What is Justice? – Reflections on a Cardinal Virtue

a sermon preached by Tony Lorenzen

at First Parish Church in Weston, MA

Sunday, January 29, 2006

[I opened this sermon by juggling]

Juggling and Justice have more in common than the letter J. Justice is more than a carnival trick. Justice is a virtue; a quality or trait or characteristic or our personality that helps us know and do the right. It is acquired by practice. The more often one acts justly, the more likely one is to act justly in the future. How does one become a better juggler? By practicing juggling. How does one become a more just person? By practicing justice.

Justice is so important that it is a cardinal virtue, a virtue upon which all others hinge, from which and without which other important virtues don’t mean as much and harder to practice. Justice is giving each their due, giving to everyone what they deserve. It is easy to agree that one should get what they deserve, not so easy to agree upon what constitutes just deserts. Justice is not always treating everyone equally. Any parent or teacher can tell you that. In fact, justice can often require treating people very differently. A child who behaves, is respectful, cleans up their room, follows the rules, and does their best in school, will and should be treated differently in many aspects than a child who is rude, disrespectful, slovenly, experiment with drugs and alcohol, runs afoul of the law, and flunks out of school. Speaking of school, it would be unjust for a teacher to give the same grade to a student who does all their work, studies hard, and gets extra help, as to one who does no assignments, does no studying, accepts no offered help and mouths off and gets in trouble in the classroom.

Justice gets more complex with more complex issues: Is it just to execute criminals to demonstrate that killing is wrong? Is it just for our government to detain people without charge or trial, or even after they have been found innocent, because our government considers them terrorist threats? Is it just to torture anyone under any circumstances? Is just to deny the right to marry, and the 1500 or so legal rights that go with it, to citizens because of their sexual orientation? Is it just to be able to fire someone from their job without cause because he is man who dresses as woman or because she is a woman who used to be a man?

Ethically, justice stands at the crossroads of the moral debate between relativism, where determining right and wrong depends on circumstance and situation, time and place, and all too often, mere personal opinion; and objectivism, where there is one and only one set and determined moral standard regardless of social and historical location or special circumstances. The problem with both relativism and objectivism in regard to justice and other moral issues is that the moral debate all too often focuses on actions and not actors, on issues and not agents. Therefore we focus on such things as whether or not the act of the state executing criminals is wrong instead of what that act does to those who commit the execution and whether or not torture is wrong instead of what kind of people it makes us as torturers. And if our government is executing, and torturing and legally discriminating, they do it in our name and We The People are therefore murderers, executioner, and bigots.

I like to start with three simple questions when faced with questions of Jusitice or any moral matter, remembering the questions are simple, the answers quite often, are not.

The questions are these:

Who am I?

Who ought I to be?

How do I best become that person?

These three questions are my three juggling objects. By asking, and in good faith answering, these questions I am better able to do justice and walk humbly with my God.

Answering them is not always easy. Especially the last one. Who I am at any given time, changes, depending on how I have been doing with my honest answers to the other two questions. I know who I ought to be: a loving, virtuous person, who seeks to take the plank out my own eye first, who seeks to walk humbly with my god and do justice? How, in any given circumstance and facing any decision, do I best act or decide is not always clearly laid out before me - such is the task of discernment, prayer, and practice.

Yet one thing is certain, I must practice being a virtuous and just person. Character is an ongoing cycle of development. You do what you are and you are what you do. The more I seek and practice justice, the more likely I am to be just. The downside is also tragically true, the less I seek justice, the easier and easier and easier it becomes to not care.

If people generally believe in justice and it is generally agreed that justice is right and good, then why is there so much injustice in our society and in our world? It’s been said that "Justice is in the hands of those with the power to hand out justice." In America, at least in theory, we believe that power resides in and derives from the consent of the governed. Again, it begs the question, "Then why so much injustice?" My answer is that “We The People” have abdicated.

130 million people are expected to watch the Super Bowl XL (40) a week from today, that's 8 million more than voted in the last presidential election. 500 million people voted in the last American Idol final, which means the winner would have received votes in equal measure to more than double the number of people who voted in the last Presidential election. Maybe there is so much injustice in our society, and since America is so powerful, therefore in the world, because We the People have abdicated the throne of Justice and Freedom. And it’s not just OTHER people, we have to take our share of the blame because Frederick Douglas was right. Those who wield power never give it up without a struggle.

When was the last time that you, members of the We the People, actually spoke to your elected representatives? How accountable are they to you for injustices or for making sure justice is done?

When my state representative from Leominster was elected in 2004 I didn't vote for her. She publicly stated opinions I thought were unjust. She was against gay marriage, for the death penalty, in favor of MCAS testing, against universal health care, and had never even heard of instant run-off or rank choice voting. She shared so many positions with her Republican opponent, I wrote myself in for state representative. At least I was voting for someone I believed held just positions. After she was elected, I began calling and writing to her, as I usually do, before many votes on Beacon Hill. My correspondence began “Dear Representative Flanagan,” and I would get responses from her office saying “Dear Mr. Lorenzen.” Now I write emails or leave phone messages that say, “Hello Jen,” and get replies saying “Hi Tony.”

What if more of us who were genuinely concerned about justice were on a first name basis with people whose political opinions or whose ideas of justice were DIFFERENT from our own? Power never gives up power without a struggle, but it is up to us what form that struggle takes. If we take the tree out of our own eye, before trying to remove twigs of injustice from the eyes of others, we will see that an effective way to end injustice is to repeatedly point out the common humanity we all share.

In their campaign to keep gay marriage rights in Massachusetts, Mass Equality’s political team, headed by Marc Solomon, approached state legislators here in the Commonwealth with results of door to door canvassing that showed citizens supported gay marriage 50 % to 25% with another 25% undecided about the issue. More importantly, they set up face-to-face meetings between legislators and gay families in their districts. Gay married couples, and their children, parents, siblings, friends and allies contacted legislators, and invited legislators to meetings to get to know these gay and lesbian families, find out who they are, and what rights they would lose as parents and spouses and families should the equal marriage law be amended or repealed. What Mass Equality sought to do, in essence, was to re-define family one legislator at a time by personal contact. It was a fascinating, and on-going exercise in love-thy-neighbor. It has been hugely successful so far. On September 14, 2005 an attempt to overturn Massachusetts equal marriage law failed a constitutional convention vote by a tally of 157 -39. Only two state senators voted for injustice and bigotry and only 37 state representatives. ( both Susan Fargo and Alice Peisch voted in support of equal marriage in case you’re wondering, as did my rep from Leominster.) Mass Equality could have chosen to vilify the enemy, to see only the speck of bigotry and hatred and a different opinion in their eyes, and portray the opposition to gay marriage as ignorant, insensitive, intolerant red-state backwaters in a blue-state legislature. They didn’t. Instead they took the plank out their own eyes and their supporters’ eyes and they’re winning by walking and talking humbly, seeking justice, loving their enemies, - Oldest kindnesses in the book. The results, so far, are justice.

Ironically, the first step in creating justice is not calling others to task. The way we create more justice in the world is by first making ourselves into just people. The work of ending injustice begins with you and me. Yes, we must hold the torturers and the executioners and the bigots accountable, but first we must take the planks of injustice out of our own eyes, and there is only one way to become more just people. It’s the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, baby, practice. Acting justly is more than it’s own reward, it makes us into the type of people we want to be, the type of people we ought to be, the type of people we are called to be- People who “do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”