The Arc of Justice
Trinity Sunday C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Does not wisdom call and understanding raise her voice? (Proverbs 8:1) Wisdom is depicted as a women sitting on a mountain, at the crossroads, and by the city gates — all the places of legal, commercial, and political power in the ancient world. She is the guardian and guide of human affairs, the ultimate governor of all kings and rulers. She is a co-author with God of creation, like a master-worker and playing before God and delighting in humanity.
She is not hidden but bears witness, ‘To you, people, I call out… to humankind’ (vs. 4). Proverbs 8 is a text of public theology — of speaking truth into the world with authority and reminding all passers-by of the glorious prosperity of a just community.
Notice, there’s no call to repent, no warning or threat to oppressors. “Instead, Wisdom invites, lures, and entices all who hear her to journey more deeply into her joys and to experience the abundance of justice. This Wisdom Woman is, what theologian Elizabeth Johnson calls, “a beneficent, right-ordering power in whom God delights and by whom God creates.” Joy and justice aren’t two separate things. They’re woven into creation, crafted by Wisdom into the cosmos before anything else was made. Joy and justice are expressions of a playful God” (Diana Butler Bass, The Wedding of Joy and Justice, The Cottage, July 05,2022).
Yet, too often, justice seems like a fairy tale. In just the past forty-eight hours our federal government threatened to “liberate” the people of California from their elected government through military action. Israel and Iran are at war. We’ve seen political assassinations in Minnesota, a self-aggrandizing military birthday parade in Washington DC. And yet, we have also seen 2000 “No Kings Day” rallies in cities across the country involving up to 5 million peaceful protestors. (Some of you among them.)
The world aches for justice. “Wisdom Woman helps us breathe — her justice is part of the fabric of things, a rightly-ordered world, the very nature of creation. And, in unnumbered eons before these difficult times, Wisdom delighted — played — across the earth with God, and with humankind. Proverbs teaches that justice dances through the universe. It is we who are misled by Folly, and we who need to rejoin Wisdom’s frolic… Wisdom still calls us to delight. And therein is the healing of the world” (Butler Bass).
In Christ Jesus, we have beheld this Wisdom. We have seen God’s face. We have peered into this Divine mystery. The life that is the light of all people shines in the darkness. God, our intimate and constant companion, is at work now and throughout history to pull and cajole everything to live, to live better, and to live well. This is how we play, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it won’t cost us anything.
Jesus told the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). We are a community that bears up together when life gets too big. The intensity of life’s joys would be too much for us if we had no one to share them with. The depth of our sorrows would overwhelm us if we had no one to listen. Because we hold together in God, the painful pruning winds of life can strengthen us. They bear fruits of wisdom, compassion, and understanding. Even death, our greatest foe cannot defeat us as we take shelter in one another and in God.
On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus knew it was not the proper time to talk about all the great things the young church would accomplish after he was gone. Jesus was going to the cross yet all that he still had to teach the young Christian community would not die with him but wait to blossom and be born at the proper time through the work of the Holy Spirit.
It would be three hundred years before Christians would arrive upon a name to unite all the ways God shows up for us. “Trinity” became the name in which we baptize. Trinity is the name in which we confess our faith. Trinity was never supposed to be a mathematical statement. It’s word-art—a creative expression to encapsulate a whole lot of Gospel teaching about God in a single name.
Trinity means God is relationship itself. God is relationship, intimacy, connection, and unity in diversity. “We are the children of a mysterious, fluid, diverse, communal, hospitable, and loving God who wants to guide us into the whole truth of who God is and who we are” (Debi Thomas, “The Undivided Trinity,” Journey with Jesus, 5/31/2020).
It was our Greek ancestors who first used the term perichoresis to describe the Trinity. Perichoresis can mean ‘to dance.’ Nothing created is a mere spectator of this dance. The living God flowing from the center of the universe opens a hand now and invites us to join in the dance of all creation to heal the world, our society, and our democracy.
Anthropologists have a diagnosis for what ails us—for what has interrupted the dance of wisdom and justice. They tell us groups of more than 140 people function through shared stories to direct their shared imagination and energy in creative and collaborative ways. The problem is our shared stories are broken, and in many places, have shattered. Stories of what it means to be faithful to God differ from one community to the next. Our stories of what it means to be an American citizen are in dispute and under threat. But we have an antidote in the name of Trinity which can unite people of every religion and no religion.
The Christian name for God, Trinity, has many implications to for how we are to live now. It means, as Wendell Berry observes, in his book, How to be a Poet, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” It means the same is true of time — there’s no such thing as wasted time or empty time. That’s why in her poem, she called “Today,” Mary Oliver can forsake the “voodoos of ambition,” take the day off, “fly low,” and celebrate doing nothing at all. That’s why “There are no ordinary people,” as CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory writes, “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
Our ancient siblings in faith grab us by the elbow and make us look at the world with new eyes. Wisdom Woman says, ‘See, God made light, the dome of the sky, the waters and the dry land, the sun, the stars, and the moon. The universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects (Thomas Berry). Nothing stands alone. Each living thing is different yet part of the whole.’ So be beautiful. Be you. Discover your true self in all your many colors. Become part of the dance of the Trinity. Love somebody. Be compassionate. Be Wise. Be loving. Be forgiving. Be kind. Be human. Be the body of Christ and ‘let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24).
