Fundamental to our Christian understanding of God is that God is not capricious or discriminatory. While human systems, institutions, and judgments may be flawed and harmful, God is just in judgment, just in vision, and just in action in human history. God uses prophets to try to teach and transform human relations and human society toward God’s justice. As we know from Bible stories, it doesn’t always work because human beings are imperfect and can be “hard-hearted” (as the Bible describes Pharoah, for example, who keeps the people Israel in bondage in Egypt.)
Justice is, thus, a theological concept. As is the idea of equitable unity, striving to build community where, as Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
For the next three weeks, our liturgical and secular calendars converge around these themes of justice and unity. This Sunday, we recognize the power and legacy of the civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This weekend also inaugurates the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In honor of this effort toward equitable Christian unity, on January 26, we will welcome guest preacher Rev. Teddy Odobo-Sheriff, an Assembly of God certified minister and community programs leader in our neighborhood (Central Life Center). On February 2, we will welcome our Bishop, the Rev. Paul Egensteiner, who will preach and lead the liturgy. Both guests will have the opportunity to preach on Jesus’ most justice-focused sermon (Luke 4) and its impact on his hearers (they try to run Jesus off a cliff).
Jesus reveals that pursuing justice and unity can engender harsh resistance. But that does not stop us because: our God is a just God, and it is God—and not prejudicial human policies—that calls us to unity.
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