PEACE WITH JUSTICE

 Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13: PEACE WITH JUSTICE

In today’s advent Scripture, the Psalmist offers us a beautiful image: that God’s salvation is recognizable when steadfast love and faithfulness meet, and when righteousness and peace kiss each other. Righteousness and peace are so caught up in each other, so in love with each other, that they are kissing when God’s glory comes to dwell in our land.

This is a significant and challenging image for us. The Hebrew word translated as “righteousness” here can also be translated as “justice.” What does it mean for justice and peace to kiss each other? It is so easy to build a fence between the two concepts, to argue that some act of violence or violation is necessary in order to bring about justice. This lie constantly assaults us in the images of our world. It tells us that if we just commit the right amount of violence against the right people, we will have enacted justice. If we lock the right people in prison, if we keep the right people outside of our borders, there will finally be justice.

But God’s justice looks so different from that. God’s justice is in love with peace. God’s justice is restorative, constructive rather than destructive. God’s justice is healing, hope-giving and forgiving, most fully revealed in Jesus who offers mercy to his executors even as he is dying for his resistance to a violent empire. God calls us to bring about justice by not committing violence at all, by proclaiming release to the captives and letting the oppressed go free. As Jesus began this ministry of reconciliatory justice, may we, as Christ’s body in the world, continue it.

Yes, let righteousness and peace kiss each other! Yes, let it be so!

Scripture: Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 (NRSV)

Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.

²You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah

⁸Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.

⁹Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.

¹⁰Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

¹¹Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.

¹²The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

¹³Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.