Numerous congregations in Lawrence are joining together to form a new faith-based organization addressing issues of justice in the city. Their first action is a joint sermon series in May to explore the theme of justice found in their sacred texts. We have asked some of the participating clergy to shed light on the topic of justice in the faith forum over the next few weeks.

Mike Scully, co-pastor, Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Kentucky St.:

Jesus spoke of justice throughout his time with us on earth often not in a direct way, but in an indirect way. One of those times came in his story of how people are to be judged at the end of the world, namely Matthew 25:31-46.

The religious person might have expected Jesus to talk about God in some form. Jesus did not mention God.

Jesus did not mention the Law. He did not mention Tradition; he did not refer to the prophets, the patriarchs, religious practices and prayers, synagogue, church, none of these. Instead, when judgment had to be made concerning what a person had done with his life, Jesus says that everything depends on how much the person has given to another human being. It was an absolutely incredible statement for a Hebrew religious leader to make.

And further, he talks about the least brothers and sisters.

Christian doctrine teaches that social justice, namely the justice that a good human society should offer humankind, can only be obtained in respecting the transcendent dignity of the human person. The person represents the ultimate end of society as St. Pope John Paul II pointed out: “What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt.”

Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature. These rights are prior even to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy.

— Send email to Mike Scully at frmikescully@yahoo.com

Mark Rich, pastor, Trinity Lutheran Church, 1245 New Hampshire St.:

The Christian mandate for justice comes from Jesus Christ himself. According to the first three gospels, his very first words were the announcement of the final jubilee. This ancient tradition promised that Israelite slaves should be freed, debts should be released, and ancestral lands should be restored. This guarantee of freedom and justice was one of the key things that set Israel apart from the empires around it. The common people were not to be turned into commodities for the wealth of others. Every Israelite man had a right to the land through which God would bless him and his descendents.

Jesus announced the jubilee and transformed it. In the belly of the Roman Empire, the common people had nearly no control of their land, their bodies, their families, and their future. So Jesus changed the jubilee. It now applied to all peoples, both women and men. And instead of returning ancestral lands while the empire controlled the land, possessions were released from private ownership and then received back among all the brothers and sisters, including the freed slaves now become brothers and sisters, co-inheritors of their former masters’ property.

This peaceable revolution restores the original gift of the common possession of the whole earth by the whole of humanity (Gen 1:28). This is how the earth will be possessed in the resurrection to come. It also restores God’s ownership of all: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).

So any child who goes hungry, any family that goes homeless, any people who are thrown off their land by another people – these are the evils that God is overcoming through the gospel. Every human has a right to a full share in the blessings of God’s earth.

— Send email to Mark Rich at pastormark@tlclawrence.org