Righteousness and Justice

Easter 7 – June 1, 2025

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

Our story in Acts is one of the stories that bother me. (There are many stories in the Bible that do bother me for one reason or another.) Here is a slave girl who makes much money for her owners by divination. That she is a slave is troubling. Although it was a custom in Roman times, it was wrong – slavery is always wrong. We are told that she is following Paul and his companions around, saying, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” Now she was not telling a falsehood about Paul and his companions and, you would think, that Paul and company would like the free advertising, so to speak. I can see it, people coming up to them and asking, “What is she talking about?” Which would have given them an opening to talk about Jesus. Instead, Paul is annoyed at her, and the spirit that possessed her and ordered it to leave her. At that moment Paul made that woman’s life much more difficult. Without her ability she was just another slave who ended up toiling in harsh conditions. In fact, her owners may even have sold her to a much more cruel master. I don’t know if Paul thought about this slave girl’s position. He acted rashly out of anger and, I believe, did the wrong thing. There were other ways to deal with this situation,

I bring this up because you and I are often in similar situations. We are called to take care of the poor, hungry, and homeless. So do you give the spare change in your cup holder to the person asking for it on the corner of East North Avenue and East Street? Are you helping that person by giving him or her something for food or will they be buying drugs with it? Unfortunately, you may never know if you’re helping or harming. Some try to solve this issue by giving the person food or water instead of money and others by giving their money to a program that feeds people (instead of a direct hand-out). Those are good options because we are called to help others in their struggles. 

We are called to help others in need because, as the psalmist says, God’s throne sits on righteousness and justice. As God’s children we are called to make things right for others in the world that so often dehumanizes and discards people because of their differences and struggles. It isn’t easy to do this since we are bombarded by the opposite message. That message says that it’s their fault that they are the way they are and so deserve what they have. Whether that is true or not is a moot point in God’s eye for everyone is God’s creation and therefore we are called to see them as ourselves and to work so that they can live the full life that God desires. In fact, God calls us to give up of ourselves for them – our selves, our time, and our possessions. We can do so because, in the end, all of those things are God’s to begin with and in spite of our hoarding of our gifts, God sent Jesus to set us free from our sin and death. With Jesus at your side, pray that when the opportunity comes you will be able to act out of love and not anger as Paul did in our story in Acts and make the lives of others better.