“‘Justice fatigue’ … the privileged often treat justice as something discretionary that one can choose to engage in or not. But opting out is not an option for the millions whose lives daily bear the marks of injustice.” Mark Labberton
Collect stories from the newspaper, television and radio that remind you of this inequality. Place any news clippings on your piece of purple fabric or paper.
Last week Derek proposed that the whole book of Judges could be summed up as “the failure of an awards and punishment model of society.” In the framework from Judges 10 that we discussed last week we noticed that God treated Israel much like a delinquent child in school with huge empty threats of abandonment, and then eventually caving in (perhaps even enabling). This week we see an even more exaggerated hyperbole of systems that chose retribution, entitlement and differed responsisbility.
Jephthah was the son of a prostitute deported by his step brothers (sons of his father’s legal wife). But years later, when their clan was loosing a series of battles, they recruited Jephthah to fight for them and he returned to his home town as a war-hero. In his hubris he promised to sacrifice, as a victory celebration, whatever came through his door. The gut wrenching turn of events that follows reverses everything you think is good and civil about community. He sacrifices his own daughter!
Outcast becomes outsider, and then returns as an insider, and then repeats the habit of exclusion by creating a cycle of death that closes in on himself.
Peter Block suggests that cycles of retribution, revenge, security, and entitlement break down community while wholeness, belonging, and relatedness reverse those cycles:
Restorative community is created when we allow ourselves to see the language of healing and relatedness and belonging without embarrassment. It recognizes that taking responsibility for one’s own part in creating the present situation is the critical act of courage and engagement, which is the axis around which the future rotates. The essence of restorative community building is… it’s citizens’ willingness to own up to their contribution, to be humble, to choose accountability, and to have fiath in their own capacity to make authentic promises to crete the alternative future.
For whatever reason, Jephthah’s promises were more about himself than a future that included others. What are our promises about? What futures are we seeking?
Come build a discussion about a collective futures and the sabotage of individualism. We’ll meet from 5-7 at Alison’s place, 409 Deckner Ave SW 30310.
CORRECTION: Alison’s Address is 1474 Desoto Ave SW.
“(God has) already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.” Micah 6: 8 (The Message Bible)
What does it mean for you to “take God seriously”?
“Justice is the right ordering of power.” Mark Labberton “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Cornell West Do you act justly toward your family, your boss, your colleagues, your friends, strangers, the disadvantaged, the environment, yourself? Find a way to act justly today in one area or situation you don’t usually.
Yesterday you defined justice.
Does the God you serve act justly?
What situations do you see that happening in? (Sometimes its easier to describe where you don’t see it happening.)
What does that mean for you as a follower?
What do you think “justice” means?
Look it up in a dictionary.
Write your definition down. Leave the note on your purple place.
Talk with God and other people about this throughout today. Think about it as often as you can.
G20 Protests, Melbourne. Use this image to reflect on today.
Psalm 32
A David Psalm
1 Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate’s wiped clean.2 Count yourself lucky—
God holds nothing against you
and you’re holding nothing back from him.3 When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.4 The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.5 Then I let it all out;
I said, “I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God.”Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.6 These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray;
when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts
we’ll be on high ground, untouched.7 God’s my island hideaway,
keeps danger far from the shore,
throws garlands of hosannas around my neck.8 Let me give you some good advice;
I’m looking you in the eye
and giving it to you straight:9 “Don’t be ornery like a horse or mule
that needs bit and bridle
to stay on track.”10 God-defiers are always in trouble;
God-affirmers find themselves loved
every time they turn around.11 Celebrate God.
Sing together—everyone!
All you honest hearts, raise the roof!—from Lectionary for this Sunday, the Message
Today Maria will watch her 4 year old son Amir die because she had to choose between buying medicine for him and 10 days food for her two other young children.
25 000 children like Amir, under the age of 5, will also die today because they didn’t have enough to eat. 18 000 of those children could have easily been saved with basic nutrition and health care.
Go without eating lunch today and use the time to pray for those who can’t choose whether or not they will eat.
‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’ “He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’
Like an aesthetic idol (such as the Golden Calf in the book of Exodus), the conceptual idol refer to any system of thought which the individual or community takes to be a visible rendering of God. The only significant difference between the aesthetic idol and the conceptual idol lies in the fact that the former reduces God to a physical object while the latter reduces God to an intellectual object. —Pete Rollins
To worship God means to forget the self; an extremely difficult, though possible, act. What takes place in a moment of prayer may be described as a shift of the center of living–from self-consciousness to self-surrender. —Abraham Joshua Heschel
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must the asked for, the door at which a man must knock.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Continuing in our series on Judges, “Neighboring in Chaotic Spaces,” we’ll read a succinct story from Judges 10 of Israel wrestling with God and the letting go and “turning” or confessing. At which point, “God could no longer bear to see them suffer.” This lines up interestingly with the season of Lent that we’ve just entered, and the strategic planning that we’ll be doing next Saturday, March 19.
Lent’s confession and obedience dance is one of letting go. Like a trapeze artist, the individual and the community are each called to let go of our grips on identity and pride. We not only need to “Let go and let God.” But true repentance also calls for letting go of our handle on God. Reoppenning ourselves to knock at the door, to learn again.
Strategic Planning’s dream>decide>do process is also a dance. Listening to our life for our calling, then forming a plan, and then following through with accountability while holding that plan loosely are a unique balance. Ideals, like Idols, separate us into silos that lead to segregation and animosity. Even a church’s Big Harry Audacious Goals (to use a Jim Collins term) have to remain connected to our openness to learn and meet God in the present. The community of Israel does not just return to who they remember themselves to be, but they have to ask who they are now, who they are going to be next.
Come join us in worship as we practice letting go and leaning in for what God calls us to today. We’ll meet from 5-7 at Mike and Anne’s house 563 Manford Ave SW.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you,
his sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light,
kings to your sunburst brightness.
Look up! Look around!
In what ways would the song from yesterday be meaningful for a woman with her children in Atlanta at present, or a man who lost all his family in a tsunami, or a child soldier in Sudan, or a mother holding her child while he dies very slowly in her arms from lack of food?
Read Isaiah chapters 60 and 61 in the Bible. How does the context of these words change their meaning?
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen
The Abbey organized in the fall of 2008 on a neighborhood back porch with two commitments, exploring the way of Jesus for city folks, and seeking the growth of the community from within instead of from outside. Several of us had kids and we prayed that the girls we were raising and the girls walking the sidewalks as prostitutes would benefit together from our church's presence. Never one at the expense of the other.
We took on the language of the Abbey to communicate the historic tradition of orders of faith plopping down in the middle of a city and making "sanctuary"' for the wanderer and for the beautiful. We wanted our identity to be tied to this kind of posture and practice.
We took as our patron saint, the Good Samaritan, our Neighbor. He knew what is was like to be outside of religious groups. He was not the person the religious reader would have expected to act with God's desired compassion. And yet his "neighboring" became the exemplar in Jesus' tale told to the lawyer who wanted to be awarded life eternal for his doctrine or his behaviors.
Neighbors Abbey does not simply bring the dreams of God to SW Atlanta, we expect to learn them from neighbors who have already been participating in these ways. This is part of what it means for us to walk in Jesus' Way, its just what those early disciples and the lawyer and the neck-craning religious leaders would have run into walking along with Jesus.
Now we meet for meals, to help our neighbors, to pray, to discuss scripture, to design public performance art projects, to mentor youth, and many other things.
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