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In the Bedroom Sermon by Brian Russo February 21, 2010, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Psalms 32:1-7 Luke 6:37-42 What is justice? Though it may seem like a fairly obvious question and answer, I’d like to invite you to the possibility this morning that it is perhaps anything but that. Now I’d imagine when prompted with this question – what is justice – many of our minds would first gravitate toward that which is understood in our penal codes. Namely, that justice is the ruling lawfully derived from the proceedings in a courtroom. And while I would assume that this is perhaps society’s greatest incarnation of justice, if you, a loved one, or simply someone you have read about has suffered on account of a unjust ruling, you would most certainly argue that equating justice to the steps of the courthouse is tantamount to equating a donkey to a horse, or better, Tiger Woods to The Buddha. Considering such, perhaps some of you would redirect that justice is in fact karma; resigning to the objection that since we cannot rely on our manmade systems of law and order, karmic interventions thereby become the substitute for what we consider justice. That somehow, someway, what it is that we sow, will one day catch up with us all, both perpetrator and victim, either in this life or the next. It is certainly an interesting take, one even supported by many of our theologies on salvation. But for me, there are simply too many variables to consider before proclaiming this the crystallized end-all definition that I wish to prescribe. For instance, how often do we witness politicians, CEO’s, white-collar criminals, officers of court, and really anyone endowed into a position of power repeatedly get away with crippling those disenfranchised from such a status elite? How often? And just how often do we see the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? How often? Furthermore, unless one of us here in this sanctuary has at one point experienced life after death, how can any of us proclaim that karmic, or rather, cosmic justice will really be meted out in the next creation? We can hope that perhaps this will be the case, but in the end this is all that we have -- hope. Therefore, our working idea of justice must have a better foundation in something else, something we have yet to uncover this morning. But one thing I am absolutely certain of justice not being is that which is written in the proverbial code, “an eye for an eye.” You all know the saying. No, justice is ideologically bankrupt in the concept of the “revenge” ethic. For where does revenge bring us, and what good does it do for us? There is perhaps no better answer to those two questions than that which we find in Agamemnon and Choephori, the legendary plays by the brilliant Greek thinker and writer, Aeschylus. To spare you a poor rendition of the enormity of each work, I quote an online review, “Agamemnon, the earliest play in the trilogy, portrays justice as revenge. Aeschylus' vivid imagery depicts Agamemnon returning home from the battle of Troy only to be savagely murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. According to the old law of ancient times, when a blood relative is murdered the next of kin must avenge that murder. Therefore, in the second play, titled The Choephori, Orestes must avenge his father's murder, but in order to do so he must murder his own mother.” Can you only imagine then the vicious cycle of revenge this would induce? And this, my friends, was Aeschylus’ crucial point -- that revenge gets us nowhere, and in fact, will only produce a chain reaction that will leave all of us buried in the ground, minus of course that last soul who walks alone through Nod after committing the final act of avenging justice. Gandhi once said, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind;” now doesn’t that just sum up everything here in but a phrase? “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” And does it not also directly correspond with our text for this morning? For in Luke 6:39, Jesus asks in the form of a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?” His point, if we dare to think that justice ought be equated with retribution then we might as well all be without sight, one by one tripping over each other, stumbling toward our mutual ends, together falling off the cliff of morality. Thus, Jesus urges that this is the kind of justice we should avoid at all costs. For that cliff, that high peak of morality is precisely what justice is, and if we were to fall from it, we would lose our entire vision of it. For justice is literally defined as the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness. It’s the first entry, no less. And this is what Jesus calls us toward in his ministry, isn’t it? To be morally righteous; to be just; to cast not the stone in your hand but to first lay it down; to turn the other cheek; to embrace others; to listen their story before judging them guilty; to love as we would want to be loved and to forgive as we would want to be forgiven. This, my friends, is true justice. So where does that leave you? By that definition, are you a just or unjust creature? Jesus asks, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but not notice the log in your own?” Just how many of us are guilty of this charge? How many of us are so quick with our triggers of anger, our barrels of rage, our chambers of accusations? How many of us really holster our tongues, constricting our specks before they dilate into logs? If justice really is to be morally righteous, then to be morally righteous is to be humble. For haven’t we all at one time been the defendant and entered our plea, awaiting with sweaty palms the verdict by those whom we have personally hurt? Why, oh why then, do we so easily forget this, and pierce those both near and far with our own liquid swords? All of us, each and every one of us, are in a bedroom with each other and yet we are so easy to forget it. And yes, I really do mean exactly what I just said. For the rear compartment of a lobster trap is known as the “bedroom,” called such because it can only hold up to two lobsters at once before they start to turn on each other. Is the “bedroom” then not a distressing parallel to our own human societies? Do we not turn on each other, casting blame upon intruders with different political, social, and religious viewpoints, and render them guilty at disturbing the equilibrium by which we were once comfortable? Look around, right now, both with your eyes and through the memories in your heart and mind – can you even begin to count how many names you have once turned on for disturbing your peace? And isn’t it just depressing that most of the time it doesn’t even take an intruder to mess up our individual bedrooms? That all too often we turn against those who were once the very people we had given our vows to -- our best friend, our brother, our sister, our father, our mother, our significant other, our spouse, and even our church? My friends, is it just-ice, is it morally righteous or equitable to neglect our love in favor for passing moments of heated anger? But some of you may be thinking, “young man, you simply do not know the ways of the world; you haven’t been snake-bitten, tasted the bitterness of an unforgivable curse of betrayal, or worse. There are simply some things in life that are by their very nature irreconcilable.” And to that I say, you are somewhat right. For who could look upon a woman who has been brutally raped and urge her heart toward forgiveness? Who could ask an innocent man who was ordered a life-sentence to somehow come to terms with all of the years unwarrantedly lost? Who could, for these offenses or for all of the nameless atrocities that happen to so many of us each and every day, declare that forgiveness and reconciliation is always possible and just? And yet, under cross-examination, I believe there is something I can offer into evidence this morning that just may be able to disguise itself as reasonable doubt. And it comes from no greater witness than that of our Bible. For the Psalmist writes, “while I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long… while I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” It is therefore my contention that if you hold on to what others have offended against you, you will only imprison yourself for life. Their offenses will simply eat away at you. They will devour and replicate themselves like a cancer, and you will carry your cross like baggage in a crowded terminal, forever bumping into others, projecting the contents of your pain out onto their image. My friends, without reconciliation, without reconciling what has happened to us, there will never be a movement forward in time, rather, we will become like a record dislodged from its player with the original trespass playing on a loop day after day, such that it eventually becomes the song we begin to identify ourselves by. And trust me, none of us want this is for ourselves – it is but a bleak existence that I, and perhaps some of you, have once known all too well -- an existence that serves anything but justice to the extraordinary beauty of our human evolution. And might I also say, it is certainly not a witness to the moral righteousness or equitable spirit that so guided our Savior in his ministry and teachings. Jesus encouraged us to leave everything behind and to follow him, and that should first mean leaving behind all that shadows our spirit. My friends, there is then but one choice for us this morning and all of the mornings that follow, and it isn’t necessarily an easy one… We must, we must learn how to let go, how to reach a verdict for our own acquittal so to reenter the bedroom of life above and beyond the specks of our neighbor recognizing that the weight of our own logs was heavy enough. Amen. |