Injustice In the Community
Injustice Among God’s People
Nehemiah chapter five is a bit of a mystery. The first four chapters of Nehemiah tell this remarkable story of how how God’s people came together and overcame opposition to rebuild the wall around the city. In Nehemiah five, the narrative about the wall has come to a halt, and we pause to hear about grain, famine, and debt. It wouldn’t be so weird, except that chapter six picks up the wall narrative where chapter four left off. So chapter five is a bit of an anomaly. There is a lot of debate about why this narrative appears in chapter, rudely interrupting the wall narrative. All of those debates aside, however, here it is and it has something to say to us.
In the ancient setting of Nehemiah, grain was money. Grain fed your family, literally. It was your source of income, and it provided the seed for next year’s grain. Even taxes were paid in grain. This meant that a famine was devastating!
In Nehemiah, we enter a world where a famine has left some people with no choice but to mortgage their land and homes in order to get a loan to purchase grain to feed their families and provide for next years seed. As with any community of people, some were wealthy while others were not. The loans were being provided by the more wealthy members of the community, but with significant interest charges. It led to a situation where families were having to pledge their land, home, and in extreme cases, their sons and daughters for debt slavery just to make ends meet.
In other words, injustice was happening among God’s people. Injustice can be a lot of things. It can be the grotesque injustice of sex trafficking or abuse, or the more subtle injustice of the growing income gap. All injustice can be summed up as wrongly relating to others. (Just as all forms of idolatry can be summed up as wrongly relating to God.) While injustice and idolatry are sinful, God’s people certainly aren’t exempt!
When the people cry out in the face of injustice, Nehemiah responds. Take a look at Nehemiah 5:9, “So I continued, ‘What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?'”
It’s important to note that the practice of making loans with interest was perfectly within the boundaries of social acceptability. There was nothing particularly illegal or unexpected about what they were doing. And yet, Nehemiah says, “What you are doing is not right!” He encourages the community to walk in the fear of the LORD when it comes to their community life together. It’s as though he says, “We aren’t going to govern ourselves by what is commonly accepted or expected. We are going to govern ourselves around what honors God.”
Think about that a moment. Something that was expected and perfectly within the boundaries of cultural law, Nehemiah still says is injustice.
Nehemiah’s efforts lead to change that helps to end the injustice. They move from exploiting the poor in their community to working together to make sure everyones needs are met. But what does this story in Nehemiah five mean for us?
This side-story in Nehemiah chapter five shows us that the rebuilding project wasn’t just about building a wall and protecting a city, it was about rebuilding a people. The rebuilding of the wall served as a metaphor for a deeper shift in the people of God.
It’s pretty common for physical things to represent deeper realities. I’ve known many people to move to a new location about a significant life event (death of a loved one, addiction, marriage trouble) because the new location represents a new start. Remodeling and revitalizing a property can often serve to revitalize the people who call that place home, whether it be a family or an organization. There is an intimate connection between the physical world and our inner world of attitude, perspective, and emotion.
This is true in our religious life as well. In baptism, the physical act of going under water and being brought back up is a way of embodying and symbolizing the spiritual reality of dying to self and being raised to new life in Christ. The physical elements of bread and wine (or juice) at the communion table serve to remind us of the presence of God with us.
In the midst of a tangible building project, Nehemiah works to establish a new way of being in community with one another. He envisions a community without injustice. As I’ve already said, the lending practices were within the boundaries of the law, but were not beneficial to the community. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:23, “’I have the right to do anything,’ you say—but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’—but not everything is constructive.” Giving loans with interest to poor families that cause them to mortgage their land, homes, and even children was permissible by law, but it was not beneficial. (By the way, this has broad application when we need discernment for something! We often think that just because we can do it, we should do it. That isn’t always the case.)
Nehemiah wants to form a community that lives without injustice and and embodies Christ-like justice. Christ-like justice is different from cultural justice of modern America. In our culture, justice is often synonymous with violent retribution. Violence is the hinge on which justice swings in modern culture. Many of our entertainment choices embody this violent form of justice, so when we are wronged we are practically hard-wired to answer injustice with a greater injustice. Christlike justice is different from our culture’s version of justice. The hinge of Christlike justice is grace. Nehemiah didn’t stop the giving of loans, he stopped loans with interest. For him, gaining off of someone else’s struggle was unjust. That is radical new community!
Jesus was also all about establishing a new way of being in community with one another. Jesus was forming a new community called the Church! Jesus also came to establish his kingdom on earth. The kingdom of God isn’t just a fancy way of talking about going to heaven when we die. The kingdom of God is a new way of conducting ourselves.
The kingdom of God is about rightly relating to God as King, and rightly relating to others in community.
The Church is the new community formed around Christ that is called to embody the kingdom.
This means that we, as the Church, are not to relate to one another along common cultural lines of separation and unity, but rather relate to one another in a way that honors God in all things. We are to bear witness to Christ in the world by the way we relate to one another. And by the way we walk in the ways of justice rather than injustice.
Wherever you are, may you experience a new kind of community that works against injustice and aligns with the justice of God.
For more discussion about injustice and the Church, visit Emmaus Road Church in Fort Collins. You can also click on the resources below.
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