The Struggle for Justice (New Beginnings UMC)

We're talking about the struggle for justice.

This is part of this business of being faithful and systems that

are stacked against us because there's a, there's a lot of

folks in this world who, who for whom justice is, is a it's a

great idea. It's a wonderful dream, but it's

really hard to get there. And, and, and as, as we're

talking about this today, we're using a story and I, I want to

apologize. This is one of those I, I

normally announce ahead of time when I'm going to be doing APG

13 sermon. And this is APG 13 sermon.

And you probably got that from the scripture that John read

earlier, not in the sense of anything graphic, but just in

the sense of some of the topics we're talking about today.

And I'd like to give folks advance notice on that, just

just so you know, but this, this story of Dinah that we're

looking at today is, is a story I'm not sure I've ever heard

anyone preach on it. And, and a Sunday morning thing.

Now, granted, most of my adult life I've been the one preaching

on Sunday morning. So I, I don't often hear a lot

of other preachers these days. But even in other contexts, I

haven't heard people really talking about it.

And, and it's a tough passage for a lot of different reasons,

But in this story we get a picture of struggling for

justice and in the system that's stacked against you.

And so we're going to look at that today and, and reflect on

that. And in some ways that I, I

suspect will be uncomfortable. And if it is uncomfortable,

that's a that's a good thing. Sorry to be uncomfortable once

in a while. But I want to talk a little bit

more about Dinah's situation and what was happening there and the

ancient Middle East. So Jacob and his family were

nomads. This Dinah was Jacob's daughter,

as far as we know, his oldest daughter born to him and to his

first wife, Leah. And she's part of a nomadic

family, which is to say they're, well, this particular nomadic

family is a wealthy family. We know that Jacob's got a lot

of resources. He's got particularly in terms

of livestock, sheep, goats, other kinds of of livestock.

He is well set. He's got a large household.

He's got a lot of portable wealth.

So he's not doing bad in the world.

And the family's not doing bad in the world.

They're in a pretty good situation.

Part of their situation is that they are strangers in a strange

land. They're in the land of Canaan.

The only real estate that his entire family owns is a burial

plot where his grandparents are buried.

Abraham and Sarah. For everything else, for all of

their grazing, for all of their water, for all of themselves,

and for all of their animals. They are dependent upon the more

powerful forces around them to allow them to use land in their

area. Now this is give and take.

You know, you bring your large family with your large flocks to

town. You've got things to sell,

you've got things to trade, you've got things to barter for

the, for the good that you're getting and grazing your land

and using people's water supplies, those kinds of things.

So, so we, he's, he's not, they're not just wandering

around looking for handouts, but they are not in a position of

power relative to a lot of the people around them.

One of the people around them that has a lot more power than

they do is Shechem and his family.

Shechem is the man who raped Dinah.

Shechem is the man for whom the city of Shechem is named.

And the city of Shechem is a real city.

It has been, archaeologists have been and I think continue to

excavate it and learn from it. It was a fairly large walled

city, which means it was a place of power.

It was the the Shechem and his father who would have had even

more authority than him, who was a who was a leader in Shechem,

his his father Haymore. They had military power, they

had geographic power, they had economic power.

Cities were were they were part of trade routes that were

important. These were big, important,

powerful people. And the son of probably the most

powerful person in the region raped Dinah and then said, well,

you know what? Now I want to marry her.

And Jacob had to decide what to do.

And Jacob had no good options, no good options for true justice

in this situation. The law and custom, there are

some things from that area that suggests law and custom.

He might have been a that, that possibly legally there would

have maybe been grounds to insist that Shechem be executed

for his crime. But he's the son of the king,

the son of the Prince. He's a Prince.

He's a leader of the city. And Jacob's got no leverage for

that kind of action, for that kind of demand.

And So what we see in this situation is a struggle for

justice in a broken world. What do we do when we have no

good options? Jacob chose a particular route.

Jacob, in his response to the situation, he chose appeasement

and accommodation for the sake of familial protection and

prosperity. And now it's easy as a husband,

as a father of a daughter, there is something in me that that

turns my stomach and I want to step back and throw stones at

Jacob. But I would like to invite us to

avoid chronological arrogance here and, and, and see the

difficult situation, the impossible situation in some

respects that they were in. Jacob is at the mercy of people

around him. He has a large family.

He's got lots of wealth. He has no military.

He has no leverage to demand justice from Haymore that his

son Shechem be executed. And he is responsible not just

for Dinah's welfare, but for the welfare and well-being of his

entire family and household and clan.

And so Jacob decides that the the best thing for the family as

a whole is to allow the marriage to go forward.

We know that's what's on his mind because his later response

to his sons that that safety is what's on Jacob's mind.

I'm at the mercy of more powerful forces.

I'm going to pursue the path of least resistance and the path of

greatest benefit. There is benefit to be gained

for his family by uniting with a very powerful family, maybe the

most powerful family in that particular region, and so he

chooses appeasement and accommodation for the sake of

protection and prosperity for his family.

His sons choose a different route.

His sons are out in the field when all of this takes place and

and it appears that the proposal of marriage has taken place

before they get back. And on the surface, his sons

agree to the marriage. They say, OK, you can marry our,

our, our sister. However, it's our religious and

cultural practice that all men in our household are

circumcised. And, and so if you want to marry

our sister, you need to be circumcised.

And in fact, if, if you can get all the men of the city to be

circumcised, then then we can, your clan can intermarry with

our clan. Our sons and daughters can

intermarry with each other. And, and it'll all be good.

And I think this is a measure of the influence and power that

Shechem had in the region because at Shechem's word, every

man in the city gets circumcised.

They see a benefit to being able to intermarry with a wealthy,

wealthy nomad in the area. But then, two or three days

after circumcision, when the pain is intense and the men are

feeling at their worst, Jacob's sons, led by Simeon and Levi, go

in and kill every man in Shechem and take their wives and

daughters as slaves. Jacob chose accommodation and

appeasement for familial protection and prosperity.

Simeon and Levi and the other sons chose retribution for the

sake of revenge and a vastly disproportionate retribution.

Be honest, upfront. Full disclosure, your pastor is

not a perfect human being. As a husband and a father of a

daughter, there's part of me this is absolutely.

But then I think about all of the other wives and daughters

who are now being forced into relationships that they didn't

want, and it gets Gray. The struggle for justice in the

real world in which we live, in which Jacob and Simeon and Levi

and Dinah and Leah lived. The struggle for justice is

often very murky and very Gray, and sometimes there are no good

alternatives. And this struggle goes on.

Today we live in a world, I don't think I'm shocking anybody

with a statement in which there is a lot of injustice and which

justice is denied to an awful lot of people.

Just two quick anecdotes to illustrate that both as far as I

know, true stories. One of a pastor from Chicago.

This was decades ago who there was a time when, when there were

some, some of the, the tenement buildings, the slums in Chicago,

very poorly maintained by the landlords and they had lead

paint in them. And it was being learned and how

devastatingly bad for people lead paint was.

And children would, you know, chew on a window sill or a piece

of paint would flake off and they would put it in their

mouths and, and, and lead, when you consume it, apparently works

very, very quickly to cause brain damage in a child,

permanent brain damage. And parents were suing

slumlords, tenants were suing their slumlords for justice.

And a pastor went on one particular day when I don't, I

don't remember whether he followed the whole trial, was

there for the whole thing, but he went and, and time after time

after time with slumlord, after slumlord after slumlord, the

case was dismissed or the judge ruled in favor of the slumlord.

And finally the pastor stood up and said, your Honor, I don't

understand. Is there no justice in this

courtroom? And the response of the judge

was this is not a Court of Justice.

This is a court of law. If you want justice, change the

law, which in terms of jurisprudence and judicial

philosophy is spot on. But in terms of justice for the

poor folks living in those slums, they had no power to

change the law. And even if the law did get

changed, how would that help them and their family and their

children? What options did they have in

that pursuit of justice when the system was so thoroughly stacked

against them? Another story, again as far as I

know true, about a young man from the South, a black man I

believe graduated from a very prestigious law school, one of

the Ivy League schools, top of his class was getting offers

from major firms to come and join them, offers to clerk for

significant justices. All of these things that would

lead to a fast tracking his career the of a of a high paid,

high salary, powerful influential attorney in the

United States. And he said no to all of them.

And he went back to his home city in the South to be a public

defender. And he was asked why.

And he said, because the number of black men in my state that

get executed is terrible, he said.

But in our country, we don't execute guilty people.

We execute poor people. Now, I was in law school when I

first heard about this. I said, oh, no, that's, you

know, you said all of this execution legal process, and

it's long and it's drawn out. And if they're guilty and we

need to have the death penalty, all this kind of.

But do a little digging and see if you can find a single

incident in which a wealthy person was given the death

penalty. In this country.

We have a different system of justice for the poor and for the

wealthy. Now, our system of justice is

light years ahead of what was available to Dinah and Leah and

Jacob and their sons and his sons.

But it's still not perfect. It's far from perfect.

And we have a very different justice system for poor people

and for rich people. And the struggle for justice

continues here and around the world to this day.

And that struggle for justice always happens in a context

where the system is stacked against the people that are

struggling for justice, and always in a broken world.

Now, as followers of Jesus, we have this hope that we have the

promise of true justice ahead of us.

God has promised that Jesus will establish true justice on all

and all of the nations of this earth one day.

We have the promise that one day Jesus will return and bring

justice to this earth, to all nations on this earth.

We get one of those promises in the prophet Isaiah, who's

Speaking of the Messiah, says this, here's my servant

referring to the Messiah, whom I uphold, my chosen one, and whom

I delight. I will put my spirit on him, and

He will bring justice to the nations.

He will not shout or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets.

A bruised Reed He will not break in a smothering Wick.

He will not snuff out and faithfulness.

He will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be

discouraged till he establishes justice on the earth three times

and four verses. God promises justice in all the

earth. One day that will happen.

We have not reached that point yet.

One day Jesus will return to this earth and establish

justice. What do we do until then?

We lack the power to have a grand strategic plan to

establish justice in all the earth.

If you can do that, let me know. I'd like to join.

I have yet to meet anyone that has that capacity.

I don't think we as human beings have the capacity to establish

true justice. I, I don't, I don't think we're

ever even going to be able to figure out exactly what true

justice looks like apart from divine intervention.

And the folks that, that are struggling for justice certainly

don't have the power to establish true justice

throughout the earth. So in the absence of that, what

can we do? We can find strategies to attack

and undermine injustice where its weaknesses are, and to bring

a little more justice into the lives of the people in this

world around us, some near and some far.

We can do that, engage in those tactics that will make things a

little bit better, a little bit at a time.

How do we do that? How do we pursue justice in a

system that's stacked against us?

First of all, we have to recognize the importance of

justice. Justice and social justice are

not an irrelevant side quest for the church.

They are the heart of what God calls the church to do and be

and pursue. We are to be a window into the

Kingdom of God in which people experience justice among us.

And we are to be the hands and feet, the body of Christ, as we

seek to pursue his mission of establishing justice on the

earth. We'll never get it completely,

but if we don't recognize that this is central to Our Calling,

we'll never even start. We'll never even try.

But this is not an irrelevant side issue.

This is the heart of who we are, Jesus.

When he announced his mission in the earth at his first publicly

recorded sermon in his town of Nazareth, and He said that, he

claimed it was not this passage in Isaiah, but one very similar

to it. This is why I'm here.

Bring recovery of sight to the blind, to set the prisoners free

to free, and set at liberty the oppressed.

Quotes from the prophet Isaiah all the language of justice that

is repeated over and over and over again in the Old Testament

Scriptures. Care, concern, justice for the

poor, for the vulnerable in the world around us.

Jesus says This is why I have come and if we are following

Jesus, that is why we are here, to pursue that same justice, to

struggle for that same justice, even if we never can achieve it

on our own. Trusting and standing on the

promise that one day Jesus will make it real.

We struggle for it now. And how do we struggle for it?

One of the things we have to do is we have to prioritize care,

healing, and restoration for those who have been wronged and

those who are most vulnerable to injustice.

One of the most tragic things about this story in Genesis

Genesis 34 · chapter mention

chapter 34 is we never hear from Dinah.

We never hear from Leah and their culture and that time and

that place, their voices didn't matter.

Fathers and brothers and rapists decided what was best for them.

The silence in that chapter rings loud in the full context

of the scripture. Where is Dinah's voice?

Couple of weeks we're going to get to Tamar.

We get to hear her voice. Where was Dinah's voice?

Where was Jacob saying, Dinah, what do you want?

How would you like me to respond?

Leah, Jake, Jacob, Leah, how? How should we care for our

daughter in this situation? And we don't get any of that.

But those are the voices Jesus listened to.

Jesus lifted up the powerless. He gave voice to the voiceless.

He took the people on the margins and put them in the

center. The children, the orphans, the

widows, the poor, the sick, the leprous, the broken, the lame,

the women, the slaves. He put them in the center and

said, let's listen. The Kingdom of heaven has made

it such as these. We need to prioritize and listen

to those voices. I'm I'm don't know what happened

here at both of the other churches, we prayed for the

situation in the Middle East in Iran right now and and again,

I'm not my goal and desire is not to be partisan and political

in all of this. When I hear the stories of the

struggle for justice, particularly among women in

Iran, I see the pictures of women who had acid thrown in

their faces by the morality police simply because they

exposed too much hair or too much skin.

When I hear the reports and, and no one at this point, I don't

know how any, I don't know if anyone knows for sure the

numbers, but potentially thousands, maybe 10s of

thousands of people who in January stood up and cried for

justice and were murdered by their own government.

The struggle for justice continues to listen to the

voices of the people that are engaging in that struggle.

What do you want? How can we help you?

What can we do? I, I, I, yeah.

Man, I have such mixed feelings about exercising violence

against other people. My hope and my prayer is that

that whatever else comes out of the violence that's going on

right now, the women and others within Iran that have been so

brutally used, abused, imprisoned and assaulted that

their lives a year and a decade from now will be better than

they are were a month and a decade ago.

But that's not going to happen. It doesn't happen without

struggle and it doesn't happen without listening to the voices

of the people who are on the receiving end of injustice and

hearing what they have to say and following their lead at

times. Meanwhile, we have to beware of

both vengeance and self-serving accommodation.

These things are always temptations.

There are always temptations, and sometimes, in an imperfect

world, sometimes they're the best that can be had.

Sometimes the best that a person can hope for is a pound of

flesh, because true justice is not attainable.

Sometimes the best a person can hope for is a paycheck.

I was wrong. By this powerful person, that

powerful corporation. I can either stand up for

justice for everyone and spend the rest of my life fighting a

legal battle that I can't pay for, or I can take a paycheck

and a non disclosure agreement and I get paid.

But justice isn't done. Those temptations are always

there to accommodate because it's safer and easier to seek

revenge, because of the the feeling of moral and righteous

superiority that it gives us. But we always have to be careful

with those. Sometimes those are the best

alternatives available, and those seem to be the best

alternatives that were available to in Genesis 34, Vengeance or

accommodation. But they're not true justice.

And even when those are the best alternatives available, we can't

be satisfied and then give up the struggle just because we got

a paycheck or a pound of flesh. Instead, we first of all need to

be slow to judge those who choose a different path.

Because sometimes the best alternative available is very

Gray and murky and armchair quarterbacking and throwing

stones from a geographic distance or a temporal distance,

chronological distance. Is is is too easy when we're not

the one involved. It's going to be slow to judge

when people accommodate or when people seek revenge, when people

fall short of true justice to get the best that they can help

for. We can be slow to judge, but at

the same time, we can never stop seeking better justice.

That's always the goal, that if, if it's never going to be

perfect till Jesus gets here, then there's always going to be

room for improvement in our own counties, in our own

communities, in our own country and in the world.

There's always going to be room for improvement. the United

States is light years ahead, just a situation in the United

States, light years ahead of what was available to Jacob and

and Leah and Dinah and the brothers.

But it's so far from perfect. We are light years away still

from the Kingdom of God, and so we can't let better than it used

to be be a substitute for let's make it better than it is.

It's hard work all along the way.

It's dangerous work all along the way.

It is morally and ethically Gray and murky work all along the

way. Nowhere in the Scripture is

Jacob condemned for his accommodation.

And the only one that condemns the brothers for their vengeance

is Jacob. And he says you have made this a

very dangerous place for us. That was his judgement of the

his sons. You have made this a very

dangerous place for us. And he was right.

They had and their response didn't deny that.

They just said, well, were we supposed to do nothing

implicitly like you did, Dad? These are these are Gray areas

and the Bible does not give easy answers, Morally simplistic

answers simply acknowledges the reality of the struggle and the

reality that God insists that we continue the struggle.

It is never OK to give up the struggle for justice.

God. God is working on that and calls

us to work on it too. Even when the system is stacked

against us, even when it's hard, even when it's dangerous.

In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.