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Meet Father KempThe Fourth Sunday after Easter – 2 May 2010
In the first year of the television series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Hitchcock produced an episode entitled “Salvage.” “Salvage” was about a young woman named Lois who betrays a gentleman named Richie to death. Richie’s brother, Dan, was in prison when his brother died and he vowed to bring justice to the traitor Lois. However, when Dan gets out of prison and finds Lois, she was so poor and miserable that she begs him to kill her. Dan assumed that there could be no justice in killing a woman begging for death so he funded her dream job of designing and operating her own dress shop and convinced the love of her life, Tim, to marry her. Only when she was wealthy, engaged and happy, did Dan kill her. We live in a world that demands justice. We as Christians cannot ignore these demands either, for the world is dominated by injustice, making these demands meet and right.
There are problems in these demands, however, insurmountable problems. First, no one defines justice. For instance, we hear a lot about the need for justice in saving the rainforests. There is much truth in these demands, the rainforest are an irreplaceable, precious, natural resource that God has lovingly created. However, the employers who cut down the rain forests do so under the banner of justice saying justice demands a just wage which can be paid only if they cut down the forest. Thus, justice has become a manipulated word used whenever someone wants to get their own way. Second, demands for justice often remain just mere demands. It does no one any good for radio hosts to demand justice, but then never offer reasonable plans for the implementation of justice. Furthermore, those who are most vocal about justice rarely ever taken the cost of justice into account and justice is expensive. For instance, when Anglican Church activists started to demand that England end her unjust slave trade, Tim Keller records that the “Abolitionists in the House of Commons… agreed to compensate the plantation owners for all freed slaves, an astounding amount up to half the British Government’s annual budget.”[1] Few if any proponents of justice take the costs of justice into account and even fewer actually do anything to implement justice, thus most demands for justice are dissonant verbal sounds screamed to a deaf choir. As St. James wisely said, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:16) The third and final insurmountable problem is that almost all the demands for justice assume that human vengeance, like in Hitchcock’s show “Salvage,” can work justice. Tim Keller said, “[V]ictims of violence are drawn to go far beyond justice into the vengeance that says, ‘You put out one of my eyes, so I will put out both of yours.’ They are pulled inexorably into an endless cycle of vengeance, of strikes and counter strikes nurtured and justified by the memory of terrible wrongs.”[2] However, human vengeance and human anger can never work out justice but only perpetrate injustice. This is precisely what St. James said in our Epistle Lesson, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”
I hope you are thinking to yourselves, “Why are we talking about justice in the season of Easter?” There are three reasons why this is an appropriate, dare I say necessary, topic in Easter. First, the Scripture affirm that God is just, He will punish all those who have perpetrated evil and wickedness or as St. James said, are “full of the superfluity of naughtiness.” However, it is clearly apparent that God’s justice is not achieved in this life, where evil deeds are celebrated not punished. This is the resurrection and justice Job longed for when he said, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Therefore, God’s justice demands a resurrection when all people will be raised to life so that justice, God’s justice, may be served. Second, the English word ‘righteousness’ is a translation of the Greek word, diakiousunh. This is the word translated ‘righteousness’ in both our epistle and gospel lessons. However, there is another translation of this Greek word that is equally valid: justice. This means the writers of Scripture did not divide righteousness and justice into two separate words with two separate meanings having two separate applications and dare I say that what the Scriptures holds together as one, we should not separate. When Jesus said the Holy Spirit would reprove the world of righteousness, it would be just as legitimate to say the Holy Spirit will reprove the world of justice. Therefore, one of the theological themes uniting our Epistle and Gospel lesson is justice. Third, Easter is the season of justice as someone has wisely said, “The message of the resurrection is that this world matters! That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice, and love have won…Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things – and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement the victory of Jesus over them all.”[3]
I hope you are now asking yourselves why Easter is the season of justice. I think part of the answer is found in John 16, when Jesus said: “And when the [Comforter] is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness (or justice), because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of the world is judged.” Jesus spoke these words to his disciples before his crucifixion. Thus he when spoke of his ascension into heaven, “I go to my Father,” he was assuming his impending death and resurrection. Jesus ascension into heaven reproves the world of justice because it is a sign that God the Father is just and has justly vindicated Jesus.
There are two important things to understand about Jesus’ just vindication. First, death is the wage paid by sin, thus one who is without sin will not and cannot die and vise versa, one who sins will die. When Jesus died upon the cross, he was paid the wage of sin; he was credited with sin because only those who sin will die. Furthermore, the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy 21:23, cursed anyone who died by hanging upon a tree. Thus, Jesus died under a curse; he became a curse. Therefore, by dying, Jesus was identifying himself with sin, his death was a statement that Jesus worked for the dreadful employer, sin. We also know from Scripture that Jesus bore our sins, not his, upon the cross as Isaiah said, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6) and as St. Paul said, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (II Corinthians 5:21) and as St. Peter said, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.” God, thus, demonstrated his justice by punishing the wickedness of sin through the death of Jesus. The second item we must know is that Scripture also affirms that Jesus was innocent, a pure and spotless lamb without sin, who did not deserve to die. Thus without Jesus’ resurrection, God the Father would have demonstrated that His justice is just like the so-called justice of petty rulers who kill innocent men. Jesus’ resurrection thus vindicated that Jesus was innocent; that he was not guilty of sin and that he triumphed over death. Jesus’ resurrection proved that God the Father was just, because God could not let an innocent man die. Therefore, the death and resurrection of Jesus affirmed and proved God’s justice. He is the just God who will not tolerate evil, wickedness and sin as the Scriptures say, “Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19, Deuteronomy 32:35) God is also the just God who will not let the righteous suffer, but will justly vindicate His people. God has demonstrated his justice through his crucified and resurrected Son, Jesus, who has become a second Adam, a new representative of humanity. God the Father has promised salvation from his justice against evil, wickedness and sin to all those who place their lives in the hands of Jesus Christ, all those who abide in His Son. God’s promise of salvation results not from God’s forgetfulness of sin, but because he has already acted justly upon our sin, through the death of Jesus. Jesus’ death takes away the sting of death because he bore that sting on our behalf and through his resurrection triumphed over death. Jesus’ death defeats sin because he was vindicated by God the Father and his vindications destroyed any power sin might have over those who belong to him.
There is such a thing as justice and it is a quality of God, who has demonstrated his justice in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus. He has promised to one day judge the world, to right all the wrongs and justly punish all perpetrators of evil. Therefore, Easter is all about justice. It is about God demonstrating his justice through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is about God justly dealing with sin, evil and wickedness. It is about God’s future judgment of world when he will finally set the world to rights. Thus, as someone has said, “Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring the problems of the material world. Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish fulfillment. Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps (I might add, take Easter away and Feuerbach was right to say that god is a projection of our wishes, he is an unjust, petty god who turns a blind eye to evil, wickedness and sin)…But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good new for the whole world.”[4]
[1] Tim Keller, The Reason for God,, (Dutton, 2008) pg 63.
[2] Ibid, 75.
[3] N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church,(Eerdmans, 1997), pg 65-66. Quoted by Time Keller, ibid, pg 212.
[4] N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church,(Eerdmans, 1997), pg 65-66. Quoted by Time Keller, ibid, pg 212.
