Justice and the Worship of God

We’ve been thinking about the nature of biblical justice lately here at BFJN, and how the nature of justice relates to our actions and responsibilities. Several months ago we wrote a post on justice, what it is and is not, and some thoughts on what living justly requires. Recently we also attended the Justice Conference in Chicago and came away with some reminders of the heart of it all, why a group of Christians started the Boston Faith and Justice Network almost ten years ago.

Justice as part of God’s character

“How can we speak of God without speaking of love? How can we know God without knowing grace?” asked Eugene Cho, Seattle pastor and founder of One Day’s Wages. These are essential, defining elements of God’s being, tied up in our understanding of his character. “How is it,” Cho then continued, “that we have extracted justice outside of God’s character?” As we attempt to reflect by our actions the fact that we are God’s image in the world, we are called to love our neighbors. We are called to extend grace and mercy, all because loving and giving grace are central aspects of who God is. And we are also called to do justice, because doing justice—that is, dismantling unjust systems and caring for the victims of injustice, the oppressed—is also who God is.

Justice as inseparable from love

Dr. Cornel West is famous for noting that “Justice is what love looks like in public.” As the headlining speaker at the conference, he repeated those words, but then expanded on them by adding, “Justice and love are not identical. But justice and love are indivisible.” The love that God has for the orphan, the fatherless, the widow, the prisoner, the foreigner—and all vulnerable groups mentioned over and over again in the Bible— is the driving force behind his mandate to us to care for them. Doing justice is about taking care of the needs of the oppressed and the marginalized, about loving our neighbor, but it is about bringing in the world that , as Ken Wytsma says in his book, , about righting the wrongs that have led to the oppression in the first place.

Pursuing justice as an act of worship

Frederick Buechner writes in

“To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for himthat he needs to have done—run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do—sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what’s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love.”

If our lives of service to God make up our worship to him, then doing justice as he calls us to do is an act of worship. In fact, it may be God’s act of worship. Our last blog post reflected on the “chosen fast” of Isaiah 58, to “loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and break every yoke.” In that passage God says to the Israelites that offering personal penance is meaningless if they are not first feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, freeing the imprisoned, and removing chains of oppression.

Writer Deidra Riggs wrote this prayer just after the events of McKinney, Texas, when Dajerria Becton was slammed on the ground, her face pressed into the grass, by a police officer. It is a high calling.

Amen.

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