The Prayer for Justice

Texts: Jeremiah 31.27-34; Psalm 119.97-104; 2 Timothy 3.14 - 4.5; Luke 18.1-8

When I was 13 years old I had a dream which I will carry with me all my life. In the dream I was wandering down High Street in Sheffield. It was a lovely day, but suddenly the sky became black with stormclouds. And then a great wind blew in from the west, a tempest which became so violent that it threatened to pull the trees from the ground. But this storm was more than just a storm. Somehow I knew it to be an angel of darkness, come to uproot and destroy everything in its path. Quickly I ran through the streets, imploring everyone I met to seek refuge in the house where I lived. 'It's the only safe place', I told them. But most laughed at me and went on their way. By the time I arrived home, accompanied by a few trusting souls, the storm had begun to howl in a truly unearthly manner. As we closed the door, I felt the storm reach out as if with claws to prevent us. With a very great effort, which took all our strength, we managed to close the door and collapse on our loungeroom floor. Through the window we could see cars being tossed in the air as though they were feathers. Buildings were ripped up and thrown down in pieces. People and animals and trees were being swept away as if by a giant tidal wave. But through the deluge, somehow, though the walls shook and the ceiling groaned to the point of breaking, our old weatherboard house stayed together. And we stayed together too. We huddled in a circle and prayed as we had never prayed before. We prayed that God would spare our souls. We prayed for the storm to pass. And though we began that time together in panic and fear, very soon a calm descended upon us. Even as the din outside became violent beyond imagining, the sense of our safety in God's care became more and more certain. And, eventually, I felt a strange compulsion, to leave the circle of prayer and go outside. I felt a strong and urgent compassion well up within me. A compassion for those perishing outside. I forgot my fear. Though the storm had become like a raging demon, I opened the door and went outside. With chaos all around, I addressed the tumult in a quiet voice, saying 'You can't enter this place. It is a house of God'. Immediately the wind died to a whisper and the dark clouds dispersed. The birds began to sing once more, the sun came out and I awoke.

For the people of Judah, the exile to Babylon was like the apocalypse of my dreaming. In the imagination of their poets and prophets, the army of Babylon was like an evil angel, come to uproot and destroy everything they had ever achieved. For some, exile was the end of their faith in Yahweh. How could the God who had led them out of slavery in Egypt now send the evil wind of calamity into their midst? What kind of God would do that? Why had the angel of death who killed the firstborn of Egypt now turned his sword towards Israel? For others, though, the turmoil of exile occasioned a deep and heart-wrenching reconsideration of their relationship with God. In the depths of their despair, they turned, as if for the first time, to the Torah or Law given by Moses. There they heard about a covenant made with Yahweh, a covenant which promised peace or Shalom to Israel if only the people would love Yahweh before anything else, and demonstrate this love by keeping the law. For these exilic Hebrews, the law became the focus of a new act of spiritual devotion. In meditating upon it day and night, they became aware of their immoral and broken condition under the covenant. They became aware of their culpability as a sinful people who had abandoned the just requirements of the law. And it broke their hearts. As the Psalmist said 'My eyes cry streams of tears because your law is not kept'.

But then a moment of transfiguration occurred. Out of the new depths of their meditation upon the law, they sensed that God was calling them into a new kind of covenant, a covenant not so easily broken because it was less like a contract and more like a relationship. The difficulty with much of Israel's understanding of the covenant prior to the exile was that it was literal and legalistic. Israel's teachers were overwhelmingly of the opinion that obtaining God's favour was primarily a matter of obeying the letter of the law. But people were not, by and large, taught that you could never hope to obey the law unless you loved the law, unless you lived with it day and night and allowed it to form the very core of your stance towards the world. People were not, by and large, taught that the law had a spirit, and that spirit was the mind and heart of its creator, the Lord Yahweh. Prior to the exile, people were not often taught that to meditate upon the law was to enter into an intimate relationship with Yahweh himself. But this was always God's intention. This was what God had longed for from the beginning. And so the apparently 'new' covenant we read of in Jeremiah is not really new at all. What is 'new' is the experience of exile, of brokenness, and what that does to Israel's capacity to understand God's ways. Let me quote:

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

In the exile, the Hebrew people began to realize that it was not obeying the law which gave them a right relationship with God. It was a relationship with God which enabled them to live in God's way. Crucially, the exile taught Israel that the law was there to form their relationship with God; it was not a list of dos and don'ts to earn God's favour.

Now, let me ask you a question. Are you here this morning because you love God, or are you here because you want to earn God's favour? Are you here because you want to know God, to be transformed by God, or are you here because you want to be a good Christian? Motives are very important, you know. They make all the difference. Search your heart. Are you, perhaps, a religious person, one who has a contract with God? One who says, 'God, I am afraid of life. In return for being a good Christian I expect you to keep me safe from pain and hurt and let me into heaven when I die!'. Or are you, instead, a godly person, one who has a relationship with God? One who experiences God's love and forgiveness; one who weeps day and night because the world is so lost to God's peace?

Luke tells a story about a persistent widow. She lobbies the local magistrate for a just solution to her plight. And though the magistrate has no regard for either God or justice, he eventually rewards her efforts just to get her off his back. Luke tells this rather strange little story in order to show us what a true disciple of Jesus is like. She is like a widow who longs for justice, and will not cease from crying out until she gets it. But where does such depth of longing come from? What kind of experience can sustain that sense that I deserve a better deal than what I've got right now? A relationship with God. A life of prayer and meditation upon the life of God revealed in the crucified form of Jesus Christ. A life of communion with the God who is, himself, like a hungry widow who roams the earth crying out for food. In the end, its communion with that God, its spending time with that God, which gives you the burning desire for a better deal, and the strength to keep on asking.

If you are a religious person, I encourage you, this day, to come in from the storms of life which so frighten you, and begin that life of communion with God. Gather with the faithful to read God's lore, to meditate upon its stories of faith, and be transformed. There, in the bosom of God's love, you'll lose your fear. You'll be able to stand up and face those demons which tear at your soul, and say to them: 'You may not enter, this is God's dwelling-place'. And in the depths of your communion with the crucified one, whose hands are outstretched to embrace the whole creation, a new yearning will take root in your soul. A yearning for justice. A cry for peace. The birthpangs of God's promised healing.