Love Is Justice

Hosea 1:10; selected

Herman Melville was a gifted teller of sea tales, but he was also a pretty good
philosopher and theologian, In his symbolic tragedy "Billy Budd", Claggart unjustly
accused the tongwtied boy of helping to plot a mutiny, Finally, after endless
provocation Billy hit Claggart and the blow accidently killed him. Everybody
knew that the death was an accident, and that the blow was the result of harrass-
ment and great stress, The ship's officers were ready to acquit him of any crime,
But the captain, a stern disciplinarian by the name of Vere, convinced them that
their duty was to stringently apply the articles of war, particularly that provision
regarding the striking a superior officer, So they hanged Billy, The law was
obeyed: justice was served, Or was it?

The relationship of justice to love has always troubled and fascinated the mind
of man, Where does love stop, and justice begin? For the past several weeks we
have been thinking about God in terms of love, We have seen that our heritage
teaches us that love is not so much one of the characteristics of God, as it is
His very essence, We've thought about the definition of love as an activity
rather than a feeling both the love of God and the love of man for his fellow man ,.
But still it is problematic, What is love? When does justice come in?

Parents know that their love for their children is far more than a feeling,
They know that love is not an easy tolerance of whatever the child happens to be
doing, In his best seller, “Betwoon Parent and Child", Dr, Haim Ginott draws
a very clear distinction between a healthy permissiveness and over-permissiveness,
Over-permissiveness, ~ of over destructive behavior says "I don’t really care,"
Parents learn that justice has something to do with love and that love without
justice isn't really love,

But in matters outside the home ~ in religion, for instance, the relation-
ship is not always that clear, Commenting on his conversion to Judaism, Sammy
Davis Jr, said: "As I see it the difference is that the Christian religion
preaches love thy neighbor and the Jewish religion preaches justice, and I think
justice is the big thing we need,"(Esquire 10/59) 4

Now that's very poor theology, but it is an accurate reflection of the image
Christian faith has at this point, Too frequently our love, as Christians, comes
out as nothing more than indiscriminate sentiment, Too frequently it is like the
man who was hopelessly in debt; who inherited a fortune, and gave it all to the
poor - without paying his creditors,

The relationship of love to justice is very difficult; and I have been helped
by the insight that there really is no relationship: that you can’t have one
without the other: that when you're talking about love, you're talking about
justice, I'd like to suggest simply, that love is justice,

The late Paul Tillich, one of the finest philosophic thinkers of this century
advanced the concept that Christian love, acted out, is simply justice, He
taught that in God himself, love and justice are a unity, and that both words
indicate the same divi: characteristic, The trouble is, again, with the strong
tendency toward sentimentalism within the Christian Church, Without giving it
much thought men define ove as something you feel ~ not something you do,

On this basis then, it is easy to convince yourself that you love your neighbor
even though you don't do anything ebowt i+ and it is possible to teach, as the

great proponents of the social gospel did, that if you feel love for a man you

really ought to deal justly with him, Tillich had the profound audacity to ask
a very simple question at this point - "How does one love another man, if he is
dealing unjustly with him?" Tho answer is obvious: unjustice is wmlove, Love
is justice,

The separate idoas that God's love ~ and that God is just are very old, nearly
as old as recorded history, But this concept that love and justice are the same
hat Oh a uniquely Jusac-Christian notion that has its roots in the history of

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So now we nist digress, to that tine centuries borore Christ when the Hebrew
people were wandering around in tho desert of Sinai on thora way from Egyptian
siavery to the promised land of Canean, During that wilderness wandering tha people
of Israel became a nation, In the desert they received their law, the covenant —
with God, their national identity - and their poculiar theology of one creative
God who wants his psople to live in faithfulness to Him, The time of the desert
was tho gonsis of the Nation: it was reneubered fondly in the same way that we -
nostalgically recall the colomial days and the Declaration of Independence,

But whon the people came into the land, the land of Canen, things bogan to
change, Primarily a desert poople, the israclites wors delighted and surprised
by the fertility and lush productivoness of Canaan, They noticed that the canaanites
worshipped the Baal gods in a relighon of fertility. They made a rather logical
deciaion: if the Baali-s are responsible for this unique productiveness they must
be worth worshipping, And so the Israelites, maintaining their own relig?on, began
to also join tho rites of the Banlins, In so doing they violated their first
and most important iaw, and to the sensitive and articulate among them the future
looked very ominous, Surely the righteous God would heap vengenance and punish~
ment on his way ward children,

Around the year 750 B,C., in the midst of this rather ambiguous religious
situation, a brooling genius of a min called Hosea, contomplated the tragedy of
his nation and found himself rolating it to the terrible tragedy of his own
experience,

Hosea had married a woman by the namo of Gomer = a faithless woman, inelined
to be a little promiscuous, Thoy had trree childre: the second two of which were
the results of Gomer’s infidelity, Finally sho sold herself to another man as
his mistress, Hosea had been wronged and humiliated and degraded, His wife's
leaving actually saved him from doing waat the law required = for, by law, he
could not remain married to an adultross,

The trouble was Hoscn still loved Gomer, Even in her infidelity: even in his
huriliation he still loved her doeply and wanted her as his wife, What does one
do under these circumstancos? That was the agony of Hosea, and at this point
Hosea realized that his own bitter experience was the same as God's treatment
by his people,

isr’“1 ha. prostituted her faith; and violated the covenant and been seduced
into infidelity by the religion of the Canaanites, Justice demanded punish=
ment, As a prophet Hosea felt that some sort of divine retribution was inevit-
able, The iand would bo laid waste: ‘the psople would die of wars and starvation,

But is that ail love de i? In the cleventh chapter Hosea speaks for the Lord,
and in the words we hear him speaking for himself and his om situations

"How,oh how, can I give you up, Ephraini

How, oh how, canii hand you over, Israeli

How can I turn you into a Sodont

How can I treat rou like a Geomarraht

My heart recoils within ne,

All my compassion ts iindiai,

I will not destroy Ephr~im again

For I am God ard not man,

I am the Holy Ons in your very midst,

And I have not cone to dostrer,
(11:89, J.B, Fhtllips)

What does justice require? Wo + does lera do? Hosea went out looking for
his wife and when ho fou! hur he brovght hoy beck, paying not only in money
but in damaged pride, He brouzhh Lor homs, snc for a period "put her away,"
That is = love is not easy tolerance; ‘Lovs doys not say *That's all right Gomer:
you've had your fling: let's heps i+ doesn't happon again. Love is justice,*
The wrong Gomer did was answerad oy Ciseiplins, But repentence resulted and
everything began areow,

That is how Gol would deal with israe?. fot carelessly overlooking every

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infidelity. Neither in revenge, punishing the offender for the s-ke of
punishnent, But in a love ~ the very nature of which is to be justice,

Now ~ what do we learn here? What are the implications? Time will allow just
a few suggestions,

First, we understand on an intellectual level that love is justice, We
learn to tighten our belts semantically by differentiating between love without
justice which is simple sentiment, and justice without love which is simple’
retribution,

Second, this intellectual formula has some very practical meanings, In our
role as parents we seo that if our refationship with our children does not contain
a Gisciplined justice we can’t call it love, By the same token we see that
there is nothing more sterile then punishment for the sake of punishment, and
that justice without the possibllity of loving redemption is not really justice,

On a wider scale I would hope we might be moved to look again at what is
called justice under the law when applied to someone who breaks the law, In
fact, our second look will reveal a system that practiced punitive retribution
without any thought of rede. °...> Capital punishment - is not justice - it
is retribution, If we are concerned about the uniquely Christian concept of
what it mcans to be just, we should be oppossod to it, and actively so. In
the whole complex matter of doaling with the criminal the Christian needs to keep
insisting that whatever is done he carefully woighs and measures by the stand-
ards of justice, and not merely reflect the neurotic need of our society for

The implications are meny ani I am sure that you are not only disagreeing
with some of the ones I have dawn, but are thinking of some of your own, That
is good,

Finally, I would hope that in all of this we have heard the good word of
the Gospel, We are dealing with a God who really cares about us; a God who cares
enough to be displeased when we stumble and fall; a God who cares enough to be
angry at the evil and dishonesty in which we participate, But lest our religion
be an expression of fear we must remember that our judge is our redeemer;
that the one who measures us ~ measures us lovingly.

The winsome words of Hosea remind us that our God has been pursuing his
children in love down through the eenturies; that his pursuit took him among men
and ultimately to the cross: that >o matter who we are, or what we have done or
what we will do, God continues to pursue everyone of us - until we turn to
him in faith and obedience,

Theat is the good news, God is love = justice: justice - love, now and
forevermore, Amen,