This is the first entry in our new series, TIKKUN OLAM. In it, we intend to explore what justice looks like in the eyes of God, and how we are called to partner with God in the healing of the world.
The late theologian Karl Barth once said that we must hold our Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, as a way to learn how we read the stories and events of the present moment through the eternal wisdom of scripture. Before we delve into our passage for today, I would encourage you to pop over to the news website of your choice and quickly scan the headlines. What sticks out, stirs your heart? How do you feel when you see all that is happening around you? When you have done so, slowly read the following:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light.
For those who lived in a land of deep shadows—
light! sunbursts of light!
You repopulated the nation,
you expanded its joy.
Oh, they’re so glad in your presence!
Festival joy!
The joy of a great celebration,
sharing rich gifts and warm greetings.
The abuse of oppressors and cruelty of tyrants—
all their whips and clubs and curses—
Is gone, done away with, a deliverance
as surprising and sudden as Gideon’s old victory over Midian.
The boots of all those invading troops,
along with their shirts soaked with innocent blood,
Will be piled in a heap and burned,
a fire that will burn for days!
For a child has been born—for us!
the gift of a son—for us!
He’ll take over
the running of the world.
His names will be: Amazing Counselor,
Strong God,
Eternal Father,
Prince of Wholeness.
His ruling authority will grow,
and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.
He’ll rule from the historic David throne
over that promised kingdom.
He’ll put that kingdom on a firm footing
and keep it going
With fair dealing and right living,
beginning now and lasting always.
The zeal of God-of-the-Angel-Armies
will do all this.
(Isaiah 9:2-7 MSG)
The above passage is typically read during the Advent season, when we allow the prophetic imagination to stir us up into holy waiting for the anticipation of the coming Christ. However, as we so often do, the imagery of Isaiah’s poems are intermingled with the sights and sounds of nativity plays and Christmas decorations and family gatherings in such a way as we lose their vitality and the sense of yearning for redemption.
It is important to remember that the age of the prophets came about in a time of great failure of the nation-building project of Israel. The desire for a king “like all the other nations” (1 Sam. 8:20) had quickly calcified into an oppressive regime through which the royal consciousness and the religious puppets of the day ignored or subjugated the very people for whom God has special affection. Isaiah, like his contemporaries, engages in the prophetic pattern of addressing a people numbed by an oppressive system to give them permission to grieve their present condition, so they might eventually learn to hope for redemption and know how to act.
This is an invaluable place to begin our exploration of justice:
The cry for justice begins not with practical solutions but a deep-felt conviction that things are not as God desires them to be. The prophets are not primarily interested in the practicalities of fixing the world; they endeavor to give us visions meant to shake us out of our pragmatism. Here we see Isaiah writing in several ways that are echoed in the other prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so on. Firstly, he speaks of what is to come as if it has already happened with a bold confidence. Secondly, Isaiah does not paint a vision of a future that is a disembodied escapist heaven, as many would think today, but a redeemed and restored creation with God as the true King. Thirdly, his use of poetry breaks us out of our compulsive need for programatic solutions. For many of us, just like Isaiah’s audience, we have been conditioned to read the brokenness of the world around us through the imperial lens. The only two options presented to us, then, are to try and fix the world using the imperial tools offered us by kings and their cohorts, or to give up altogether and embrace numbness as a way to protect ourselves from existential despair.
Our task is to receive the unreasonable prophetic imagination stirred by these prophets so we might break out of the imperial morass, and then ask how we as followers of the Prince of Peace are called to respond in our time.
Tikkun Olam is a phrase that dates back to the creation of the Mishnah, a written collection of rabbinic sayings around 200 AD. It roughly translates to “repairing the world”, and gradually moved from discussions on divorce procedures to something more broadly akin to social justice - how we bring harmony to the world through our actions. Yet the phrase means more than “repair” as if to put things back how they were. It also means to improve, to heal, to leave something better than how it was found. Perhaps my favorite layer of this wonderful phrase is that olam can also mean “hidden”, which connotes that in healing the world the hidden qualities of God are revealed.
In this series we will focus primarily on what we as Christians are called to do as we work alongside of God for justice on God’s terms. Part of that task is to allow the prophets to shake us out of our lethargic religiosity. To do so, we return to Isaiah and place alongside him Amos:
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. (Is. 1:11-17)
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)
Thoroughly shaken, we return to Isaiah to find some hope of redemption for ourselves:
“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Is. 1:18-20)
It is not enough to merely sing songs and celebrate our holy days. These things should prepare us to partner with God in the healing of the world. The prophets, in quite stark terms, tell us that worship and sacrifice are an offense to God when not partnered with justice. This is far from saying that musical worship or observation of the church calendar do not matter; rather, the metric of good worship is a) how it reminds us of God’s character and will and b) then forms us to care about the things God cares about, c) leading us to right action. We are tempted in our sentimental age to think of good worship in terms of how many people are crying, or arms are raised, or the response to an altar call (which sadly is often a result of emotional manipulation). It is shocking, and intentionally so, to realize through the prophets that the very things we determine make our worship good might be an affront to the God of Justice.
It is easy in our pervasively-online culture to critique big amorphous categories like “the Western Church” or “the evangelical movement” for hypocrisy in this regard. Fair enough. I have participated in it as much as anyone, mostly because it makes me feel superior to other Christians. But what about us? What about City Beautiful Church? Have we taken seriously the intent and fruit of genuine worship? Do we point the finger at others as a way to distract from the reality that we are not taking up the call to heal the world alongside God?
I will leave you with a quote from recently deceased biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, whose work on the Old Testament and specifically the prophets has been transformative for me. He speaks profoundly of the need for us to come out of the kingly system, grieve that the world is not as it should be, and then take more seriously the prophetic imagination as the starting point for justice-seeking:
“Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk.”