Richard Davenport
October 1, 2023 – Proper 21
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
“Justice” is becoming a bigger and bigger topic in the news these days. There are headlines for you no matter which end of the political spectrum you end up on. Multiple indictments against former President Trump, fraud, conspiracy, and all sorts of other things. President Biden’s son Hunter is embroiled in his own legal troubles, troubles that may reach to the President as well. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, whether you think either is guilty or innocent, the stated desire on both sides is for justice to be done.
Much the same could be said of the various Black Lives Matter riots that took place around the country. Whatever you think about the underlying motivation for the riots, the statement that was made was one of racial justice, bringing justice to a system and a society that some saw as unjust and inequitable. We might say similar things about other riots and mass gatherings that have happened here or in other countries. Perhaps not for reasons of race, but for economic reasons, environmental reasons, or any of a host of other things. Someone sees something that they think is out of balance, some person or group is being dealt with unfairly, so, to correct the problem, you are bring justice to the situation. You are making things just and right once more. That’s one of the main purposes of the government. That’s why the group of people charged with prosecuting alleged criminals is called the Justice Department.
Justice is something that we have a sense of at a very young age. You can see kids only a couple of years old really wrestling with the concept of fairness. “His cookie is bigger than mine! It’s not fair!” Solving the problem, at least in their little minds, is an act of justice. It isn’t necessarily a matter of punishment, as if the kid with the bigger cookie somehow did something wrong, but that things need to be made right and, in order to do that, I need a bigger cookie too.
Kids usually start developing that sense of justice and fairness pretty early, but it’s also a pretty selective one. If you’re a kid and you see your brother with a bigger cookie, you feel injustice of the situation and call out to mom with all of your righteous indignation. Mom has a few options available, if she’s at all interested in actually evening things out. 1. Give you a bigger cookie. 2. Give your brother a smaller cookie. 3. Take away everyone’s cookie so no one gets one. While all three of these options would solve the problem, only one would probably feel like justice to you, only one would make things right in your eyes.
It’s only really justice if I’m getting something out of it. I see an opportunity to get some kind of benefit and so I cry out the need for justice. But I don’t really want justice. I want justice that makes me look good. I want justice that punishes that evildoer over there so I can prove I’m better than someone. I want justice that allows me to vent my righteous anger on someone who has wronged me. I want justice that gets me more of something
In the Old Testament reading, God is speaking to the people of Judah. They are presenting a grievance to God. Their forefathers did bad things, but God is punishing the children for those sins. The people grumble that God is being unjust and that they shouldn’t have to suffer for what others have done.
Obviously, God is all powerful and can do whatever he wants. If he wants to inflict injury on people, he can do so for whatever reason he wants. But, that isn’t how God tells us he operates. He doesn’t punish people at random. He is a God of justice and righteousness. He is a God who makes things right.
So why would God punish children for what their forefathers had done? Well, as it turns out. He didn’t. The people weren’t really thinking that they should live godly and virtuous lives. That wasn’t their concern. They didn’t actually want justice. They just wanted to be left alone. If they could convince God that he was being unjust, then he might leave them alone and they could get back to business as usual.
We know this because we know the events of Ezekiel’s life. He lives to see the end of Judah as a sovereign nation. The spiritual life of the nation has been an almost unbroken downhill slide since the days of Solomon. Yes, their forefathers did some terrible things. But, God announces that they aren’t being punished for what their forefathers did. They are being punished for their own sins and no one else’s.
They don’t really like that. “Anything bad we may have done should be more than outweighed by all of the good we’ve done in the past. We’re good people. We don’t deserve to be treated so harshly for one or two minor mistakes.”
It makes some sense. It’s a fine argument. But we don’t even operate that way. We discount people’s pasts on a regular basis. I remember growing up and watching the Cosby Show. I loved Bill Cosby. I loved his funny stories, his sense of humor, I loved that I could listen to him and watch him because his stories were wholesome and didn’t have the mature themes and language of so many other comedians out there. Looking back on it even now I think about how great the show was for just being a good life story, such that it didn’t matter that it was about a well-to-do black family. Even a white, suburban kid like me felt right at home there.
But then, years later, accusations, indictments, convictions. Suddenly Bill Cosby is persona non grata. It seems he has done some rather unpleasant things and now that’s how he’s viewed. Whatever good he did through wholesome family entertainment and through his work in communities is all covered over by what he’s done more recently. His good works are gone and forgotten.
It’s interesting to me that it tends to only work one way. If some terrible criminal manages to clean up his act and stay on the straight and narrow, it’s very hard for him to be seen as anything but a criminal. He’s a thief, a murderer, a drug dealer. Whatever it was he did in the past now colors everything he does in the present. Why? Because it isn’t about justice to begin with. It’s about avoiding punishment. It’s about making me feel better about myself because I have people to look down on. It’s justice when it helps me and injustice when it doesn’t.
God points out the problems with all of this. Your past shouldn’t and doesn’t have any bearing on who you are now. If you were a terrible person in the past but now have your life on track, then that’s who you are, a person with his life on track. If you did all sorts of good things in the past, but now you’re a crook, then all of those good things you once did, helpful as they may have been, don’t change that you’re a crook now.
If God is punishing you, whatever you’ve done before isn’t going to save you. It’s all about who you are right now. God doesn’t enact justice based on your past but on your present and right now you’re a thief, a liar, a rumormonger, a stuck up peacock, a curmudgeon, a philanderer, or whatever else you’re up to.
God’s justice is really the only true justice. He isn’t subject biases. He doesn’t have some other agenda. He isn’t going to get confused by the arguments and he has all of the evidence in front of him. He’s going to deal justice for all of the rotten things you’ve been doing, all of the things you think no one notices. God is going to even out all of the injustice you inflict on the people around you. A kid who sees his brother has a bigger cookie and tries to take that cookie finds that God not only defends the victim but will take your cookie away too, because you thought you deserved more than what you were given. If you had earned any of it, then maybe you could claim that, but it was all a gift to begin with. You didn’t deserve any of it. Whether that gift is a cookie, or a loving family, or material wealth, or simply one more day of life.
Sinner though you are and deserving of punishment though you may be, the marvel of Christ’s death is that in his suffering and death he takes all of your sin. God no longer sees it on you. There is no punishment to give you, because it has been given to Jesus instead. All of those terrible things you’ve done in the past, well, they don’t matter. They’re in the past, and right now you are living a life of righteousness, a life made possible because Christ gives it to you. Where you came from doesn’t matter. Only where you are now matters, and, if Christ has died for your sins, then right now you are living a life of righteousness.
You don’t really want God to deal with you in justice, not according to what you deserve as a sinner. You want God to deal with you according to what Christ deserves, and he gives that to you freely. Instead of giving you justice, he gives you mercy.
As the church, we still pray for justice. We still work to bring justice to the world. There are many injustices, many wrongs in need of righting. We try to bring justice, not our twisted kind that is only really looking out for ourselves, but a justice that sees everyone as someone loved by God. God has given you justice, not based on what you deserve, but based on what Jesus deserves. That is the essence of God’s mercy. We are not to call for justice in order to gain something by it. We work for justice because there are those, like the Israelites of old, who misuse justice and use it for their own benefit. We work for justice here and now in order to give a small example of what will happen to evildoers who will eventually stand before the righteous judge. Punishing wickedness now not only keeps others safe, it also hopefully calls the wicked to examine his wickedness and turn from his ways before it is too late. For those who do turn from their ways, we are called to let their past truly be in the past. We were once like them, and on some days we still are. We thank God that, out of his great love, he has had mercy on us and not dealt with us according to what we deserve.