Sermon: When Life’s Unfair
Many of you are familiar with the parable of the prodigal son.
“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ So the father divided his assets between them. And the younger son took his share of the inheritance, left home, and squandered his wealth in dissolute living.”
The parable doesn’t say whether or not this man had any daughters. Only that he had two sons.
Because, honestly, it doesn’t matter whether or not he had any daughters. Because one’s inheritance was passed down to one’s sons.
Daughters, I suppose, would benefit from the inheritance that their husbands would receive. But the daughters themselves received no inheritance.
So: A parable about a prodigal daughter who demands her share of the inheritance just wouldn’t make sense, because only sons received a share of the inheritance.
Which means that the daughters of Zelophehad had a real problem. Their father had no sons. No one to inherit the family wealth. No one to carry on the family name. All their father had were these five daughters.
When their father died, because they were women, they had no rights. They wouldn’t receive any of the inheritance. And their father’s name would disappear from history.
It’s really hard for me to hear this story with an ancient mindset. It’s hard for me to comprehend a world in which women has so few rights.
By the time I was born, the idea that women should have equal rights was well established. It may not have always been the practice; but the idea was there.
In 1971, the year I was born, women earned the right to have a credit card in their own name, without needing to have a husband or father co-sign for them.
It does kind of baffle my mind that this happened so recently. But I’ve never lived in a world where a woman could not have her own credit card.
Yet I do know that, even today, women in this country do not have equal rights or equal opportunities.
With the new Real IDs now required for travel, many are realizing just how much harder it is for women to get Real IDs than it is for men—generally speaking—because women are much more likely to have changed their last name at some point in their lives than men.
Is it fair that women find it harder to get Real IDs than men? Of course not. And that’s just one way that women and men are not treated equally today.
Now, I don’t know how much we’ll talk about all this when this scripture comes up at camp. (Remember, these scriptures I’m preaching on are from the curriculum we’re using at camp.)
But one thing campers of all ages do understand is when things are unfair… Even young children have a strong sense of fairness… And how are we supposed to respond when things are unfair?
One way adults respond to children when they complain that something isn’t fair is to say, “Life’s not fair. Get used to it.” And… it’s true! Life isn’t fair.
But sometimes, people go out, and they engage in the struggle to make life a little more fair; to fight for justice on behalf of those who have experienced life’s unfairness far too often.
Besides the inability of women to get a credit card before 1971, which the camp curriculum actually brings up, the camp curriculum also mentions other laws and practices that were unfair or unjust, laws which were eventually changed. For example: child labor, which was allowed by law until 1938. That’s still within the lifetime of some of our church members. And also, the right of older people to have guaranteed medical care, which didn’t happen until 1965.
And what about the right of same sex couples to marry? That didn’t happen, nationally, until 2015.
These unfair laws were only changed when ordinary people noticed the injustice, and began telling others about it, and pressured lawmakers to change the laws.
Which is exactly what the daughters of Zelophehad did. The laws that denied them their rights were wrong; so they went to Moses and a group of other leaders, and told them. They said: “This is not right!” These women explained how the law was oppressing them; and they insisted that something be done.
The law needed to be changed.
Moses said he’d pray about it. He didn’t say that as a way of brushing them off, the way some people today say it. (“I’ll pray about it; now be gone.”)
No. Moses really did pray about it. He took the concerns of the daughters of Zelophehad to the Lord.
And the Lord said that these daughters of Zelophehad were right! They were right to bring their complaint before Moses, they were right in saying that the present laws were unjust, and they were right in demanding a change to the law.
Think about how remarkable this is! The Bible is filled with praise about God’s law. The longest chapter in the Bible—Psalm 119—contains 176 verses, and every verse is a statement praising the law of the Lord.
And yet, these daughters of Zelophehad dared to go to Moses—God’s prophet—and insist that the law be changed.
And God agreed!
The daughters of Zelophehad spoke out for justice. They demanded their rights. And God agreed.
Because God desires laws that protect people’s rights. God desires laws that establish and maintain justice. God desires laws that protect the vulnerable.
In other words, God desires laws that make things fair.
What God doesn’t want are laws that deny people their rights; laws that make things unfair.
That’s what the law was doing for those daughters of Zelophehad.
The prophets that we are familiar with—Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, and all the rest—also spoke out against unfair, unjust laws.
These prophets—like the daughters of Zelophehad—spoke out against laws that denied people their rights, or laws that failed to protect the vulnerable and the weak.
Even the psalmist insisted on laws that protect the vulnerable. “Defend the weak,” it says in Psalm 82; “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed; rescue the weak and the needy.”
If life or misfortune has treated some people harshly or unfairly, show extra favor to them. Do what is right.
And if the laws themselves are oppressing those who are vulnerable, work to get those laws changed, like the daughters of Zelophehad.
After consulting with the Lord, Moses and the other leaders did change the law. The new law said that “If a man dies and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance on to his daughter… It shall be for the Israelites a statute and ordinance, as the Lord commanded Moses.”
Shockingly, there are people today trying to take away rights that aren’t all that different from the rights that the daughters of Zelophehad fought for. Rights that God agreed should be protected.
Rights are being denied to people because of their gender or their gender identity, for example.
This taking away of rights is contrary to the gospel. This denial that all people are created equally by God is contrary to the gospel.
Among the apostles in the New Testament, the Spirit was at work, developing them into a beloved community of believers, where no distinction was made between men and women.
That’s quite a radical concept for the first century, but it follows the example of Jesus. He treated women equally, as if they were men, to the astonishment of his disciples.
But the Spirit worked among those disciples, to open their minds to how life in God’s kingdom should be.
And thus we have that ancient statement, that hymn, that creed-like declaration found in the book of Galatians, that, in Christ, there is no distinction between Gentile or Jew, slave or free,... male or female.
And despite how counter-culturally radical this was in its time, the disciples actually tried to live by it. And when they didn’t, someone—like the apostle Paul—called them out on it.
Paul would say to the believers things like: “How can there be distinctions among you? Have you forsaken the gospel?”
And Paul would argue for and fight for the right of every person to be treated equally and fairly, just as the daughters of Zelophehad had argued for and fought for their right to be treated fairly.
We see this work of the Spirit right from the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit enabled all people to hear the gospel proclaimed in their own language. This was the Spirit’s embrace and celebration of diversity. The gospel would not be reserved exclusively for those who could speak Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek, or meet any other criteria; the gospel was available to all.
And the Spirit continues to lead people of faith today, to defend the rights of the oppressed, to lift up the lowly, and to struggle for justice. That’s what Jesus’s “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” declaration was all about: it was about undoing and reversing the unfair ways of this world, making them fair, restoring justice, and ensuring that people’s rights were protected and preserved.
Some people say that things like this shouldn’t be preached on, that they aren’t a main concern of the gospel. They say preachers should just preach salvation, which they define as living eternally after one dies.
But Jesus was very much concerned with this life, and very much concerned with how fair or unfair things are in this world; how just or unjust things are.
And “salvation,” in scripture, means to be made whole, to be well, to be free to live that abundant life Jesus talked about, starting right now.
Which means that we who follow Jesus are called upon to do exactly what the daughters of Zelophehad did: to speak out when things are wrong or unfair, to demand that our leaders listen, and to continue struggling for justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment