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Known to Stand Our Ground: Called to Justice
This week, my kids have been watching a computer animated movie called Barnyard. The story is about a cow, Otis, who likes to be the life of the party. He is the prodigal son of the farm. But when coyotes kill his father, Ben, Otis’s position in the farm suddenly changes. He has to step up into the role his father always held – that of protector of the other animals. It’s a responsibility he doesn’t want because he just wants to live a carefree life. When the coyotes keep threatening the other animals, and finally steal his favorite chicken friend, Otis decides he will face the coyotes once and for all, to ensure the safety of his family.
As he gets ready to confront the coyotes, the song, “Won’t Back Down” begins to play. The song was made famous in the 1990s by Tom Petty and has been covered several times by famous musicians, including Johnny Cash. As Otis fights the coyotes, the lyrics say, “Going to stand my ground, won’t get turned around, And I’ll keep this world from dragging me down, Gonna stand my ground, and I won’t back down.
Otis certainly was standing his ground, standing up for what he thought was right, standing up to protect his family and his friends. Most of us are like Otis when a situation or a person threatens our self-interest. We can stand up for what’s right when the safety of our family or our friends is at stake or the honor of our favorite football team is threatened. Standing our ground, heeding a call to justice is easier when we will benefit from it.
What’s more difficult, however, is to confront evil and injustice when we don’t have a stake in the argument. When we are not directly affected by a situation, it’s easier to let ourselves off the hook, to step back, to let someone else do the hard work of calling out the evil while we stand around and watch passively.
In the synagogue in Capernaum, there were plenty of people sitting around passively while Jesus directly confronted the evil powers in the room. Jesus was teaching there, in a town he had not been to before, and was astounding the people gathered there with his teaching. His very words had a power and authority not seen before. When the man with the unclean spirit – the same thing that elsewhere in the gospels is described as possessing a demon or an evil spirit – wanders in, Jesus immediately stops what he is doing to free the man, to confront the evil that abounds.
The people in the synagogue must have known this man. He couldn’t have been a stranger to them. But by themselves, they did not have the power or the courage or the will to free him. Jesus had no personal stake in this man. He was a stranger in town. He didn’t know him at all. But still, he acted and acted immediately. A man possessed by the Spirit of God confronts this man possessed by a spirit of evil, and it’s no contest. Evil, injustice, bondage cannot stand in the face of the spirit of all goodness and wholeness in Jesus Christ. The new Reign of God is here, and in its presence, reign of darkness doesn’t stand a chance.
In this very short story, we have a great hope and a great challenge. The great hope is precisely that in Jesus, when we speak as his followers, when we live as his disciples, we have access to his power, to the Spirit of God that flows from him to us. The challenge is that we are called to use that power to stand up to injustice, to right wrongs large and small, and speak out like Jesus did – to command the demons among us to be silent so the voice of God can be heard. We must stand our ground and embody the justice of Jesus.
As followers of Christ, we are known to be ones who stand our ground and who are called to justice. When we speak God’s truth to a power that binds, oppresses, puts down or harms, we are letting others see the work of Christ in our actions. What would our world look like, our neighborhood look like, our families look like if we were to stand our ground in Jesus’ name, claim for him the justice, the peace, the wholeness that doesn’t benefit ourselves but benefits others?
Do we have the courage to be like retired Lutheran men and women from Minnesota who flooded the phone lines of their Congresspeople, demanding that the United States take a stand on the atrocities in Darfur, in the Sudan? A member of the House of Representatives said that Darfur never crossed his radar screen until one day, when all of these Lutherans started calling him. These Minnesotans cared about what was happening there not because they were affected but because Sudanese refugees lived in their communities and told them about what was taking place. Their phone calls and letters helped bring national and international attention to the suffering of the innocents.
Do we have the courage to speak out when a co-worker or a classmate make a racist or a sexist joke? Can we, in the name of Jesus, speak to them in love and show them the way of peace, of reconciliation, of wholeness? Do we use the power that we have as the body of Christ to advocate for better care of God’s earth, God’s creation? Do we use that power as followers of Jesus to demand an end to war and a beginning to peace? Do we claim the Spirit of God that lives in each of us because of the gift of Jesus to ensure that every child on this earth has the right to a safe home, nutritious and abundant food and a top-quality education?
We are known as followers of Jesus when we stand our ground for freedom, justice, peace and wholeness in the world, when we answer the call to justice for all of God’s children, even people we will never meet or never. In the coming week, how will you speak with the power and authority of Jesus, bringing peace and hope to a broken world?