It’s Complicated

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 31, 2011

It’s Complicated

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God

A letter dated March 30, 1978:

“Dear Mr. Ferguson:

We regret to inform you

that we will not be able to offer you

a place at Harvard Law School

in the class of 1981.

        

We would like to explain our decision.

There once was a day when young men like you

were the ones we routinely admitted:

men from New England and the Northeast;

educated at prep schools and Ivy-League colleges;

Protestant;

White;

men who, when they heard the word “squash”,

thought of a sport rather than vegetable.

But those days are gone.

Over the past few years

we have witnessed an explosion of applications

from an increasingly diverse pool of applicants.

We now realize we need to respond

by seeking a diverse class that better represents

the demographics of the world

into which we send our graduates.

We now actively seek candidates from less well-known schools;

candidates from states in the south and the west;

candidates who are African American,

Native American,

Asian American,

Latino;

candidates who may be the first in their family

to have graduated from college;

candidates who may not present grades and test scores

that are competitive,

but who display other qualities,

including having overcoming adversity,

that indicate their potential to be outstanding lawyers.

It was barely a decade ago

that we routinely denied admission to women,

on the assumption that any woman in the class

did not intend to make a life-long career in law

but would leave practice within a few years of graduation

to get married and raise a family.

Were this 1968 rather than 1978,

we would be acknowledging your application

with an offer of admission.

But one of the few constants in the world is change

and we have to adapt to the transformations

we find all around us.

More important,

we believe that we are called not only to teach justice,

but also called to do justice

by removing artificial barriers

we had erected in our admissions policies

over the past 100 years

and reach out more broadly, deeply, and purposefully

to assure that our graduates reflect

the rich diversity of our nation,

and indeed, the world. 

We are confident you will find your place

at an outstanding law school

and go on to an exemplary and fulfilling career as a lawyer

and we wish you every success in the future.

Very truly yours,

The Admissions Office of Harvard Law School”

This was not the rejection letter I received

from Harvard Law School back in 1978

after I had applied,

but it might just as well have been.

Admission standards at colleges, law schools,

business and medical schools

had changed drastically over the previous ten years

as schools sought to open their doors wider

to a broader, more diverse group of students,

For Harvard Law School

there were too many WASPs from the Northeast

just like me in the applicant pool

and some would have to make way

so the school could create a very different class

from what had been the norm for decades.

I knew it was the right thing to do,

that Harvard and other schools were attempting to correct

for injustices built up and built in over the years.

But still, where was the justice if I was penalized

for a situation over which I had no control,

for attitudes I had no part in creating,

for mindsets that existed long before

I was even born?

                 

Was showing a preference to one person

at the expense of another person,

showing a preference to a person

with lower grades and scores

just to respond to the need to diversify,

was that fair,

was that just?

                 

Or was it, as some argued at the time,

“reverse discrimination”?

No more just,

even if well intentioned.

                 

At age 23, I was beginning to learn that

this justice business was and is complicated!

We heard in our lesson such simple, direct words:

“what does that Lord require of you

but to do justice.”

But what does that mean – to “do justice”?

In this context, it isn’t just a legal term,

a term applied only in a courtroom.

To do justice is how we are called to live

in every part of our lives

as children of God and disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The word “justice” appears almost 200 times in the Bible,

references scattered within books of both

the Old and New Testaments.

The command is always the same:

God calls us to seek justice,

to work for justice,

to do justice,

in the same way we are called to seek peace,

work for peace.

Justice is at the top of God’s list of things and behaviors

God considers not just important,

but essential for his world, his Kingdom.

And conversely,

injustice has no place in God’s world,

God’s kingdom.

God’s justice is broad;

it is to be sought everywhere:

it is social justice,

it is economic justice,

it is environmental justice --

pick the arena and simply apply the term:

seek justice,

do justice.

Do justice because,

as the Psalmist reminds us,

“God loves justice”.

(Psalm 11:7)

                          

So, when God tells us

we are to “give justice to the weak and the orphan”

(Psalm 82)

we cannot be satisfied that our work is done

if we know the weak and the orphan

can find free advice at the local legal aid clinic.

To give justice to the weak and the orphan

is to assure they are fed,

assure they are housed,

assure they have access to the same level of medical care

that you and I have.

It is to assure that they don’t live in fear,

but have lives grounded in confidence and hope,

for that’s what God wants for all his children:

lives filled with hope.

As he spoke of the Messiah who was to come,

the prophet Isaiah gave us a model

for how we are to do justice:

“He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”

                           (Isaiah 11:3)

We are to do justice leading with our hearts,

in the same way Jesus does justice.

The world in which Jesus lived in two thousand years ago,

was one in which a small group sat at the top of society,

owning most of the land and other assets,

possessing most of the wealth, most of the power,

showing little concern for the poorest, the neediest.

We are little changed two thousand years later

as every economic indicator shows that the gap

between the wealthiest one percent

and everyone else in our country has grown every year

for the past two decades:

“The richest 1 percent possess

over a third of the country’s wealth;

more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent

of American families.

The top 10 percent of American households

take in 42 percent of all income

and hold 71 percent of all wealth.”

(Michael Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?)

Our reaction to these statistics may be

that that is simply how the free market works.

Or, our reaction could even be a bit of Gordon Gekko:

as we try to figure out what do we need to do

to claw our way up out of the lower 90 percent,

up into, if not the top one percent,

at least the top ten percent. 

But, if we seek justice,

if we want to do justice,

then our first reaction to statistics like these

should be to ask, is such a situation just?

Is it just that chief executives of top businesses

are taking home salaries of $5 million,

$10 million, $15 million, even more,

when so many are out of work?

Is it just that the typical chief executive officer

of a large business in this country

earns a salary 400 times that of the lowest paid employee?

Four hundred times!

As the debate has raged on

about the deficit and budgets,

have you heard anyone from any party

speak up for the elderly,

for children,

for “the weak and the orphan”.

for the more than forty million men, women,

and children in this country

who struggle just to put food on the table?

Where are the voices speaking up for them?

Where are the voices demanding that they too

are assured of justice?

Where are their lobbyists?

Jesus would say that’s our job,

to lobby for them,

to assure justice for them.

You may have seen in the paper

that an extraordinary event took place

this past week right in the Capitol

when an ecumenical group of clergy,

including a representative from our Presbyterian Church (USA),

gathered to make just that point –

that nowhere in any of the debates

where they finding concern for justice for the poor,

the weak, the elderly,

the jobless, the homeless.

The group argued that we may well be concerned with

leaving our children a legacy of debt,

but we cannot resolve that issue by substituting

a legacy of poverty,

of indifference,

of neglect of our most vulnerable.

That is not just,

and no matter how appealing some may find it politically,

we can be certain that God will not let

such a situation stand,
for God loves justice.

Three years ago the PC(USA) adopted a Social Creed

to help us to learn more about what it means

to do justice, to seek justice, to live just lives

as we weave justice into all parts of life.

The idea came from a creed adopted 100 years earlier,

a time not all that dissimilar from now,

a time when the rich, the corporations ran roughshod over society,

and the poor, the elderly, the most vulnerable

were cast aside, “collateral damage”

of free market capitalism.

I’ve put a copy of the Social Creed in your bulletin;

http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/acswp/social-creed/

take it home and read through it.

Talk about it with your family, discuss it over dinner.

Find one point that particularly resonates with you,

some part of life that you’d like to work on

to help bring justice and root out injustice.  

We are certainly not the only church with a Social Creed.

The Social Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church

begins with the lesson that the measure of just society

“is how it treats its most vulnerable members.”

This sums up perfectly and pointedly

the teachings we find in both

Old and New Testaments

of what it means “to do justice”.

“The basis of our work is God,

not ourselves”.

(Rigby)

Whether we like something,

whether it fits our politics,

our ideology,

our economic theories –

none of that matters to God.

What matters,

all that matters,

is whether we are living justly by

doing justice,

seeking justice,

bringing justice

as we root out injustice.

For what does the Lord require of us –

require of us,

expect of us,

demand from us:

but to do justice.

It really isn’t complicated.

AMEN