Let justice roll down like waters

... and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. 

Psalm 103:6

As I attempt to write these occasional meditations on Psalm 103, I’ve been stuck on this passage for weeks. Righteousness and justice are hard to grasp because we know God is just–justice is not merely a virtue, but one of the key qualities of God–and yet our world can appear fundamentally unjust. The Psalmist knew this, too, as did all the inspired writers of scripture. Indeed, outside of the Psalms, only Job grapples with the nature of suffering and justice of God to such an extent.

Our error, of course, it confusing the perfect justice of God with the imperfect justice of man. Even the faithful know, when we look into ourselves, that we are not always just. Although we may even be perfectly just in our dealings with others, are we always just in our hearts? Do we give God and everyone we encounter their due, in mercy and charity?

Unable to get a handle on the subject, I recalled a folktale about a righteous man who ponders the justice of man and the justice of God. He is troubled by a line in Psalm 37–I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread–for he feels as though he has seen both things. He says to himself “In all my dealings I have given each man his due, and God above all, and yet I have struggled and suffered, while the wicked are rewarded.”

And so he leaves his town and begins searching the world over for true justice. He searches cities and small villages. He searches the courts of law and halls of power. He searches among princes and peasants. He finds true justice in none of these places.

His search takes him to every corner of the world, and he finally passes beyond the known world and into a land of darkness and mist. Lost in this place, he comes across a small hut and knocks at the door to beg a scrap of bread and a cup of wine.

A hooded figure greets him and welcomes him in. There, he finds a place much larger than it appeared to be, with halls stretching in all directions. Every wall is lined, floor to ceiling, with small oil lamps. Some are magnificently formed in gold and adorned with jewels, while others are made of rough clay or similarly poor materials. Some are large, and some are small. All of them have a wick and a flame and a certain amount oil. In some, there is a great deal of oil and a long wick, while in others, the oil is almost exhausted, the wick consumed, the flame about to flicker out.

He knows in his heart that each lamp is a life, and he follows the figure through endless corridors and endless lamps–the lamps of young and strong and of the old and fading; the lamps of the great and powerful and the lamps of the poor and weak. Thousands upon thousands of lamps pass by, until the figure finally leads him to a simple one and leaves him alone, and he understands that this is own lamp.

His lamp is nothing special–neither grand nor poor–but to his horror he sees that it is about to flicker out. He trembles in fear, and notices a lamp burning brightly next to his. It is made of much humbler stuff than his own, but it is full to the brim and has a long wick topped with a brightly burning flame.

He watches as a nearby lamp begins to sputter, and then goes out. Gripped with horror, he searches for his companion but does not see him. His gaze turns toward the humble lamp so full of oil. He reaches out to it, intending to pour just a little into his own, just enough to keep the light burning, when the hooded figure reappears and grasps his wrist.

“You searched for justice everywhere but within your own heart,” the figure says. “Let me tell you of another who came here: a boy, poor and sick, who wandered these halls alone and found a lamp likes yours, about to go out. And he took his own lamp, and poured the oil into that of the stranger, and thus shortened his already brief days to provide for another.”

The man falls to his knees, weeping, convicted, and when he opens his eyes the hut is gone and so are the lamps, and he is alone in the land of darkness and mist, not knowing whether he lives or is dead, but knowing that his own righteousness was tested, and found wanting.

The Prophet Micah writes that God has told us what good: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? When Christ came, it was to bring forth justice to the nations, and he told us the necessary thing upon which all the Law and all the Prophets rested: to Love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and to love our neighbor as yourself–to love others as we have been loved by God, even unto death.

According to the ancient sages, the world rests upon three pillars: justice, truth, and peace. Truth allows justice to prevail, and justice allows truth to shine forth, while both make peace possible. We are called to assist God in bringing these things forth into the world, but even when that fails, God will keep his promise, and His Justice will prevail. The fulfillment of that promise may lie beyond our understanding or even our lives, and that justice may seems inscrutable and elusive, but in the end, all the living and the dead will face the merciful Judge, who will ask us what we did to help bring forth His justice for all the oppressed.

Here is My Servant, whom I uphold,
My Chosen One, in whom My soul delights.
I will put My Spirit on Him,
and He will bring justice to the nations.

He will not cry out or raise His voice,
nor make His voice heard in the streets.
A bruised reed He will not break
and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish;

He will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow weak or discouraged
before He has established justice on the earth.
In His law the islands will put their hope.”

Isaiah 42: 1-4