Last week in the city of Osh, in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, ethnic
tensions erupted in violence, looting and murder. No one is quite able to say
just what set things off, but the city of Osh is home to a large number of Uzbek
people, a minority group in Kyrgystan.
There are a lot of folks in Kyrgystan who believe that the Uzbeks are living in
homes and taking jobs that should rightfully belong to the Kyrgyz. They want to
see the Uzbeks return to neighboring Uzbekistan.
Last weekend thousands of Kyrgyz youth armed with Kalashnikov rifles raided the
Uzbek neighborhood in Osh, killing 100 people and sending Uzbeks fleeing to the
country’s border with Uzbekistan. Most of the houses belonging to Uzbeks were
burned down. One building that remained was a squat convenience store that had
been spray-painted with the word “Kyrgyz” in red.
The mobs that rampaged through Osh seemed to be meticulous in singling out Uzbek
property, judging from the smattering of intact buildings marked “Kyrgyz” or
“KG,” some with curtains still hanging in the windows. Those cars that remained
were burned out and flipped over, and columns of trucks were seen Sunday hauling
loads of them out of the city.
The situation was made more difficult because the Uzbeks don’t trust the local
police. The police are Kyrgyz. How do the Uzbeks know the good folks from the
ones who are trying to kill them? Though perhaps tens of thousands of Uzbeks
have fled in the wake of the deadly rioting that broke out here last week, a
small number have stayed behind to protect their homes, or whatever is left of
them.
One of the questions that will face the leaders of Kyrgyzstan in the coming
weeks, aside from how to restore order, is how to bring about justice. Who will
be held accountable for this violence? Who will pay for the property damage? You
can’t just come in and burn someone’s neighborhood down and start killing
people. What good is any government if justice can’t prevail?
Now why would we care about such matters, you might ask yourself. Hey, it’s
Father’s Day, Jim. Throw us a softball, would you? We can deal with our
consciences some other day!
I would respond by saying first that Father’s Day is not a church holiday, and
if you ever leave this building on a Sunday without your conscience bothering
you, then I may not have done my job very well.
Secondly I would challenge you to think about the fathers left in Osh who are
guarding their homes and burying their family members this morning. Their
nightmare at least deserves some consideration on our part as we ask ourselves
what our faith says about issues of justice and how we might respond to a
tragedy like this.
The story we read for today challenges us to ask ourselves how we would respond
to a serious injustice as people of faith. It comes from the same period in
Israelite history as the one we spoke about last week.
As I mentioned last week, King Ahab reigned in Israel from 873-852 BC. His was a
reign a great injustice, as this story shows. But his injustice was held in
check by God, who spoke through the prophet Elijah and called Ahab to account
for what he had done.
Ahab was married to a devious woman named Jezebel who was from another country
and worshipped other gods. She had no patience for the religion and faith of the
Israelites. And in this story she manipulates the system of justice for her own
ends.
Ahab wanted to plant himself a vegetable garden near his own land, but he didn’t
have enough land for the garden. So he made an offer to a neighbor, a guy by the
name of Naboth, to buy his vineyard.
The problem was, Israelites were supposed to keep their land in the family –
they weren’t supposed to sell family land when finances got tight. So Naboth
refused, knowing that Israelite law prevented him from making the transaction.
But rather than simply accepting Naboth’s decision and looking for another plot
of land, Ahab sat around the palace and sulked. When Jezebel saw him sulking she
asked what was wrong. He told her that Naboth had refused to sell him the
property.
She said, “You realize you are the king around here, right? If you want
something you just take it. That’s what it means to be king. I’ll arrange
something so that you can have that land.” Bad decision right there, Ahab.
Jezebel forged some letters in Ahab’s name, commanding some elders around town
to proclaim a religious observance, a day of fasting where everyone in town gets
together. I know, it sounds like she’s encouraging the Israelites to observe
their faith. But believe me, that’s not what she has in mind.
She tells the leaders to arrange to have Naboth seated in front of everyone. She
also told them to have two ruffians sit on either side of him. When everyone
showed up, they were to accuse him of cursing God and the king.
You see, she knew that under Israelite law, if you had two people accuse someone
of a crime, that was enough evidence for a conviction. And the penalty for
cursing God or the king was death by stoning.
Sure enough, the elders did exactly as she said. They proclaimed the feast, the
called everyone together, and they had two clowns falsely accuse Naboth of
cursing God and the king. And just as Jezebel had planned, they took Naboth
outside the city and executed him right on the spot.
So Jezebel then goes to Ahab and says, “Naboth is dead. You can have that land
now.” Again, that was against the law because the land was supposed to pass to
Naboth’s oldest son. But Ahab went and took possession of the land. A complete
miscarriage of justice.
But Israel’s God would not stand for that kind of injustice. God called Elijah
to go to Ahab and say, “Buddy, you messed up. Because of what you’ve done, the
same thing will happen to you and Jezebel that happened to Naboth. You’re
roadkill.”
You might have expected Ahab to just ignore Elijah, but Ahab actually did have a
conscience. He realized that what he had done was wrong and he repented of his
sin, even though there was no way he could make things right. He couldn’t bring
Naboth back.
The point our author is trying to make here is that the God we believe in
demands justice for wrongdoing. Our God doesn’t see justice as simply a civil
issue. It is a religious issue. Justice is at the heart of God’s own
righteousness. We cannot be authentic Christians without championing the cause
of justice and fairness.
There have been some folks, folks who claim to be devout Christians, who have
recently questioned whether or not social justice really is essential to the
Christian faith, or whether or not it’s a ruse for some other kind of political
agenda.
I would respond by saying, “Ask Naboth if God cares about social justice. Ask
Elijah if that’s something God cares about. Ask Ahab whether or not God seeks
justice for the oppressed.”
Many of you can remember Father James Groppi, a priest in Milwaukee who in 1967
led a campaign to secure a citywide open-housing ordinance that would give
citizens the right to rent or own property anywhere, regardless of race, color
or creed.
Angry counter-demonstrators hoisting effigies and hurling epithets, as well as
rocks and bottles, greeted the initial marches into the predominantly white
South Side neighborhoods. As 1967 drew to a close, the Associated Press voted
Groppi “Religious Newsmaker of the Year.”
The Priest Senate of the Milwaukee Roman Catholic Archdiocese and three
Wisconsin Lutheran district presidents made public statements urging the passage
of legislation for open-occupancy. In April 1968, following the assassination of
Martin Luther King and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which
included robust open-housing provisions, Milwaukee passed its own strong
open-housing measure.
He didn’t see justice as a private matter. He saw it as a basic question of
Christian faith. And a lot of people in Milwaukee were able to overcome the
rampant racial discrimination in Milwaukee housing because he did.
But justice isn’t just about other places. It’s an issue because it affects our
congregation. First, our congregation includes a group of immigrants from
Mexico, specifically from the state of Sinaloa.
The majority of our Hispanics are from Sinaloa, the home state of the most
violent drug cartel in Mexico. Think about what it would be like to be in
contact with loved ones who are living in a literal war zone, where the police
are overpowered by the gangsters.
This past Monday a gang from the Sinaloa cartel busted into a prison in Mazatlan
and killed 29 inmates from a rival gang. Three policemen were injured trying to
guard the prison. These guys seem to have the power of Jezebel, moving about,
doing whatever they want because no one seems to be able to stop them.
Our own people are going to call cousins or uncles or grandparents today and
wish them a happy Father’s Day, never knowing if their loved one will bet he
next one to be swept up in the violence. But I hope their faith will reassure
them that Our God is a God who demands justice.
Secondly, our congregation is now home to a group of Karen Baptists who have
relocated here as a result of being unable to convince the military junta in
Burma to let them keep their ancestral land in eastern Burma.
Over the last two decades, the Karen National Union (KNU) and its military wing
the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) have lost control over most of
their former territory, known to the Karen as Kawthoolei.
Thousands of civilians have fled regions now controlled or patrolled by the
Burmese army, which in some areas works in collaboration with a Karen splinter
group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).
Some of the refugees, mainly farmer civilians, have found shelter in Thailand;
others survive in precarious circumstances as internally displaced people in
remote pockets along the border.
In 2004, a temporary “gentlemen’s agreement” ceasefire was reached between the
KNU and Burma’s military government. However, reports of human rights abuses,
including forced labor, the burning of villages, arbitrary taxation, rape, and
lynchings, continue to emerge from Karen State, and in 2006 the ceasefire
agreement appeared to have unraveled.
The Karen in Burma have few rights, and they suffer from devastating poverty,
forced labor, and some are used as human mine sweepers while large corporations
make deals with the junta to take resources from the Karen territory like wood
without compensating the Karen. They are largely a displaced people, many of
whom have fled to refugee camps in Thailand.
But they’re not treated well in Thailand either. The Thai people sometimes treat
the Karen the way some folks in our country treat undocumented Mexicans in this
country. The Karen have not brought this misfortune on themselves, and their
presence with us this morning is a reminder, like the voice of Elijah, that God
calls for justice in their situation.
Imagine what it would be like to know that it’s no longer safe to live in land
that your ancestors have lived on for years, to be forced to move to a country
that is so different from your own country, and to wonder how relatives and
friends back home are faring.
We may not be able to speak their language, and we may feel powerless to deal
with the violence in Mexico, but the justice of our God transcends the barriers
of culture and language and geography. They are no longer people we read about
in National Geographic. Their names and phone numbers appear in our phone books.
Their children go to school with my daughter. They pay their taxes like everyone
else, and they work alongside the rest of us in Waukesha at our places of
employment. If we can do nothing else for them, as Christians we can stand
beside them and join them in their call for justice. As Dr. King said,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is easier to sit on the sidelines, to watch the world go by, to say, “That
isn’t my problem. I’ve got enough problems of my own.” Jesus could have looked
at the world and done the same thing.
But he knew he had something to contribute. His sense of justice was rooted in
his divine nature. God couldn’t become incarnated in a human being and not care
about people who were being mistreated and degraded.
As Jesus’ followers, we need to have the courage of an Elijah, to speak out, to
stand with those who have suffered injustice and remind the world that God is
watching. We may never see the justice that we believe in. But we can, in both
large and small ways, start bringing it about in our own community.