“Justice for all,” the elephant cried as he danced among the chickens.
I am reliably informed that this is an African proverb. It’s so obviously a proverb. Although I’m not the freshest biscuit in the barrel even I can work that out.
Elephants don’t speak. Nor do they dance. Neither do chickens, even though there’s a dance named after them.
So who might the elephant be?
Might the elephant be Robert Magabe as he dances on the ruins of the once productive farms of a once prosperous Zimbabwe?
Or might the elephant have been Idi Amin as he danced on the graves of those who opposed or threatened him?
Could the elephant be Jacob Zuma as he dances around the $30 million refurb. of his retirement home while much of his country grinds on in wretched poverty?
What about Vladimir Putin as he gloats over the games that cost his country a cool 52 billion, three times the amount of the previous winter olympics?
Perhaps the elephant isn’t a person, but a company, a multi-national mining company, as it rips the wealth out of a vulnerable nation, consigning its citizens to slave-like labour and a future of suffering?
If the proverb had been known in Old Testament times could the elephant have been the leaders and people of Jerusalem and Judah who “plundered the poor, crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor (Isaiah 3:14-15).”
Or the middle-class women of Israel for whom life is a progressive cocktail party, “the cows of Bashan, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy (Amos 4:1).”
What about in New Testament times? Would it have been Herod and Herodias on the occasion of their debauched, depraved, drunken, sadistic, lust-crazed birthday bash as they danced on the decapitated head of John The Baptist.
Or Herod, imprisoning and persecuting God’s people, having James slain with a sword, executing his own soldiers for incompetence and basking in false praise as if he was a god. (see Acts 12:1,19 and 21-23).
Is the elephant each one of the 85 richest people on the planet who own half of the world’s wealth?
Should we look for the elephant closer to home?
Tony Abbott, perhaps, dancing on his new $30,000 rug at Kirribilli House as he turns back the boats, turns his back on the damage being done to children in detention and turns a blind eye to a more compassionate approach to desperate people seeking asylum in the land where, according to Tony, himself a descendent of boat people, to be born here is to win the lottery of life. I thought lottery winnings were big enough to share.
After all, our national anthem boasts, “For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share.”
Or is the elephant the Australian voter who gave Tony the mandate to pursue the policies of the previous government with even greater rigour?
Is the elephant me, consuming more calories than my body needs, living in a house with more rooms than my empty nester years need, stashing more super than my future needs, titillated by more toys than I could play with in two lifetimes of sabbaths and wardrobing more threads than I could possibly need in a dozen winters?
Justice is a strange word. It is so open to interpretation - and abuse.
One of the sadder things about my life, which is trotted out from time to time to entertain the grandchildren, is that I can recite all the opening lines to the old TV Superman show of the fifties and sixties:
Faster than a speeding bullet.
blah, blah, blah (I’ll spare you the full text)
fights for truth, justice and the American way.
Is truth and justice really the American way? Pigs might fly, or pink elephants.
But can any of us get truth and justice right? If not, who can?
As a group of friends surfed a hundred beaches in ten days recently we arrived at each beach at the top of the hour for prayer before we took the plunge. We started most prayer times with a Bible reading, wading our way through some of the chapters of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.
In Isaiah we meet the God who is just and is committed to justice. And because he loves justice he hates injustice and oppression.
Ah, yes, to wheel in a well-worn phrase, he hates oppression with a passion.
His moral outrage at injustice, hypocrisy, lies, exploitation, neglect and indifference on the part of his people is both confronting and convicting:
These people honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me (Isaiah 29:13).Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yolk,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter,
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not turn away from your own flesh and blood (Isaiah 58:6-7)?The way of peace they do not know,
there is no justice in their paths.
They have turned them into crooked roads;
no one who walks in them will know peace (Isaiah 59:8).
The Sydney Diocese has launched into an initiative called “Jesus brings.” Some with an acutely heightened sense of theological exactness have tweeked the initiative to “Jesus is.” That’s okay. The more evangelistic action, the merrier! If we don’t reach the nations of the world in our city we are in danger of becoming a white elephant of a denomination - a very anglo-celtic white elephant!
One of the stated sub-themes of “Jesus brings” by the architects of the initiative is “Jesus brings justice to the oppressed.” If it is to be “Jesus is” we could tweek the same sub-theme to be, “Jesus is the one who brings justice to the oppressed.”
A good question to ask is, “How does Jesus bring justice to the oppressed?” I’ve been asking it a lot over the last month, especially as I am being invited to preach on the theme in churches throughout the “Jesus brings” initiative.
If we don’t put our mind to this question as a Diocese, is there an elephant in the meeting room?
If we don’t put our mind to this question in our local churches, is there an elephant in the crying room?
If I don’t put my mind to this question as a follower of Jesus, is there an elephant in the spare room?
Who am I kidding? I have enough spare rooms for a white elephant, a pink elephant and a dancing elephant!
Feature photo: David Blackwell
