The Bishop’s View: Justice
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (Rev. 21:1)
The November gathering of the Chicago Council of Religious Leaders convened at St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Church at the north end of Lakeshore Drive. While we were there, I spent some time in the worship space, which, like all Orthodox worship spaces, dramatically reflects the Eastern understanding of three tiers of creation.
One enters through the first gate into the narthex, which is always appointed to suggest that one is still in the ordinary world of dust and sin. For example, floor materials in the narthex are always the color of dust and sand.
The farthest point away from the narthex is the sanctuary, or what we most often call the chancel, which rests behind a threshold. In this case, the wall is a golden gate ornamented with icons of Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist, the patron of the parish and two angels that guard the doors. Only the ordained are permitted to pass through this threshold. Above the sanctuary is the “dome of heaven” – a mosaic of nearly a million brilliantly colored tiles, depicting Mary and Jesus in glory.
Between heaven and earth, as it were, is the nave where the congregation gathers. The activity of the congregation is intended to imitate in this world what is happening around the throne of Christ in the next. By incarnating on earth the vision of the Reign of Christ, the Church calls the ordinary world from the narthex to something not yet perfect, but slightly closer to heaven itself.
The subject of much of this issue of “Let’s Talk” is justice. Everyone seems to know that the word “justice” in the context of faith signifies an essential component of the Christian vision … yet it is a word with many different meanings. Is justice served when everyone gets what they deserve or when everyone gets what God desires? Is justice accomplished by everyone being equal or by a preferential bias for the poor and powerless? In any case, justice, the practical face of Christian discipleship, doesn’t seem to have much to do with the esoteric symbolism of church architecture.
But, in fact, the design of an Orthodox worship space may give us the best understanding we will ever have of what justice is.
Justice, I think, is everything we do in the life of the Church that imitates what we believe the Reign of Christ to be; everything that we believe is happening right now in the transcendent realm of the saints in light; and everything we do and say that draws the world just a little closer to becoming part of that distant reality here and now. In this view:
• Justice can be seen as a synonym for discipleship, because justice is everything we do that that faithfully follows what Jesus taught.
• Justice is evangelism because telling the good news is our primary way of calling the world out of the dust and a bit closer to the vision.
• Justice is stewardship because sharing, grounded in gratitude, is our way of leading the world by example into the economy of the household of saints in glory.
• Justice is the work of compassion and healing because caring for the least is our way of living the vision of the great separation of the sheep from the goats.
• Sometimes justice is an angry overturning of the tables in the social system when our only way of proclaiming what the Kingdom of Christ is, is to dramatize what the Kingdom of Christ is not.
• Sometimes justice is the work of intentional cultural inclusiveness, because we cannot be the image of the fullness of redemption unless we reflect the depth and breadth of creation’s diversity.
• Sometimes justice is the most ordinary act of worship, because in gathering together around Word and Sacrament as a single body, we live the rhythms of confession and forgiveness, giving and receiving, speaking and listening, singing and silence, all of which we believe gives a special insight into what it means to live in communion with the God of the universe.
Justice, you see, is not just one more item on the laundry list of Christian duties. Justice is a rich language through which we bear witness to all that we have been, all that we are, and all that we are becoming in response to the persistent call of Christ to “come closer, friend.”