On May 22nd during the worship services, we dedicated a much of items (school kits, health kits, layettes, blankets) before sending them to a location where they would then be shipped all over the world to people in need. You may not have thought much about this brief time during worship, but what we did was very significant and an act of faith.
Most of us probably did not think much about when we brought items for the school kits, health kits or material for the blankets—but the bringing of these items are an act of service. Sometimes simple acts can make a tremendous difference in other people’s lives.
Think about what happens: All of the blankets, school kits, and health kits were sent from our building to a central place where they are placed besides many others from congregations throughout Indiana and then they are shipped to various places throughout our world. Some of the blankets will be given to people who do not have one. It may be used for warmth to sleep under; it may be used as something to sleep on rather than dirt. The school kits with pencils, paper, etc. are sent to places where the children may not have these items and because of getting one of these kits, has a better opportunity to learn to write and read—receiving an education that may be the difference for that child and their ability to move beyond a pure survival mode of existence.
We may never know all the ways that this act of providing the supplies and labor of assembling these kits and blankets has to those who receive them, but we do know that they do make a difference.
This to me is a large part of what it means to do social justice. Over the past years, sometimes this phrase ‘social justice’ has been perceived as a negative. One TV commentator even went so far to tell people to run away from congregations that use this phrase ‘social justice.’ However, I think that this is part of what we are called to be about as the people of God. Think about the 10 Commandments—over half of them deal with how we relate to our neighbors. Think about Jesus’ ministry—most of it is to people who are in need and on the edges of society (sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, the blind, the deaf, and the lame). Even as Jesus shared his last supper, he taught the disciples and gave them a new commandment—‘to love one another as I have loved you.’
All this points us in the direction of the understanding that to continue the ministry that Jesus has placed before us is about helping those in need and seeking to serve our neighbor. When we do things like make blankets or provide supplies for school kits and health kits—we are in essence doing social justice and doing the will of God. For social justice is simply seeking to be just or fair in how we treat other people with dignity and respect. And the reason that we should care about social justice is that God wants us to address the needs of the entire world in a fair and loving way. And by preparing and sending all the items that were in the sanctuary on May 22nd is one way that we live out our faith and a call to social justice.
-Pastor Steve