No Peace Without Justice

Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
   and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
   the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
   the spirit of counsel and might,
   the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
   or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
   and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
   and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
   and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

So, as Christians, we hear this passage, and it’s impossible not to think about the coming of Jesus. That’s why, after all, it’s one of the selected passages for Advent. I mean, “…with righteousness he will judge the poor, / and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…”—what’s more Jesus-y than that? And it’s okay for us, as Christians, to think about Jesus when we read this text. Even so, we need to be aware of the Jewish context. This, like so much of Isaiah was written during a time of war and turmoil, it was written as the Northern Kingdom was falling due to a foolish decision by King Ahaz. So in this passage, Isaiah was looking ahead to a time of peace—to a time when there would be a good and perfect King appointed by God to lead the people back to a time of peace and prosperity. He never specifies who this king is; it’s ambiguous as to whether or not Isaiah even knows exactly who this king is. What is not ambiguous are the attributes that this king will have— and the most important thing about this future king is that he will be a just king. He will reign with justice and righteousness, he will lift up the poor and the meek, he will take oppressive rulers down. And with justice, comes peace.

Because of the injustice and oppression the Jewish people faced in Egypt, because of everything they had been through, justice is a key part of their theology, and it’s therefore a key part of our theology. And so reading this passage, with this emphasis on judgment and justice being what leads to peace, the now-famous slogan from various racial justice rallies kept coming to my head—“No justice, no peace.” This specific slogan seems to originate from 1986 after the murder of a Black man, Michael Griffith by white youths; it the gained popularity after the Rodney King verdict in 1992. And I know I saw this slogan everywhere during the George Floyd marches when I was in Philly. I think this slogan may make some people a little uncomfortable. They might try to harken back to the days of Martin Luther King and the early civil rights movement of peaceful protest. But remember, as I’ve talked about before, people have a tendency to try to whitewash Martin Luther King—so even though “no justice no peace” originated in that specific form in the mid-80’s, Martin Luther King is quoted as saying, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

The people of Isaiah’s time knew this—after everything they had been through, they knew peace didn’t just mean a quiet time with a lack of overt physical violence or war. If one wanted to, they could attempt to make the argument that it was a peaceful time when the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt, but is that true peace? Can true peace ever exist when people are being oppressed and degraded? It absolutely cannot.

It's easy for the most privileged among us to have these surface views of what peace is—to believe that peace is simply the absence of fighting or violence; to believe that peace is nothing but a calm quiet, or as King says, a lack of tension. True peace exists only when true justice comes to fruition. So this slogan—no justice, no peace—I wonder if it would be easier for some of us to think of it, not as some kind of threat, but more as a statement of fact— the fact that peace cannot exist without justice. Peace cannot exist without full equality for all people.

And it is obvious, for example, that something like state violence and use of force being disproportionately used against people of color is something that requires a serious overhaul, a serious restructuring of a deeply broken system—it’s something that requires the real work of justice before there can be any real peace. But again, it’s not just a lack of physical violence that brings peace.

Let’s think about our reading from the Advent candle light today that the White family beautifully recited to us. Christian theologian and mystic Howard Thurman writes about the inner peace that comes with opening oneself to God, and finding our true home within this Temple of God, on this Island of Peace. But how can one make the time to find this inner peace, this peace that brings one to their true home if that person isn’t sure if they’re going to have a physical home if they can’t make next month’s rent payment? How can one feel that purity of inner peace and connection with God if they don’t know where their next meal is coming from? Remember last week, we talked about the fact that if we’re totally consumed by our jobs, by the unfair demands of this economy, of this world, we won’t be able to find that time for quiet contemplation to really connect with the world around us and feel that hope that Advent is all about. Well, even more pressing is the fact that there are so many living in fear of going hungry or houseless that there can’t be any time to feel that hope, or find that inner peace.

And we know, Church, that this is something that our community is not immune to. We have housing insecure people in our town, worried they’ll have to pull their kids out of the school where all their friends are, worried that they’ll have disrupt the lives of their families, pull out the roots they’ve planted in this wonderful community because someone came in and decided to double rents with no thoughts about what community really means, with no concerns about fellow human beings. So sure, we’re deeply fortunate to have very little physical violence or unrest in our community, but can we really call it peace when we have people in our community who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves scrambling to find housing over the holidays? Do we really think that those who are worried about finding a home during the worst housing crisis maybe ever are able to find any peace of mind, are able to find their way to that Island of Peace within their soul when they’re frantically trying to figure out how to house themselves and their children? A society in which someone who has been privileged enough and strategic enough to build massive amounts of wealth for himself and then use that to push people out of the places they’ve called home for years in order to make even more ridiculous amounts of money is not a just society, regardless of a lack of perceived violence or tension from the most privileged and comfortable among us.

This, Church, is why peace cannot exist without justice. As long as we have people, people in our very own community, literally minutes away down the road, anxious and scared about finding a place to live, peace just isn’t possible. We don’t have to look far to see that.

This world that Isaiah talks about in today’s passage, this world that Jesus lived and died to try to bring us—a world in which the calf and the lion, the leopard and kid will lay together—this is not a world that is possible without justice. It’s not a world that’s possible without complete equity. Never forget what Jesus will say in the book of Matthew—“Truly I will you, just as you did not [feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick in prison]— just as you did not do these things to the least of these, you did not do it to me.” I truly believe this is Jesus saying a different version of “no justice, no peace.” This is Jesus saying, as long as people are going hungry and wasting away in prisons, nothing else really matters. As long as oppression exists, peace does not; as long as justice is absent, so is peace.

But—let’s look at how today’s passage starts— “A shoot shall come out of the stock of Jesse, / and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” These metaphors of trees and vineyards and this organic growth is all over the Hebrew Bible. One of the best and maybe most influential examples is from Job chapter 14, verse 7: “for there is hope for a tree, / if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, / and that its shoots will not cease.” The reason for all these metaphors is that there is so much hope in them. In Job, just when it seems his life has ended, all has been taken away, he’s given everything back, plus some; throughout the Hebrew Bible, every time it seems like the people of Judah have finally been conquered, are finally doomed, they come back, they right themselves, and their covenant with God remains intact. No matter how dire things may seem, there is always hope. God’s covenant never dies; God’s love for us is eternal and unconditional. We can right our wrongs and we can bring about that perfect earth as it is in heaven—that world that is fully just and therefore fully peaceful. But to bring that world about, we have to be creative; we have to see things a little differently.

Because when we see a stump, a shoot of a tree, or a weak sapling struggling against the cold and the leaves, we might not see much hope or potential in it. But this is exactly where our hope comes from—it comes from unexpected places. I want to read for you again, that stanza from the poem I included in my note to you all in our weekly email two Thursdays ago:

Advent means emergence.
The One who made the entire cosmos is made flesh,
a deity newly made of flesh,
not popping into and out of existence in an outpouring of power,
but cropping up in unexpected places like
dandelions in the cracks of a sidewalk. 

No one would have thought or believed that the Prince of Peace, the son of all humankind would be born to two normal people in a stable among animals, among unpleasant smells, among the cold drafts of the elements. This is how our savior comes to us because he is truly one of us. This is why we must make an effort to see Jesus in everyone we meet. Because the hope and the peace we are looking for will come from the most unexpected people, will come from the most unexpected places.

This peace the Isaiah preaches here is the peace that Jesus preaches as well, that Jesus tried to bring us, tried to guide was towards— this is what we are waiting and working for, not just during Advent, but throughout our whole lives, if we’re living right. If we’re doing it right, it means we’re working for a world in which worries about the most basic human needs—food, drink, housing—never have to be on anyone’s mind. We’re working for a world in which justice reigns, and therefore eternal peace is finally, at long-last present.

And as usual, it’s daunting. I’ve noticed in my attempts to form a tenants union with local folks, there’s sort of a feeling of resignation, like they’ve already lost. Because it’s hard to find that inner peace, that hope that things will be okay when one’s life feels so precarious due to the whims of the wealthy.

But remember— despite the beauty, the peace, and the hope of today’s passage, its context was not so pleasant. The Northern Kingdom was falling, and Isaiah had to tell his people as they’re giving up hope in their promised land, there is still hope for peace— but things may be rough for a while. And just when you think it’s over, just when you think all hope is lost, you will see a small, unassuming shoot from a stump thought long-dead, and you will know that God’s love will never abandon you. And when we think all is lost, let’s remember, our greatest hope came in the form of a vulnerable, defenseless human baby, born a poor refugee surrounded by his frightened parents and barn animals.

This is how peace comes to us— in these strange, quiet, humble ways. But before peace, comes justice. Amen.