We have named here at Broad Street Christian Church three core values: Spirituality, Relationships, and Justice. Today is the third in the series focusing on our values and as we focus on justice, we begin to think about ministry beyond the walls of our congregation.

Our core values are certainly about us, but they cannot be only about us since the purpose of the church is to be a place of praise and preparation. We cannot be the church – the ones assembled in the name of Jesus Christ who loved the whole world and stay inside and tend only to ourselves. So we gather here on Sunday morning to praise the living God and we go from this place prepared to live and serve in the name of God and for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Serving our church, our communities, our world means seeking and doing justice. Justice is about fairness and integrity. We know that none of us can claim any moral superiority to another; and none of us can claim any moral inferiority to another. We all stand equally before God who will, with grace and mercy judge each of us.

To seek justice is to look for what is righteous, for what puts us in right relationship with each other; what is equitable, and morally right. Justice makes the case that there are some things people in right relationship with their neighbors ought not do and that there are consequences when we do the wrong thing (suggested by the definition of justice in Webster’s New International Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1996).

Justice helps us claim our vision. In this congregation, to seek justice is to say out loud that anyone looking for a church where Christ is lifted up and all are welcome is not a mere slogan, but the heart and soul of who we are.

We have declared here that we will “spread a welcome table for all members of God’s family here. To be about justice is to understand that God’s family is large and extended. We have not yet met all of our brothers and sisters and cousins. So let’s assume we are all related, and that we all want the best for God’s family, the world, and that we want the best for ourselves – let’s see if we can know God and build relationships as we do justice. Do justice and build up our community as we celebrate the differences that strengthen us while we work through differences that could divide us.

Differences have threatened to disrupt and divide the church before. The letter to the Ephesians was written to Gentile Christians, Gentile was the name given to anyone who didn’t follow the law of Moses. The recipients of the Ephesian letter have joined the Jewish Christian community. There was a time when they were not believers, a time when they were unfocused, when they were without hope in the world. We’ve all been there. Even those of us who have spent all or most of our lives in the church can recall a time when we did a thing or two we hoped God didn’t see or know about. I am not calling for confession here – just that we remember that we have received a great gift from God. What counts is that we have been saved, redeemed, rescued, returned to right relationship with God through our faith in God and through God’s faith in us.

So we are Christians, we are people exploring what it means to be in community with each other and with God. We heard in the reading from Micah that we are called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God; we overhear in the Ephesian letter a call to justice seeking unity. Sounds like our core values to me.

What does a justice-seeking place look like? It looks like a place where we can see ourselves as God sees us:

“For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2.10).

We are made in the image of God – created to do justice to treat people with respect and where we expect to be treated with respect.

We are created to do justice, to love kindness, to be compassionate and caring as we encounter people. We know that not every human encounter will be filled with love and joy. Life can be messy, not everyone will love us for who we are or respect us for who we are. But our call is not to be them; our call is to be as God made us: fully human with all the emotions and flaws we humans have. But God has not only made us human, God has created in us a spirit, and with that spirit the ability to be faithful, to ask: God, what must we do, what is the right thing to do, if I believe that my day to day encounters, I am dealing with another child of God, how do I seek, find, and live justly?

How do I do justice where people encounter racism and sexism and class discrimination and homophobia. What is the justice when grieving Gold Star mothers stand in opposition to each other as they consider the war in which their children gave their lives. Who do I call when people are denied life sustaining medical care, and helpful, skill building and character building education, and safe, decent, and affordable housing? What do I do about people dying of diseases and starvation in a world filled with brilliant medical minds and a bounty of food and water? How do I do justice in the name of our Christ who said, “as you did it for them, as you did not do it for them, the least, you were dealing with me” (Matthew 25.31-46).

We are made for good works, what better work can we do than to do all we can by whatever moral means we can to make sure every one is treated as if they too are made in the image of God, because they are as we are. Can you see yourself as God made you? Can you see your neighbor as God-made too?

In a justice seeking place, walls are torn down, and we become open and vulnerable to one another. We don’t try to hide the hurt or the joy, but we offer ourselves in love, because the one who loves us all brings us together.

“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” (2.14).

The first readers of this letter knew about real walls. There was “in the temple a [barrier] which separated the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of Women in the Jerusalem Temple. This fence with its warning inscription (“no man of another race is to enter within the fence and enclosure around the temple”) served to remind the non-Jews that they must keep their distance from Israel’s sacred shrine. That barrier, Ephesians declares has been broken down [so that] access to God is no longer restricted to Jews and their cultic observance” (Interpretation series. Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon. Ralph P. Martin. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1991, p.35).

The dividing was real, and in too many places they still are. Walls can protect us, but not always. Some of you have seen the great wall of China, it was a thousand mile long source of security for an ancient empire. We remember the wall separating East and West Berlin during the years that there were two Germanys. The government of Israel has built a series of walls, a security fence between itself and parts of Palestinian territory. The wall is a source of controversy as parts of theses walls lie beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders, an as church groups, including the Disciples of Christ have urged the Israeli government to tear down the wall, and we have, as a church urged the Palestinian government to do all it can to stop the murder and mayhem caused by suicide bombers.

Walls can represent shelter from danger, and they can build up hostility. But walls need not be permanent or impenetrable, that is why we build gates in walls. Walls can come down. When they do, they are a sign and symbol of new, renewed, and positive unity. The Great Wall of China is now a tourist attraction. We rejoiced in the late 80’s when the Berlin Wall came down, and we continue to pray for peace in Israel and the Middle East.

In the name of justice, we have declared that Christ Jesus is our peace – the source of our shalom, the one who when we name him as our Lord and Savior, brings us to the communion table and the baptismal waters, and helps us to be blessed as we bless others. Justice does not demand that we agree. It does demand that we see the God created humanity of those we encounter, and that we reach across walls to build just communities.

A justice seeking place sees over the rubble of the broken down dividing wall, and sees Jesus standing in its place, and sees new possibilities.

“So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (2.19).

Then the ones who were aliens and strangers – far from home and unknown will no longer be “them” or “those people”. They will be brothers and sisters of ours, people we will invite to be part of us in the name of Jesus Christ.

If you have known the anxiety of homelessness, or emotional displacement, if you didn’t know if or how you belonged, if you have ever been a spiritual refugee, you know what it is to long for a place to belong and to be accepted, and you know what joy there is in finding that place.

Now we all reside in the protection of the head of the spiritual house, we are under the protection of God. The church of Jesus Christ is that place where we bring people together in the beloved community. We believe it here, we proclaim it here, we live it here. We are that safe, justice seeking place built on the foundation of Christ Jesus who is our model for faith and ministry. “As the cornerstone in ancient building methods had an importance as the stone used by the architect-builder to determine the “lie” of the building, so Jesus Christ is the pattern by which the church is being shaped by God” (Martin, p. 38-39).

Finally we can find our purpose in a justice-seeking place. We are in the house and what a house it is. “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2.21-22).

We are created to be the place where a just God dwells, and wherever we do justice, we honor God. We are after all the household of God, and God’s house is a house of prayer and a house of justice.

“As royal householder of the nation, God’s honor was at stake in the welfare of the people, particularly the most vulnerable. Social justice in Israel had a theocratic rationale. Fairness, equity, and especially care for the suffering poor were signs of Yahweh’s sovereign authority among the people. Injustice and lack of compassion were acts of rebellion, public affronts to God’s sovereign power…social justice and mutual care is right worship, and lived allegiance to the sovereign God” (Richard H. Lowery. Sabbath and Jubilee. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000, p. 20-21).

God the householder of the dwelling has asked us to do four things: to honor God as we do justice, as love kindness, and as we walk humbly with our God. The fourth thing is this: God has asked us to recognize and to love Christ who is the one who in the face of all that would build walls between us, becomes our peace, our hope, our joy, our salvation. His love for us gives us the will to tear down the dividing walls; and to find our shalom, our well being, our courage, our intestinal fortitude, our ability to speak and do justice in his name. We will in this sacred place know God, build relationships, and do justice. Praise and thanks be to our God. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor