What does Easter have to do with Systemic Justice?
Spoiler: Everything
Hey there! I know it’s been a while since I’ve written / sent you anything so hopefully you still remember me.
Life has been rough and work has been crazy. In the 7 weeks since I last wrote to you, I’ve traveled to visit with church + government leaders and speak in two cities - Montreal (my first visit to Quebec!) and Ottawa. April is a bit packed too with trips to Kelowna (a beautiful, wealthy town in British Columbia) and Calgary (think Yellowstone but slightly urbanized).
Here’s a recent sermon from the lovely Evangel Church in Montreal - one of the largest evangelical churches in Montreal that is also one of our generous historic church partners that partnered with IJM in strengthening an entire city’s justice system in South Asia.
Which brings me to this upcoming week - I’ll be teaching at the lovely Trinity Church in Kelowna, BC this upcoming Sunday. Trinity Church is one of the largest churches in Canada and has generously partnered with IJM Bolivia for many years - a partnership that led to us achieving 150 criminal convictions for perpetrators of sexual violence in a justice system that showed only a 0.04% conviction rate for sexual violence crimes just 15 years ago. If you can’t tell - this is why I love doing what my team does at IJM Canada: inviting everyday Christians across the Canadian Church to give generously and watching the abundant returns on their faithful giving. And the beautiful thing is that it truly takes very little investment in our work to see the kind of returns we regularly see.
So now that we’ve gotten the personal updates out of the way, let me share some fresh theological content with you. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to give you an early preview of some of my freshly written sermon for this upcoming Sunday in Kelowna.
Jesus has resurrected from the dead - now what?
What does the resurrection of Christ have to do with the bad news of the world today? What does the resurrection of Jesus mean for the bad news of injustice around the world today?
If we’re being real – many of us have a hard time articulating why the Christian faith compels us to do something about the injustices surrounding us. We know we’re supposed to do something but we’re not really sure why. And if we’re being even more real – our non-Christian neighbours, secular culture and young people outside the Church don’t really see the Christian faith as relevant to some of the biggest justice issues today. Because the Gospel or the Good News of Jesus Christ doesn’t really feel like good news when compared to the bad news of injustice.
I believe that this is because most of us in the western Church don’t really understand the full impact of the resurrection - much like Jesus’ apostles in Acts 1.
These days, I like to think of Jesus as my all-time favourite TV character: Ted Lasso. Or rather, I like to think of Ted Lasso as an incarnation / avatar of Jesus in pop culture.
Now for those of you who have never been blessed by Ted Lasso – he’s an American football (the kind of football you don’t play with your foot) coach who gets hired almost as a joke by a London Premier League soccer (or you know, as the rest of the world calls it - football) club. And everyone is convinced that it’s going to be a disaster – because this guy knows literally nothing about soccer / real football. But as you keep watching the show, you realize that there’s something really unique about Coach Lasso. Because everything that he touches comes to life.
Literally everything and everyone that he comes into contact with – his duplicitous boss, underperforming team, angry captain, prima donna (or pre-Madonna; IYKYK) players - is somehow miraculously transformed by his touch.
We see this all throughout the life & ministry of Jesus in the Gospels too – everywhere he goes, whatever he touches comes to life. Dead people come to life, demon possessed people are set free, people with lifelong medical conditions are miraculously healed – because this is who Jesus is. And this is what his body does.
And this is what his Body, the Church, is supposed to do. Through the resurrecting power of the Holy Spirit and through the transformative touch of the Body of Christ. Especially after the physical body of Christ is taken up into the heavens in Acts 1.
The medieval nun, St. Teresa of Avila once said this:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
You see, the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just a spiritual event. Yes, the resurrection of Jesus points to the spiritual reality of us being raised from death to life spiritually. But when we overspiritualize the resurrection – as we often do in the west – we miss out on what’s obviously staring us in the face: that the resurrection is first and foremost a physical event. It’s an event of Jesus defeating death – a current physical reality.
But Jesus defeating death also points to a future physical reality – the resurrection of life. Because what God has done for Jesus, he will also for us one day.
And what God will do for us – he will also for all of creation one day.
This is the full impact of the resurrection - the renewal of all things - including the most broken justice systems. And if we’re not careful, like the apostles in Acts 1, we can also miss out on understanding the full impact of the resurrection.