“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” Proverbs 31. 8-9.(NLT)
It's not as if this verse is out of step with the main thrust of the Bible. In the Bible 'justice' is a catch-all word that holds a variety of obligations: care for the poor, protection of the vulnerable, support for the weak, food for the hungry, hospitality for the stranger.
An entire Bible text concordance could be compiled with commands and imperatives, exhortations and incentives, stories and parables, about how to treat other people well, the importance of generosity as a lifestyle, and respect for the dignity and worth of each person whose path we cross.
So why is it that moral imperatives like those in that Proverbs text exert minimal purchase on our credit and debit cards, aren't enough to compel us to be the voice of those silenced by the powerful, and only occasionally feature at the centre and beating heart of our worship? Find a few contemporary worship songs that chime with "ensure justice for those being crushed." You might, but they are a barely audible minority report.
What would happen if a church community took these verses as their motto for 2023? We've done enough with verses about our own individual spiritual development, or renewed commitment to the disciplines of being the church community. These are often self-interested, perhaps even self-indulgent. How about a year when every agenda, from full church meetings to deacons' meetings, committees and task groups, had this verse as a specific, recurring, first item on our agendas?
First, it would force us to ask questions that dig beneath our comfort zones. Who are the people who can't speak for themselves? How can we help them find their voice? Are there times when we need to be their voice, or at least join our own voices to the chorus of the unheard to raise the volume levels?
Second, who are those that our social systems, political policies, and our own social and political preferences and prejudices crush?
"The poor may be defenceless against [the powerful] because they are too ignorant to counteract the obstructionist tactics of the legally savvy, too inarticulate to state their case convincingly, too poor to produce proper evidence, too lowly to command respect." (Waltke, vol 2 Commentary on Proverbs, p. 509)
These are the very people good government is there to enable, empower, and ensure that justice is available to everyone, regardless of status, wealth, power or social favour.
Third, the imperatives are clear and uncompromising. "Speak up...ensure...speak up...see to it!" Do everything in your power to make this happen, church! What does that mean in practice? What is it the church is called to speak, to ensure, to see to, in relation to food banks, heat banks, fair and just wages, resources for adequate and humane social care, proper provisions for processing and humanely treating people seeking asylum? If the answers are not obvious, at least the questions are. And that's a start.
Fourth, in the light of this embarrassing text, what do we have to say about all of us being complicit in creating the kind of society that tolerates food banks as a growth industry? How can we better speak up for, and ensure justice for, those who now depend on food bank provisions to eat, be warm, retain some dignity? How do we "see to it" that justice and fairness can advance far enough to begin reducing the need for food banks, heat banks, and other support providers? Yes, they are hard questions, at times intransigent. But to be a follower of Jesus is already to be well down the road to loving our neighbour, questioning the status quo, and doing what is necessary for those Jesus once called, with exaggerated irony, the least of his family of brothers and sisters.
Fifth, and much more personally. I ask myself what difference it would make to my own way of living, my way of seeing the world, my responsiveness to the countless people I encounter day by day and week by week - what difference it would make if this text was printed at the top of each page in my week to view diary. A reminder that I am called to "Speak up...ensure...see to it." As a self examen at the end of a week - note down times this verse has galvanised my speech, energised my action, and so made a difference in the scales that measure out human well-being and social justice.
And thus, finally. Supposing I started my prayers by saying this text, and allowing it to question what I've been about. Use it as an intercession for those I know, or have seen in the passing - to pray for those who are indeed, without a voice, the poor, those disempowered by systems and structures, - unwanted, inconvenient, overlooked, superfluous to the requirements of a society sated in both possessions and possessiveness. To pray for justice and to speak up for it; to pray for the poor but also defend them; to pray for those seeking asylum, but also to befriend, support, be compassionate towards. That, at least.
I guess I could read those two verses from Proverbs and feel the inner slump of resignation. "I do what I can," might seem a realistic enough goal. But then I hear those imperatives of Proverbs, rephrased by Jesus and embodied repeatedly in the Gospels as his way of neighbour love and love for God in action - ""Speak up...ensure...speak up...see to it!"
Justice is what neighbour love looks like in public. Love your neighbour as yourself because you love God. Who knows, you may end up loving God even more in those very words and acts of speaking up, ensuring, and seeing to it that so long as you are in the neighbourhood, nobody is unloved.
So Jim. Forget the complacent, "I do what I can." The text is not about shoulder-shrugging resignation. It's a yoke to be taken up with glad determination to learn and live Jesus' way. "See to it!" Do everything in your power "to ensure justice for those being crushed."
How? Well, God's grace is sufficient; God's peace guards the mind and heart; the Holy Spirit gives words to disciples under pressure; we walk every day in the love from which nothing can separate; and we serve one who came with his own manifesto of the Kingdom of God, and we buy into it with everything we are, and the living Christ walks with us on the road of the Kingdom of God:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4.14-30)
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