Justice is coming, and it’s furious

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

These are not nice songs. The writer’s life is not nice, his feelings are not nice and the response he is looking for from God to deal with injustice is a long, long way from nice.

This is not to say that there is no goodness in what the writer wants, sees and credits to God. Families, showers, refreshment, gifts and praise: these are all things we might typically call “nice” in English. If our lives are going pretty well, these are nice things.

Maybe that’s why we’ve developed quite a nice culture of niceness around faith and church, and why we generally sing nice songs, nicely. Life could be better, but it’s not too bad. So why make a fuss? Why grumble or protest? If you must, could you not do it nicely?

That depends on how much there is to protest about, how much change is needed, how big the turnaround needs to go – in this case – from death to life. These pleas are not gentle and nice because they are desperate, urgent, pain-fuelled indictments of evil, cries for rescue and faith that relief will come from God with vigour and fury, power and glory.

These standout passages remained front of mind for Israel when they experienced the crushing injustice of invasion and desperately hoped for a saviour. In John 2, it’s clear that people joined the dots between the inspiration of Psalm 69 and the life and passion of Jesus. He did not suffer so life could be a bit nicer, but because it needs to change massively.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God knows the full extent of injustice and suffering in our world, more than we can maybe feel or identify with personally. He will not let evil win. He responds by empowering people who trust in him and may themselves suffer in a battle for justice. The Spirit helps them to contrast their situation with the bright hope of salvation, seeing a world which can be better and praising God as if it is already here. Jesus showed how to get there, and we can follow.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

In the last week, I’ve been struck by how limited my hopes and prayers for comfort and the ability to “get back to normal” have been. Normal didn’t work. Normal wasn’t just. Normal was more desperately wrong than I experienced personally, but aren’t I connected by the Spirit with these big, urgent, desperate hopes? Aren’t we all?

As my Facebook feed has filled these last few days both with agreements that black lives matter and with condescension for protestors who aren’t socially distancing, I can’t pretend that I know what to do, but I want God to guide my response. Some of it won’t be nice.

Who am I going to share this with?

As our school community starts to reconnect in person, I’ll look for what God wants there. Many families have come from different kinds of suffering. I want to understand and empathise better and for God to use us to provide hope and change.