Stephen
Terry, Director
Love
and Justice: The Two Greatest Commandments
Commentary
for the March 22, 2025, Sabbath School Lesson
"If you do
away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and
malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and
satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the
darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will
guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched
land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered
garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58:9b-11, NIV
I
look at the events unfolding here in the United States and around the world,
and it seems like looking at a vast ocean of humanity in turmoil like a raging
sea during a tempest. The waves, stories high, crash into one another and many
are carried to and fro like rudderless ships unable to follow the course they
were meant to. Fearing the storm, they cling to any other vessel that offers
stability, even if doing so should mean their own destruction if that vessel should fail to remain afloat in the storm.
Our experience
today reminds me of the fate of Pompeii when Vesuvius blew in 79 CE. Few
questioned the decision to build a city at the foot of that volcano. They only
knew that living was good, and they could make a future and a fortune living in
the shadow of that Damoclean sword. When the rich built their estates there,
all those who saw an opportunity to make money supplying the wealthy with their
needs followed. That thriving community went about their daily affairs unaware
of how short time was and how all the things they
acquired and considered important would soon be nothing but ash. Hundreds of
the citizens remain today as macabre stone statues formed from that ash as it
fell suffocating man and beast alike to one day be unearthed by archaeologists
and gazed upon by thousands of curious tourists.
Just
as then, we live our lives chasing the golden ring while our carousel goes round
and round, not realizing that the ride will end, or even if we do, using that
shortness of time to justify grasping all we can before the day arrives when
there are no golden rings and we can no longer ride the carousel, when the gay
music of the circus becomes the dirge that heralds the end of all things. We
ignore the plight of others who cannot afford to ride the carousel or who are
too physically or mentally disabled to do so. Even more golden rings for us who
can afford the price of the ride. After all, it is just a Darwinian weeding out
of those who are not fit for survival in this competitive world. And if in desperation,
they should resort to the crime of stealing what they cannot afford, well,
there are the prisons for that. And if they become pimps or drug dealers to obtain
the money to ride the carousel, it is only because they have learned the
careless regard for human life from the wealthy. Although criminalized it is a parallel
form of oppressing others to obtain greater wealth at their expense. If it
requires less work to prey upon others in this way, it also means greater
danger from those who would either take advantage of the pimps and pushers to
steal what they have gained or from the enforcers called for by the carousel
riders to make sure that they are the only ones extorting others so they can
keep riding.
The
entire system has bought into this warped version of life. Politics, business,
religion, all ride the carousel grasping for the golden rings. They do not
realize that the one at the top, the maker of those rings, is evil personified.
They only recognize all the things those gold rings can buy. Houses, cars,
boats, vacations, and most of all, power. If they have enough, they can live in
exclusive neighborhoods in walled compounds where they never need see another
poor, disabled, or minority person for the rest of their lives, compounds where
lesser riders of the carousel can be co-opted to serve them simply by promising
them more gold, even if it is never actually provided. Foolishly people insist
they are not like this even while reaching out for the ring, denying they are
doing the very thing they would be ashamed to acknowledge they were doing.
All
the way back to Cain, who slew his brother Abel, we have been living like this.
One would think that religion somehow would be above such material concerns.
But the indictment of religion is written all over the denominations as they
compete for lay members and the money they bring in to
build expensive houses of worship and provide extravagant salaries and benefit
packages for those standing in the pulpits. While that is more than obvious for
those prosperity preachers with their mansions and private jets, they are only
the heaviest fruit on the same tree as their less affluent brethren in the
local parish. Recently, I discovered that the benefits package for an associate
pastor in my own Seventh-day Adventist denomination is $107,000 per year. Yet,
in the same conference where this is the case, they cannot afford to pay the
pastors and so are laying personnel off. Years ago, I spoke with the conference
ministerial secretary and asked him why they did not use lay pastors to fill
the gap. He replied that if they did not pay the person, they could not control
them. This was a tacit admission that even within the church, money is all
about power and control. It explains why the church seeks so much of it. They ride
the same carousel as everyone else.
To be
fair, there are those who are faithful to Christ, but they are not typically found
in the halls of power within any denomination. They are ostracized because their
lives are an ever-present rebuke to those who have sold themselves for thirty pieces
of silver to serve those who control the purse. It was the religious leaders
who enticed Judas away from Christ for silver. Pilate did not do it. Herod did
not do it. It was the priesthood who arrested Jesus and demanded his death, because
they could not control him. The same spirit exists in our modern religious
leaders. We have the tendency to think that those of whatever denomination we
belong to are not part of the problem. It is like those who say politicians are
corrupt but believe that only applies to every other politician except the one
they voted for. Jesus said of such religious leaders, "Leave them; they are
blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." (Matthew
15:14)
Jesus
modeled an entirely different life that God intended we should live, a life of
freedom from such control. (John
8:36) We are like the Israelites in bondage in Egypt, but unlike them, we
are unaware of our enslavement. Our shackles are shackles of debt and financial
obligations that keep us from feeling free while driving us on to never give up
on the hope that pursuing that golden ring will someday free us. In the end the
only freedom found is that of death. But Jesus offers that freedom now if we
are willing to get off the carousel and come to him. What divides Christians from
the world is love, love even for their enemies. It is only in such love that justice
is found. Those who are always grasping for more are in danger of compromise in
meting out justice for those who have little. Their constant hunger for more
opens the door of temptation to pervert justice to obtain what they desire
despite the shortness of time they can enjoy it in this life. The young with
the road of life stretched out before them cannot appreciate the shortness of
that road or the foolishness of trying to carry everything with them on that
journey.
Life
tells them that only the things that can be seen,
touched, tasted, heard, or smelled are the things that matter. Things of the Spriit
are considered myth and should be abandoned for the
things that really matter. But Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew
5-7), taught exactly the opposite, that the kingdom of God is what should
be sought most of all, and God will care for those who choose to do so. God
does not use his power to coerce us for God is love. (1
John 4:8) Coercion derives from fear of the consequences of disobedience,
it is how fallen humanity often portrays God. But love drives out fear for the
two cannot coexist. (1
John 4:18) "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in
them." (1 John 4:16b) Love does not oppress the poor, the disabled, the foreigner.
Love does not drive people in fear but draws them through love and sacrifice given
on their behalf. (John
12:32) Only with love can freedom and justice abound. "For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)