The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

How shall I enter the Eternal’s presence? 
Shall I come with sacrifices, with yearling calves to offer?

Would the Eternal care for rams in thousands, or for oil flowing in myriad streams?

What does the Eternal ask from you, but to be just and kind, and to live in quiet fellowship with your God.

Welcome to this place of justice and kindness. Welcome to this time of quiet fellowship. 

There once ruled a great and powerful king, whose name was Solomon. Upon succeeding to the throne, Solomon was just a boy, and was filled with awe at the mightiness of the task before him. In the humility of his heart, he prayed for the wisdom to govern justly: “I am but a little child, and how should I discern between right and wrong?”

One day two women came before the king. They carried with them a little baby, which was set down on the floor, at the foot of Solomon’s throne.

“O my lord,” said one of the women, “five days ago I gave birth to a child. This woman and I live in the same house, and three days later she also gave birth, but that same night her child died, and at midnight she arose and, while I was sleeping, took my son away from me, and laid her dead child in its place. When I awoke in the morning I thought at first that my son was dead, until I realised that it was not my child.”

“No,” interrupted the second woman, “she lies, my lord, she lies! The living child is mine and the dead is hers!”

“No,” cried the first woman, wildly. “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.”

King Solomon raised his hand for silence.

“One of you says ‘my child lives and yours is dead ’, and the other says ‘your child is dead and my child lives’: there is a simple way to resolve the matter. Bring me a sword.”

A sword was brought, and the assembly waited to see how the king would proceed.

“Very well,” he said, “cut the child in two, and give half to one mother, and half to the other.”

The first woman turned pale.

“O my lord,” she said in a faltering voice. “Pray, give her the child. I beg you, do not kill it.”

But the other woman’s face remained hard.

“Let it be neither mine nor yours,” she said, “divide it as the King has ordained.”

Then Solomon arose, and pointed to the first woman.

“The child belongs to her,” he said. “Give her the child, and do not kill it. She is its mother.”

 

Young children have a very concrete, literal understanding of fairness...a fairness that means that I get my equal share. You get a cookie, I get a cookie. You get two cookies, I get two cookies. Essentially, for kids, if it’s fair, they get something. So, have you heard this suggestion about teaching fairness to kids? ...that when dividing something into portions... when cutting pie or breaking off pieces candy, the child who does the breaking or cutting should be the child who gets to pick their piece last. Quickly, the child cutting the pie recognizes that in order to get their fair share, they have to make the pieces equal. 

Experts say that the capacity for more abstract thinking develops around age 11. Before that, it’s difficult for a child to put hirself in someone else’s shoes, or to wonder if what’s fair for hir is fair for others. They haven’t yet learned that life isn’t always fair, or that grownup justice doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody gets the same thing in the same shape and size. 

I don’t think that equal shares is quite what Solomon had in mind when he suggested that a baby be cut in half. He wasn’t concerned that each of the two women before him get an equal portion of baby...one arm, one leg, one eye each. He was concerned not with distributive justice...that is, being sure everyone have an equal share, but with moral, social justice...making sure the baby was with it’s own loving mother. Life is not always fair, but justice is still possible. 

 

The story of the judgment of Solomon is an extreme example of decisions that we have to make every day. Few moral decisions are simple; we often need to decide between two or more choices that may have equally positive and negative consequences. It is one thing to say that we desire to live justly, and quite another to know what that means when trying to morally navigate through life.

 

‘How shall we live’ is the theme that we’re working with throughout this church year. So far, we’ve looked at living with generosity and courage and imagination; and we’ve talked about living with commitment and with amazement. In each sermon, I found myself saying, or wanting to say, that ‘living’ something is a whole different thing than understanding it. Really ‘living’ as the people we want to be requires incorporating our values into all that we are so that we become those values in our every action. To live generously is to be generous. To live with amazement is to be amazed. To live justly is to be just.  

 

At least for me, to live justly is the most difficult concept we’ve discussed so far. Justice is a very complex thing, hard to describe and hard to apply. We are pretty good at naming injustice...we know that when we see it. We can see that there are some Sneetches without stars, or food, in their bellies.[1] We can cry out against this injustice. This is our prophetic voice...a very important part of working toward justice in the world. But, beyond naming it, knowing what to do about it, knowing what will bring greater justice to the situation, is much more challenging. 

 

Let me get personal... While there are many different kinds of justice with which to concern ourselves...criminal justice, societal justice, retributive justice, restorative justice... when I consider how I...me, myself and I...might live justly, my first thought is of distributive justice...the kind of justice that is about being fair, and which would have everyone have an equal or fair share. I think about how I have a greater portion of pie than most people in the world. I castigate myself for playing into the capitalist worldview that would have me think that I deserve whatever I can earn or acquire.   Then, when I look through the ‘justice lens’, I see my life as hoard-ish, privileged, and self-centred. I can temporarily placate my self-critical angst by looking at all the more extreme examples of materialism and privilege than my own, but then I think I’m just trying to justify my position. I run through the Fix-it-Up Chappie’s[2] machine over and over...I’m a privileged person...I’m a disadvantaged person...I’m a victim...I’m a perpetrator...I’m doing what I can...I haven’t scratched the surface of my privilege...This is my internal war. It can be paralyzing.

 

I suspect something similar happens with some of you. In our work organizing for social justice in the last few months, Jöelle Favreau led those gathered through an exercise to identify the elements that would need to be in place for us to feel our work was meaningful and effective. In the collected comments, Jöelle noticed that a general feeling of discouragement or despair lay not far below the surface. Living justly, and having a positive effect on societal justice, apparently feels out of our reach. 

 

It’s befuddling. What role can we possibly have in creating justice in the world? What is the right thing to do? What good does it do to give a panhandler a handful of change? Would it help if we gave away everything we have? It might give a hungry person a meal, or help a family make it through a few more months, but then what? Would that make a difference? I suspect not, at least in transformative ways...and so, I have to conclude that justice is about more than spreading resource around in equal shares. 

 

The words to “We’ll Build a Land” say that we want a land “where justice rolls down like waters, and peace like an ever-flowing stream.” This is perhaps a liberal translation of the prophet Amos, who calls not for peace, but for ‘righteousness’ like an ever-flowing stream. I don’t really like that word ‘righteousness’, do you? It congers up piety and pride and Sneetches with stars on their bellies.

 

But I fear we misunderstand the word righteous. Righteousness is that quality of life, in relationship with others in community, that gives rise to justice.[3] Let me say that again. Righteousness is that quality of life in relationship with others in community that gives rise to justice. To live justly is to live righteously...in right relationship with each other and with all that is. As a bumper sticker says, “If you want peace work for justice” and if a just society is a peaceful one, then peace would flow like a river. But being just, being righteous, comes first, even if it would have made for difficult lyrics in the hymn. 

 

And so then, how might we be righteous, that is be in right relationship? It involves maturing past a childhood notion of fairness. It includes seeing that we are all different, with different gifts and challenges and life circumstances. It involves understanding that an equal distribution of goods and services might not always equitable. Being in right relations means living the golden rule, treating others as we ourselves would want to be treated. Being in right relationship means being able to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and in that way understand their particular position and challenges. It means thinking about how our actions will affect others, and then acting in alignment with our values. It means both taking responsibility for our own mistakes and using our privileged positions responsibly. Living justly requires that we choose to live in love. Being in right relationship does not necessarily mean dividing everything up into equal, fair shares, but rather, using what we have, in resources and position, to ensure that justice is served. 

 

Justice concerns itself with the proper ordering of things and people.[4] Traditional discussions of justice are occupied with two things...equal opportunity (or freedom) and the distribution of goods and services in such a way that they are of greatest benefit. Questions of justice arise then conflicting claims are made, and when a fair balance or equilibrium is sought.[5] This does not mean that each party will win. John Rawls, in his groundbreaking work, “Justice as Fairness”, says that “one must acknowledge the principles of morality even when to one’s disadvantage. A man whose moral judgments always coincided with his interests could be suspected of having no morality at all.” Justice, then, involves making moral decisions and acting in ways that serve our values without regard for how it might, or might not, serve our own short term interest. 

 

Living justly means asking the hard questions. In preparing for this message, I stumbled across a great website... www.justiceharvard.org... which contains the first course that Harvard has ever made available on line. I recommend that you check it out. I’ve only watched a few minutes of what is a total of twelve sessions, but it’s a wonderful discussion of some of life’s hard questions...what is the right thing to do? Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that your child needed to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Are there any absolutely right and just solutions? 

 

I’m pretty sure that I can’t tell you how exactly to answer the questions that come before you. Should I give my attention first to my aging parents or to my children? Should I stop buying clothes made in Mexico, even when jobs in inhumane maquiladoras provide the only income many families can find? Can I justify spending money on a vacation instead of giving it to charity? Should I insist that I get attention first, even when someone else is in greater or more immediate need? And what about my carbon footprint? What’s the right thing to do? These questions require personal, and moral decisions about what is just. 

 

The Roman goddess Justicia, or Lady Justice, is depicted in a statue in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington DC.   Justice is personified, portrayed as a person, which is appropriate because justice, if it is to come to life, has to come alive through people... through our actions. Justice, if it is to be, must live through us. 

And how? Well, if we can take our cue from the symbols held by Lady Justice, we need three things...

 

First, we need to be aware of the swords we hold. While we may not choose the sword of Solomon or a sword of war, we can still wield the powers of our voices and our advocacy. In one of Martin Luther King Jr’s sermons, he used a line from Matthew...“Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves”. King said that wisdom gives us a double-edged sword. How we use that sword determines how things are cut...for us...and for others.   What we cut for ourselves determines what will be available to others. 

Second, we need scales to consider competing interests. Like Lady Justice, each of us holds the capacity for discernment and the wisdom to weigh decisions. This requires that we ask questions and that we reflect honestly upon them. When we know our own hearts, that frees us to hear the beating of other hearts more clearly.[6] Then we can see beyond what is said and done to see the real stories in the lives of others. In that way, we can use our wisdom to be doves of peace...to do no harm.

Third, we need the blindfold of impartiality. If we so choose, each of us the ability to practice impartiality...to step back and to see a bigger picture. As mature adults, we can make choices that serve justice rather than purely personal interests. We can act from where we are...we can act from our unique places of having or having not...we can live the justice we want to see in the world. 

 

Using our power, using our best moral discernment, and working for the whole family of humanity...these are our tools. And, the words with which we light our chalice, it seems to me, give us great advice about living justly...they say, all things NOT being equal, that we can choose to use what we have to do more help than hindrance, more healing than harm, more blessing than curse. It might not feel like what we as individuals are doing will bring true justice to the world, but I can assure you that this is the only way that justice will roll down like waters... if all of us act, using our best judgment, to tip the balance, to bend the arc of the universe, certainly we can begin to turn the world toward justice and peace.   

 

Spirit of Life. Come to me. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in my hand, help me to give life the shape of justice. May it be so.

 

The prophet Amos lived in a time of peace and prosperity, a time when there was a breakdown in the old tribal and family systems and an emergence of a wealthy class at the top of Israelite society. Amos was aware that these changes came at the expense of many.   His words are oft quoted…perhaps most famously by Martin Luther King, Jr… they are the words present in our first hymn today.  

Over and over Amos renounces social injustice and religious arrogance, saying (and I paraphrase)...

Don’t give me any of your lavish sacrifices. I’m not interested in the melody of harps or your displays of good intentions. I can see through it all, and I want something that I can see and touch and taste and feel in my bones... I want something real and that matters. 

He says, let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

So after one more musical offering, go your ways, walking humbly, loving mercy, and living justly.

So be it. 

Amen.

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