Repair Of The World

I have told this story before, but I remember being asked by a woman after mass why I spoke so much about social justice and why Spiritus focused so much on that. “It’s so political,” she said. I responded by saying something like, “I am only preaching on what I read in our scriptural tradition – and most of it is about social justice and ‘being political!” She wasn’t too pleased with my response.

A great example is our first reading from Isaiah 58. I don’t usually do this but I’m including a bit of the reading here so you get the full flavor:

Thus says the LORD: If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
God will renew your strength
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“”Repairer of the breach,”” they shall call you,
“”Restorer of ruined homesteads.””

What do you hear when you read something like this passage?

For me it begs the question, “Who are the oppressed, the hungry or the afflicted?” What groups of people are we talking about in our modern context, and what would it mean (or look like) to remove the oppression, their hunger or their affliction? And how might that come about?

This work is part of our call.

Similar to our reading the other day, Isaiah offers us another “IF….THEN…” sequence. IF we address the issues of injustice, THEN our light will shine and we will be strengthened and guided by God. Not the other way around. We don’t always get the strength and guidance first. Sometimes we have to jump right in!

I actually hear this quite often in the stories of people whom I deeply admire. People who have done amazing social change work. I can’t think of a single story where they said, “I had all the energy and knowledge I needed before I started!” In fact, so many felt un or underprepared to do what they felt called to do and many, at their moments of exhaustion, were infused with an unexplained energy to press on.

One of my heroes these days is Rev. William Barber. Rev. Barber founded an organization in 2015 called “Repairers of the Breach” (taken from this passage). This national organization tries to “build social justice movements that uplift our deepest moral values,” and one of their initiatives is the Poor People’s Campaign. They strive to find practical, collective steps that people can take to address the many breaches we find in our world, and it is very powerful and compelling work.

But our gospel from Luke 5 also shows us that the work of repairing the breach does not have to be so grand or extensive.  In this passage, Jesus invites a tax collector named Levi to come and follow him. And Levi does so – immediately!  Levi then has a dinner and invites all his friends (also tax collectors) and the religious authorities get all ruffled that Jesus is eating with and associating with these folks (aka sinners).

Mind you, tax collectors were despised people in the times of Jesus. Generally, they were Jews who were working for the Roman oppressors. So not only were tax collectors despised because they were considered ‘traitors,’ many of them often overcharged people and skimmed some off the top for themselves. And they often got pretty wealthy doing it. So there were many reasons to hate them.

But Jesus goes right in their midst and sits with them. When asked why he does this he says his famous, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

Jesus was absolutely committed to the repairing of breaches and was determined to not give up on people. And he often put himself in the company of people who were looked down upon, outcast or despised.

Today’s readings combine to remind us that we’re called to repair both the large/social wounds in the world and the individual ones.

For some of us, doing larger social justice or advocacy work with people we don’t really know (repairing one kind of breach) may be much easier than trying to repair the political breaches (for example) that we experience in our communities or families. Yet our sitting down with those we “despise” or actually going out of our way to engage them and be in their company might just be some of the most important work we can be doing these days to try to repair some of the very deep social wounds we’re all impacted by.

Whenever I think about “repairing breaches,” I think about the incredible depth and wisdom of the Jewish tradition that Jesus was steeped in. In Judaism, there is a cornerstone idea called “tikkun olam” which translates as “repair of the world.” It is both an idea as well as a practice – that each of us has a responsibility to be involved in repair work.

There is so much that needs repair in this world. May we use our Lenten journey to reflect more deeply on how we can be more engaged as repairers of the breach.