injustice – The Raynville Rambler

Inspired by love and anger

Jesus asleep in the boat.
Found at https://www.freedomfrommedom.com/ – original artist unknown

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is the first of two on consecutive days by the Scottish hymnwriters John Bell & Graham Maule, both in the series on social justice issues. Both of them invite us to join our own concerns with those of God. This one, “Inspired by love and anger”, puts words into the mouths of various groups before turning to God himself. The full words can be found here.The tune, Salley Gardens, is a gentle Irish folk melody, easily memorised, but perhaps a little too gentle for the subject matter

Verse 1 invites us to be “inspired by love and anger, disturbed by need and pain”. It’s all too easy to suffer compassion fatigue as we hear of yet more suffering in the world (just this week, uncountable Covid cases in India and two localised disasters in Israel and Mexico, for example). “How long can few folk mind?” may well be a question aimed at ourselves.

Verses 2 and 3 offer a contrast between the cries of the victims for justice, peace, and release of prisoners; and the rich who ask not to be criticised for their position, wealth and exploitation of others. To be fair, not all rich people are like that: Bill Gates is said the be the fourth richest person in the world with assets exceeding $100 billion, but he and Melinda are also great philanthropists who do genuinely seem to seek fairness in the world.

In verse 4 we offer up to God the “agony and rage” of Earth and ask when his kingdom of equity will come. In verse 5, God responds by asking, as he did through Isaiah, “Who will go for me, who will extend my reach, and who when few will listen will prophesy and preach?” A common response to that question is “Is it I, Lord?”. This is prayer as dialogue leading to action.

The last verse turns to Jesus, using some imaginative wording. He is pictured “amused in someone’s kitchen, asleep in someone’s boat” as examples of being with us in ordinary life. His ministry is summed up as being “a saviour without safety, a tradesman without tools”. It’s not a very satisfactory ending, as it doesn’t really explain how God in Jesus – or in us – does answer the earth’s call for justice. We need more guidance from this sleeping saviour on how exactly we are to work with him in this way.

Cry Freedom in the name of God

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Michael Forster’s “Cry Freedom in the name of God”. The tune written for it, called “Free indeed”, was not easy to sing just from the score, and I’ve not found a version of it online. I note that John used the better known tune ‘Battle hymn of the Republic’, but that sounded a bit too jolly to me for the words here, and I can’t hear it without thinking of the irreverent words sung at school camps many years ago!)

Interestingly though, a search for “cry freedom” mainly brought up references to a 1987 film set in South Africa’s times of apartheid, and it may have been that which inspired Forster to write this hymn, which is obviously influenced by liberation theology (the idea that God is necessarily with those who struggle against injustice).

The first verse sets the scene by referring to the freedom found in Jesus Christ, and that has to be what distinguishes a Christian response to injustice from the equally strong motivation of humanists to respond to the same issues for the sake of its victims. For the Christian, we are not only working for justice in human society but seeking to establish God’s will “on earth as in heaven”.

The second verse highlights two specific injustices that are found in the world today, and not only those in ‘underdeveloped’ countries: unfair responses to natural disasters in which the poor always come off worst (think India’s current Covid pandemic compared with the levels of vaccination in Europe); and the tendency to promote defence spending over relief for the poorest (as our own Government has just launched two vast aircraft carriers while cutting aid budgets).

The third verse focuses on the dictators who ‘hid behind their bodyguards and fear the open mind’. Imprisoned in their own mindset, and in constant fear of uprising or assassination, these men (as they nearly always are) may be vastly wealthy but do not have the peace of heart that comes with living openly for God and for the welfare of others. But it’s not only dictators. We can all be a bit like that, comfortable in our houses (be they palace or bedsit) and saving or spending for our own benefit rather than giving our money away for the aid of others. It takes a true repentance (metanoia, change of heart) for people to start to use whatever wealth and power we have for the “good of humankind”. Jesus said “the truth shall make you free” but as his biographer John put it, “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

The fourth verse turns to the Church, where the assertion is that we Christians need to be freed from the way the Church sometimes works: “honest doubts met with fear and vacuum-packed theology”. In other words, we deserve the freedom to explore faith for ourselves and not be condemned where it takes us down a different route from that laid down by church ‘authorities’. This is always a difficult balance: in a world of many religions and philosophies, there has always been a natural concern among Christian teachers to stop people in the pews straying so far from received wisdom that what they believe contradicts the basics of Christian orthodoxy. But it’s all too easy for that to lead to laying down strict wording of creeds, prayers and forms of service that are “required”. What did Jesus actually teach us to do? To break bread together and remember him, to pray in in private and use the Lord’s prayer as a pattern, to let the (Hebrew) scriptures be our guide to God’s will. Nothing more specific than that.

The final verse is about being freed from focussing on ourselves so that we are free to live for the good of others. Putting all these together, we have freedom from unjust structures in society, from living in fear of others because of our own acts of injustice, from being too tied to specific ways of practising Christianity, and from being inward looking. Together they make for the freedom in Christ that allows us to bring God’s freedom to others. To go back to John’s choice of tune, surely we must end with a chorus of “Glory, glory, hallelujah! Cry freedom in God’s name!”

The Bible in a Year – 19 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

19 June. Amos chapters 6-9

The section headings found in most modern Bible translations are not part of the text, but a useful guide to it. Today’s reading is headed “Complacent self-indulgence will be punished”, and the verses that immediately follows is “Alas for those who are at ease in Zion” – which is then expanded by a picture of rich leaders living a life of luxury while ignoring the suffering of the poor. Indeed such arrogance is always wrong, and the complete opposite of the model of the “servant king” embodied by Jesus.

But God’s condemnation was not only for the leaders. In chapter 8 it is market traders and similar who are singled out – “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, … [saying] We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practise deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat” (8:4-6). The poorest people suffered not only from a government insensitive to its peoples needs, but from rampant profiteering. The same charges could be laid against many (though not all) of our own politicians and business people and we should not be surprised if God raises up a prophet like Amos to highlight them.

The Bible in a Year – 17 April

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

17 April. 1 Kings chapters 12-14

Following Solomon’s long and apparently successful reign, things rapidly fall apart. Firstly, as we read yesterday, there was a division in the nation between the majority of the tribes following Jeroboam and the tribe of Judah that remained loyal to Solomon’s son Rehoboam. The theological reason given initially in chapter 11 was that Solomon was led astray by his foreign wives; in 14:22-24 we find that this idolatry had become widespread in the land. But Jeroboam was no better: he repeated the sin of Aaron by making idols in the form of golden calves for the people of Israel to worship.

We are also given, in chapter 12, a more secular reason for the rebellion against Solomon’s house, which is the “heavy yoke” that he laid on the people by using forced labour. That was the real cost of his great buildings and royal splendour. A ruler’s wealth is rarely acquired without someone, somewhere, suffering, whether it is the ruler’s own subjects, or people working as slaves in other parts of the world.

Both of these can still be seen today, only it is more obvious with the spread of globalisation and the internet. We cannot plead ignorance of the people who suffer in developing countries to produce the cheap goods that we consume in the West, and justice demands that we do something about it, even if is just looking for Fairtrade products, boycotting the companies known to be the worst offenders, or supporting political action. For instance, Traidcraft ran a campaign from 2014-2016 in which tens of thousands of people called for a change in the law to allow prosecution of UK-based companies who are “getting away with things in developing countries which just wouldn’t be allowed in the UK.”

Rehoboam could have saved the day, if he had listened to the counsel of the older advisers who said that he should become more of a servant to the people; but his pride would not allow this and he listened instead to his own sycophants who told him to oppress the people even more. It reads like a repeat of the story of Israel in Egypt in the time of Moses, only this time, the oppression is by their own leaders, and instead of God rescuing his people from a foreign power, he would use foreign powers to remove his people from the land. But for now, all that is yet to come.