Wisdom And Understanding Give Birth To Social Justice

Our title this week is Wisdom and Understanding Give Birth to Social Justice, and our reading this past weekend was from the gospel of Luke:

The Boy Jesus: A Glimpse of Wisdom in the Temple

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

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“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:41-52)

From Childhood Wisdom to a Life of Justice

Lukes’ gospel is the only version of the Jesus story to contain a narrative about the childhood of Jesus.

By the time Luke’s gospel was written, the Jesus community had become more diverse than the Jewish movement it began as. It had evolved into a richly cosmopolitan community where many members valued the Hellenistic culture and stories they had been socialized by. By including a narrative about Jesus’ childhood, Luke’s gospel is taking a cue from traditional Greek biographies that told a story of the hero’s childhood that foreshadowed what kind of leader the hero would be.

This story of Jesus in the Temple forecasts that Jesus will become a wise teacher with exceptional wisdom and understanding that amazed the Temple teachers. The story concludes with Jesus returning to Nazareth and growing into even greater wisdom and understanding there.

By the time Jesus becomes an adult in Luke’s gospel, his wisdom and understanding of the Torah had grown into teachings that brought him a following. These teachings manifested in “good news to the poor . . . freedom for the prisoners . . . sight for the blind,” and teachings that “set the oppressed free” and proclaimed “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

The childhood story invests Jesus with the wisdom and understanding that produces fruit in him as an adult teacher. That fruit is what we would call social justice today.

Jesus called for the kind of social justice, born out of love of neighbor, that stood squarely in solidarity with the oppressed of his own time and place. James Cone states in one of his last books, The Cross and the Lynching Tree:

“I find nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair, as revealed in the biblical and black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.” (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 201)

Social justice was the Hebrew prophets’ righteous endeavor:

“Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

It was this prophetic tradition that both John the Baptist and Jesus stood in and expanded to those pushed to the edges or margins of their society as well. To pursue social justice in whatever context we find ourselves is therefore a righteous act exemplified by Jesus himself.

Social Justice as the Fruit of Faithful Love

Social justice is rooted in love of neighbor which, though not always practiced, is the central tenet of any religion about Jesus:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no commandment greater. (Mark 12:31)

To love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Mark 12:33)

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love [of neighbor] is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14)

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. (James 2:8)

Loving your neighbor and social justice are two phrases referring to the same thing. As Stephen Mattson writes, “To dismiss social justice is to dismiss the worth and humanity of your neighbor” (On Love and Mercy: A Social Justice Devotional, p. 16).

Any Christian teaching, action, or movement that disparages, discourages or prevents adherents from caring about social justice rejects Jesus’ central wisdom and teachings on loving one’s neighbors. Any form of Christianity that inhibits your pursuit and practice of social justice denies the central tenet of the gospel that the Jesus of the stories taught, for the work of social justice is merely the act of applying the ethic of loving one’s neighbor.

And yet, even within some more progressive forms of Christianity today, pursuing social justice within and outside of one’s faith community too often comes at a high cost. After all, the Jesus of our story did end up on a Roman cross. (Though his story doesn’t end there.)

Why Neighborly Love is Central to Faith and Justice

Pursuing social justice will cost you. If it doesn’t, then your story is the exception, not the rule, and your experience would be very unique. Too often, when someone seeks to pursue social justice as an expression of their faith in Jesus and his call to love our neighbor, the result is loss of reputation, friends, family, and income. And there are even those who have also lost their lives. You may find yourself feeling abandoned, but you are not. You are standing in a rich tradition and you are not alone. You and many others are in the same story we read of Jesus in the gospels. You’re in the right story. Even when we may find the path of loving our neighbor discouraging, keep learning, keep listening, keep doing. You are engaged in a holy act of love alongside a holy community of love. As it is written:

“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18, emphasis added.)

Love, compassion, and social justice are all connected here. However much we profess to love, that love will manifest itself in caring for the material needs of our neighbors.

It will lead us to seek to be more connected to the world around us. It won’t lead us to want to escape to some far distant cloud or private, inward place, but will lead us to be more effectively engaged with our world in solidarity with our neighbors. We won’t simply care about the well-being of our neighbors’ souls (whatever that may be), but we’ll care about their concrete, material existence and want them to receive social justice along with us.

Social justice is the practical fruit of loving one’s neighbor. Therefore, to say that Christianity is rooted in the love of neighbor is to also state that Christianity bears the fruit of being rooted in social justice out of love for our neighbor. Whatever form of Christianity we subscribe to, our faith should not disconnect us from our world, from our community, from our society. It should propel us to lean into and be more deeply connected to our world, community and larger society.

This coming year, let’s lean more deeply into Jesus’ wisdom and teachings on loving our neighbor and embrace whatever adventure to which that leads.

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