FFT

…Don’t the prophets strike you as kind of cranky? … no wonder those of us who preach often avoid them. Our listeners don’t always like it. We don’t like it.
We like happy books. In most of our churches, it is easier to preach comfort rather than judgment, mercy rather than justice, because by the standards of God’s justice, who can ever measure up?
On the other hand, these passages are in the Bible. In fact, the prophets directly account for 250 of the 1189 chapters in the Bible. Can you really be a biblical preacher and not address what the prophets have to say?
More than that, there is a reason why we need to preach on justice. There is a reason for the anger of the prophets, and why we need to submit ourselves to the discipline of regularly sitting under and preaching their words…
...We read the prophets and think: What’s the big deal? What are they getting all heated up about?
To us, the world is not so bad. Most of us are pretty happy. Things are going okay - at least for me.
I know there’s violence in the world. It’s regrettable, but as long as it doesn’t touch my life, I would prefer not to think much about it. Certainly that’s not connected to my anger, self-centredness, lack of love.
Cheating goes on everyday in business. Somebody shades the truth a little for profit - that’s just the way things are.
Some 8000 children are born with or infected with HIV everyday in sub-saharan Afica, and it’s now the leading cause of death.
A few miles from my church, from any church, children are born in poverty, living in ghettos or slums; they will grow up without access to decent education, housing.
But they’re not my children. Maybe their parents did something to deserve it. So what if in ancient Israel the poor often got the shaft? Where is it any different? Why go off the deep end?
The prophets act like the world is falling apart.
What’s the big deal?
The prophets have been given the crushing burden of looking at our world and seeing what God sees; rich people trying to get richer and looking the other way while poor people die. And thinking God is really pretty pleased with their lives. And that the world is going pretty well.
We tend to avoid preaching about justice because we don’t really want to know the truth about what sin has done to our world and to us. Because that would make us uncomfortable.
As Micah 2:11 put it: “If a liar and a deceiver comes and says: ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people.”
We prefer preaching that tastes great and is less filling….
…. Events that horrified the prophets go on every day in our world, but we just get used to it - like you get used to wearing your watch. After a while - we don’t notice any more.
The prophets noticed. The prophets never got desensitized to sin. Injustice is sin. Justice is central to shalom. We omit justice from our preaching at peril of our calling, and of our congregation’s health and ability to see the reality around them…
…Concern for justice must also be rooted in Jesus and tied to Scripture. Historian Mark Noll noted that one shortcoming of the abolition movement was a failure to do the exegetical and theological work needed to base abolitionism in the authority of Scripture. As a result, reform movements after the Civil War (from women’s rights to temperance to child labour) became increasingly detached from Scripture, and they became increasingly separated from the concerns of the church…
…When we ask people to involve themselves in justice issues, we are not adding a burden on to their busy lives, or asking them to do the church a favour. Ultimately, what matters most is… Which person is more like God?...
…In some churches, where many attenders are well off, we may have to remind ourselves of how badly injustice stings… we hate it when someone treats us unfairly - at work, in family. The call of Jesus is to get as energized about someone else’s being the victim of injustice as you are when it’s you. In particular, be concerned about injustice to those you might be inclined to overlook.
This is another concrete story, from a woman quoted in Miraslov Volf’s wonderful book Exclusion and Embrace: “I am Muslim, and I am 35 years old. To my second son, I gave the name Jihad so he would not forget the testament of his mother - revenge. The first time I put my baby at my breast I told him, ‘May this milk choke you if you forget.’ So be it. The Serbs taught me to hate. [She describes her work as a teacher and how the very people she taught and cared for became her enemies.] My student Zoran, the only son of my neighbour, urinated into my mouth. As the bearded hooligans standing around laughed, he told me: ‘ You are good for nothing else, you stinking Muslim woman.’”
Jesus often surprised his followers by being concerned for those whom others were inclined to overlook….
… So we are to remind people that it is in Jesus that justice prevails. The cross was the scene of the most monstrous injustice in history, where the one truly innocent person in history was visited with the sum total of human sin.
It is on a cross we see most clearly God’s hatred of injustice. It is an empty tomb that proclaims most loudly justice’s final victory.
And so Jesus’ people are called to form a community where shalom prevails. I love the translation Eugene Peterson gives in Acts 2 of the way the world looking on the early church “and in general, liked what they saw” (Acts 2:47, The Message).
May it happen again.

-John Ortberg.