A Principle of Justice, Equity
and Compassion
A Sermon by Arthur S. Vaeni
January 5, 2003
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Amos is at the heart of the second principle we share as religious community. The second principle as written in your order of service reads: "We covenant to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations." Amos, you see, has a very long finger, for though he lived nearly 2700 years ago, he continues to point us in the direction toward justice.
While Amos may come across as stern, there is nothing severe or unyielding about his conception of justice. Justice rolling down like waters is justice saturated by fairness and compassion. "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." You've gotta love Amos! What beautiful imagery, but even more than that - what chutzpa! Amos was but a lowly shepherd. He was not one of the professional oracles or prophets of the day. He was a peasant in the kingdom of Judah who believed his God had spoken to him and told him to prophesy. The country we call Israel was divided at that time into two kingdoms - Judah and Israel. Amos received his call from God, and he traveled to Beth-el the royal sanctuary of Israel, where he condemned the king, Jereboam, as well as the rich and powerful of the country. What did they do to have such a judgment levied against them? During the time when Amos appeared, there was peace and prosperity throughout the land. But peace was maintained by military force, and prosperity existed for some at the expense of others. Does that sound familiar? The
Israelites assumed they deserved the good times they were experiencing
because of their extravagant support of the official shrines. Their
gods were smiling upon them. Many of them still had a hard time limiting
themselves to one god. I can imagine the scene in the royal sanctuary
when this scruffy prophet in his shepherd's clothes confronted the well-to-do
of Israel. He declared their king would be killed, and they would all
be exiled In
Garrison Keillor's version of Biblical history he described "Moses
[as coming] down from the mountain with the clay tablets" and saying,
"Folks, I was able to talk Him down to 10. Unfortunately, we had
to leave adultery in there, but you will notice that solemnity was taken
out. And that night the Israelites killed the fatted calf and drank
wine and told Bible jokes in celebration." While the humor may have been lost on Amos, for it doesn't sound as though humor was his strong suit, he was saying something similar about what is important in life and what isn't. While our solemn assemblies of today -be they religious observances or political debates - have their value for us, they are a sham if they exist simply as solemn events that fail to move us toward a deeper reality that knows justice, equity and compassion. "Seek good and not evil, that you may live," Amos told them, only then will God "be gracious to the remnant of Joseph." Amos was the first of a series of prophets whose writings have survived from ancient Israel and Judah. Although the prophets made some predictions about what would befall the Hebrews if they did not behave themselves, their primary role was not to foretell the future, but it was to call the people's attention to the disparity between the way they were living, and the way their God called them to live. When you read the Hebrew Bible you see the evolution of a god - or at least the people's conception of their God - as it changes through the ages from a tribal, warlike deity to a more universal Divine Being, the essence of which is experienced through justice and love. Through Amos's words you hear the ongoing maturation of the Hebrew religious perspective. You see the basis for the second principle we lift up as part our values. These concepts of justice, equity and compassion suggest ways of being, that is ways of living our lives, that nurture and sustain our own well-being -not at the expense of others' well-being, but in recognition of the truth that our individual welfare is best served by insuring the welfare of one another. Although this fundamental ideal has been around for 2700 years, it's a sophisticated and religiously mature concept that humanity has yet to fully grasp. Some people get it; many of us don't. Some of us get it intellectually, but we have not been able to fully grasp it with our hearts. There's a New Yorker cartoon in which two people are protesting and passing out leaflets on Main Street. After being given one of the leaflets, a young man in sandals, shorts and beard says to the protester: "I totally agree with you about capitalism, neo-colonialism, and globalization, but you really come down too hard on shopping." Some of us might be able to place ourselves in the young man's sandals. We may have a clear sense about the rightness of justice and even a strong intellectual belief in support of it, but it is not yet at the core of who we are and how we are. I agree with Denise Levertov, however, that humanity's failure to attain justice and equity gives us no right -no excuse- to opt for pessimism or cynicism. On the evolutionary time scale, the concepts of justice, equity and compassion have not been around all that long. "We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life." In her poem, "Beginnings, Ms Levertov wrote,
It's my belief that although these concepts arise from Life's Source in that they point us toward ways to fulfill our humanity and toward ways that harmonize our lives with life itself, they represent, as I mentioned before, a mature way of being. We need to allow ourselves to grow into them. Amos suggests an understanding of God that speaks of God as that force, those laws, the conditions that not only called the Universe into being but sustains it. As he said,
Lord may not be the name I would choose, but I share in that understanding of that which I call God. It is the Source and the Sustainer of Life, and it is from that which comes justice, equity and compassion. That may seem perplexing given that life is so often unfair. There's a story about the Sufi wise-fool, Nasruddin, in which four boys ask him for help dividing a bag of walnuts among them. "We can't divide these evenly among us. Can you help us?" they ask Nasruddin. "Certainly," said Nasruddin, "Do you want God's way of distribution or mortal's way? "God's way, of course," said the children. Thereupon Nasruddin gave two handfuls of nuts to one child, one handful to the second, two nuts to the third, and none at all to the fourth. The children were baffled. "This is God's way," said Nasruddin, "He gives some people a lot, some people a little, and some people nothing. If you had asked for mortal's way, I would have distributed them evenly." Justice and equity are human constructs. Life so often seems unfair. Justice and equity are not inherent in the Universal scheme, and yet I believe they are natural developments in life's evolutionary process. They arise from and are in harmony with the Way of Life because they serve our well-being, and in the end they serve Life's well-being. I believe God's or the Universe's interest in our welfare, so to speak, is limited to our general welfare, that is insuring that the overall conditions for sustaining life are met. Beyond that it's up to us. Justice, equity and compassion represent our human response to the insistent demand on Life's part that we live in ways to sustain not just our own lives but others' lives as well as Life itself. At this stage in our development as a species we seem to be born with some proclivity for compassion or empathy. In one study focusing on children's moral development a thirteen-month-old was observed responding "with empathic concern to a crying playmate. The empathic child brought his own mother to comfort the crying child…" What is interesting is that he brought his own mother rather than the crying child's mother who was also available, apparently figuring if someone needed comforting his mother was the right person for the job. He had the right idea anyway. He responded to his playmate's distress with empathy. We
seem to have an inclination toward empathy and compassion, and as we
grow, studies have shown that we have what seems in part to be a natural
inclination toward fairness. What four year old doesn't know when things
are not fair for him or herself? We appear to have some tendencies,
but full-blown conceptions of justice and equity must be learned. They
do not seem to naturally develop on their own. We are continuing to
evolve our capacity to understand, to feel and to realize justice, equity
and compassion. In the realm of evolutionary experience we humans are
but children -"only beginning to imagine the fullness of life"
and only beginning to realize the power embodied in our love for life. In yesterday's New York Times there was an article about the newly elected government of Brazil. The first sentence read: "Brazil's new leftist government today suspended a $760 million purchase of a dozen new jet fighter planes for its air force, saying the money could be better used to relieve hunger." Can you believe that? The President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who "was born into a large peasant family in a poor rural area and as a child sometimes went hungry himself," declared in a recent speech, "So long as there is a single Brazilian brother or sister going hungry, we have ample reason to be ashamed of ourselves." An article in last month's Olympian stated, the United States' Census Bureau found that in 3.5 million American households people go hungry. Even closer to home researchers have identified what they call a Western hunger belt, stretching from New Mexico up to Washington. The President of Brazil declared, "So long as there is a single Brazilian brother or sister going hungry, we have ample reason to be ashamed of ourselves." "If at the end of my term of office every Brazilian has the opportunity to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, then I will have completed my mission in life." [NYT, 1/4/03 p. A3]
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