be translated by both terms and that one has to look at the context to see which one is most appropriate. Unfortunately, translators have tended to take “justice” out of the picture.

 

Jesus fulfills the Old Testament narrative

There is a story line you can trace throughout the Bible from a Christian perspective. Jesus is the promised Messiah intimated from the beginning, announced in the calling of Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel, and then clearly predicted by the many prophets who followed before and after the exile. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Hays writes about Luke’s important contribution in his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament:

 

“The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are two parts of a single grand literary work in which Luke tells the story of salvation history in a stately and gracious manner. God’s mighty act of deliverance through Jesus Christ is narrated as an epic, in such a way that the church might discover its location in human history, particularly within the history of God’s dealings with his people Israel (112)”

 

Wolterstorff singles out three of the Old Testament themes regarding the coming Messiah -- themes that Jesus consciously fulfills:

 

1. The one who brings justice

In the classic passage Jesus chose to read in his hometown synagogue he quotes from the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-20).

Startled by his first sentence (“The scripture you’ve just heard is fulfilled this very day”), his male audience look at him unconvinced. Jesus tells them what they’re thinking, “You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself’ – meaning , ‘Do miracles here in your hometown like those you did in Capernaum.’ But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown” (vs. 23-24).

Then they become enraged as Jesus tells them they are just as hardened spiritually as their ancestors in the days of the prophet Elijah who chose a foreign widow (in today’s Lebanon) to display God’s power and mercy; or in the days of his successor Elisha who healed a Syrian general of his leprosy. They tried to kill Jesus then and there.

Later, when John the Baptist began to doubt Jesus’ mission in prison, Jesus let his envoys observe his work for a while and sent them back saying, “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22).

Significantly, in the Isaiah reading that Jesus read from chapter 61, he had added a phrase (“let the oppressed go free”) from chapter 58. Here’s the exact passage, where the prophet chides his people about fasting without caring for the poor and the downtrodden:

 

“No, this is not the kind of fasting I want:

Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;

lighten the burden of those who work for you.

Let the oppressed go free

and remove the chains that bind people.

Share your food with the hungry,

and give shelter to the homeless …” (Isaiah 58:6-7).

 

Matthew understands Jesus’ ministry in the same way; further on in his gospel he quotes from another of Isaiah’s five “servant songs:

 

   “Look at my Servant … He is my chosen one …

     I have put my Spirit upon him.

     He will bring justice to the nations.

     He will not shout or raise his voice in public.

     He will not crush the weakest reed

         or put out a flickering candle.

     He will bring justice to all who have been wronged.

     He will not falter or lose heart

until justice prevails throughout the earth” (Isaiah 42:1-4).

 

Most commentators see in the last line of Jesus’ synagogue reading (“that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,” lit. “the year of the Lord’s favor) a promise to restore the Year of Jubilee, all but forgotten by the Jews in history. According to Moses' law, every 49th year all debts had to be released, land went back to the original owners, and all agricultural land had to lay fallow.

Luke too makes clear Jesus’ concern for the poor (not just “poor in spirit”):

 

“God blesses you who are poor,

   for the kingdom of God is yours.

God blesses those who are hungry now,

   for in due time you will laugh” (Luke 6:20-21).

 

Luke is the only gospel to tell the parable of Lazarus and the rich man “who was dressed in fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day,” while poor Lazarus lay covered with sores, wishing he could just eat some crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. After death, their fortunes are reversed. Angels carry Lazarus to Abraham’s side, while the rich man is tormented in “the place of the dead.” He realizes too late that he didn’t “repent of his sins and turn to God” (Luke 16:30).

 

2. Jesus as innocent

I’ve written before that by far Isaiah is the prophet Jesus quotes the most. Luke especially picks up the theme of Isaiah 53, the last of the “servant songs,” in which God’s righteous servant is crushed for his people’s sins:

 

“My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,

like a root in dry ground . . .

He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief . . .

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;

it was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,

a punishment for his own sins.

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God’s paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on his the sins of us all . . .

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.

And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,

he did not open his mouth.

Unjustly condemned he was led away” (Isaiah 53:2, 3-8 NLT).

 

Consider these events during and after Jesus’ passion:

3 times Pilate, the Roman governor, declares Jesus “innocent” (Luke 23: 4, 14, 22)

One of the criminals on the cross rebukes his comrade on the other side of Jesus, “Do you not fear God? … And we indeed have been condemned justly … but this man has done nothing wrong” (23:40-41).

Luke again in Acts speaks of Jesus as the innocent martyr; for instance, in the speech that leads to his martyrdom Stephen accuses his hearers of killing “the innocent one (dikaios)” (Acts 8:33).

 

3. Jesus as King

Right from the beginning, and throughout the four gospels, Jesus announces the coming of God’s kingdom in his person: “The time promised by God has come at last! The Kingdom of God is near! Repent and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15)

Luke recounts the same discourse on Jesus’ lips, “Yet know this: the Kingdom of God has come near” (10:11). Further on in the gospel Jesus declares, “In fact, the Kingdom of God is among you” (17:21).

Often it’s non-Jews who recognize Jesus’ kingship. Think of the three Magi, or wise men, who traveled from the east and, upon coming into Jerusalem, ask King Herod, “Where is the child who was born king of the Jews?” (Mat. 2:2) Matthew in recounting the story of his birth also quotes from the prophet Micah (5:2):

 

“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

you are by no means least among the rulers of Judah,

for from you shall come a ruler

who is to shepherd my people Israel” (quoted in Mat. 2:6).

 

To any Jew at the time, Messiah was to come and rule – and rule with justice, as we read in Psalm 72:

 

“Give your king justice, O God,

and your righteousness to a king’s son.

May he judge your people with righteousness,

and your poor with justice …

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people …”

 

So perhaps Pilate, knowing this fact about the Jews, used it to spite the Jews who had strong-armed him to crucify Jesus. He made sure that Jesus died with this sign over his head, “King of the Jews.” But what none of those witnesses to Jesus’ crucifixion realized that day – from the Roman governor to the Jewish leaders, from his own followers (mostly women) to the gawkers standing by – was the magnitude of the cosmic event unfolding before them.

 

A Larger Story of Justice

Yet the cosmic dimension of Jesus’ death didn’t appear till two days later – when the disciples finally investigated the news that the women had brought them of an empty tomb. Wolterstorff frames this overarching biblical narrative in terms of justice/injustice:

 

“That very same Jesus who is identified as the one sent by God to inaugurate the reign of justice himself became a victim of gross injustice. Though innocent of the charges lodged against him, he who came to lift up the downtrodden was himself handed over to be executed in the company of a pair of common criminals, thereby consigned to the lowest rung of the downtrodden. Were it not for Jesus’ resurrection, the entire story would have been profoundly ironic, with massive delusion at its core. As it is, Jesus’ becoming the victim of injustice proved not the end of the story but a central episode in a larger story of victory rather than defeat for the cause of justice. For one who accepts Chalcedonian Christology, the victim was not only human but divine” (Justice: Rights and Wrongs, p. 129).

 

The redemptive power of Jesus’ death is a central theme of the Apostle Paul’s writings. One of many passages on this reads, For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (II Corinthians 5:20-21 NLT).

The cross is where most graphically for Christians justice and love meet. Justice as law is satisfied in the perfect Son of Adam’s sacrifice, just as God’s forgiveness is released through the cross to embrace all humanity.

After I finished this lecture at the conference sponsored by Pathways for Mutual Respect at the National University of Singapore, the first hand to go up was that of Professor Syed Farid Alatas, a sociologist who directs the Department of Malay Studies at the NUS. He made several positive comments and then this remark: "What you say about Jesus, justice and the cross, reminds me very much of the meaning of Karbala for the Shia community. Both cases are about redemptive suffering."

It's true in my experience that Shia Muslims identify more readily with Jesus' work of redemption on the cross. After all, their identity as Shias is deeply rooted in the martyrdom of Hussein, the Prophet's grandson at Karbala. Still, as I will show in my next blog, the theme of justice for Muslims plays out very differently -- though in the end, when it comes to righting wrongs in the world, both communities sense a similar calling from God.

 

Closing remarks

Wolterstorff’s research on justice continued with another book Justice in Love (2011), which highlights the dignity of the human person, and hence, the inherent rights of all people. But that’s a topic for another day.

I started this blog by reminding you of the first one, and particularly about the necessity of having just people in positions of leadership as a prerequisite for a just society. That’s why Jesus, whose birth still marks the western calendar, is such an important contributor to our topic. Gandhi himself, the great founder of the modern nonviolent movement, wrote:

“The message of Jesus, as I understand it, is contained in the Sermon on the Mount…. It is that Sermon which has endeared Jesus to me…. The message, to my mind, has suffered distortion in the West…. Much of what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., as many of you would know, took inspiration from Gandhi’s use of Jesus’ nonviolent resistance to injustice. What is lesser known is the impact of Jesus on African American women seeking to abolish slavery and later fighting the injustices of continuing racial discrimination in the 20th century. We owe a debt to Bettye Collier-Thomas, who wrote a fascinating book on this topic: Jesus, Jobs and Justice: African American Women and Religion.

Perhaps these are the most appropriate words to wrap up our thoughts on Jesus and justice:

“Black men and women shared experiences of oppression. However, the impact of slavery on black women was distinctly different. Set apart by their sex, black women were more exposed to sexual violence and misuse of their bodies for breeding and other purposes. Used as sex objects and beasts of burden but determined to survive, many women viewed the Bible as a source of inspiration. It became an instrument of freedom and survival and a tool for development of literacy. Within the confines of slavery black women developed boundless spirituality and adopted the Bible as their guide, and Jesus Christ as their personal savior” (xxv).