In today's reading from Isaiah we hear the encouraging and hope-filled words of the promises of salvation. They are words that describe an experience of divine justice. God himself comes to us, we are told, with vindication and recompense. God enters the world of human experience in order to make right everything that has gone wrong and to establish fairness, truth, and righteousness throughout the world.
Thus, Isaiah announces the world-shaking change to be brought about through the justice of God being established on earth. However, it can't stop there—God asks more. We must ask where our own blindness lies, where we can't hear and where we are unable to proclaim the good news and justice of God.
I think it does us some good to step back and consider the overall picture because in all of this talk of justice and vindication there is an implicit response demanded on our part. What are we to do, and what should our habitual attitude be concerning life in a world made entirely new by the plans of God? Let's see how the scripture today helps us.
In both the first reading and the gospel, disability plays a pivotal role in illustrating the manifestation of God's justice. It may help us in understanding to bear in mind that for long millennia—for thousands of years—people held a punishment concept of disease. We can see it coming through in both the Isaiah reading and in the gospel. Disease and disability were thought to be the result of sin. If someone had a disability, say blindness, deafness—or perhaps things that weren't understood at all in those days—barely even now—things such as autism or intellectual disability, it was believed that they, or even a parent or ancestor, had sinned and that the disease or disability was a consequence of that sin. Disease and disability were believed to be punishment for sins that had been committed.
I'd like to think that we've moved beyond such ways of thinking, but have we really? It wasn't all that long ago that I remember there being stories in the news media of certain religious groups claiming that the AIDS epidemic was God's punishment against people who engage in intravenous drug use or in homosexual activity—never mind the innocent children born with AIDS. I suppose people with that mindset would say that it was their parents' sin—God forbid! The point is that the punishment concept is, in fact, still with us and it lurks in insidious ways in attitudes, for example, that see health care as a privilege reserved for those with enough money—or the right insurance—to pay for it rather than as a basic human right no different from the right to have food and water. The punishment concept also reveals itself in the way that we tend to set people with disabilities—and other differences—apart.
In a view that sees sin as having been forgiven, in one that sees the price of all sin as having been paid, it becomes somewhat more difficult to continue to understand disease and disability in terms of punishment or as the result of sin. In the justice of God a radical equalization has occurred and from that equalization a new imperative emerges for humanity. It is the "law of love." St. James, who in today's Epistle tells us to show no partiality, goes on to say that if you really fulfill the law you will love your neighbor as yourself.
The real lesson of justice for us doesn't really have as much to do with curing disease, or with the eradication of a particular disability, as it does with God's telling us that we shouldn't let those things matter when it comes to accepting all people as human beings on equal footing with ourselves and everyone else. In the same way that we are not to show partiality to the rich over the poor, we also are not to show partiality based on disease and disability—or anything else that society uses to set people apart. The true healing, the cure, takes place in our own hearts when we reach out to embrace those who are different and accept them as equal human beings to ourselves.
The Gospel story reveals to us where the source of justice lies. In the story the people bring a man to Jesus who can't hear or speak. They beg Jesus to heal the man—to take his differences away—but how is he so different from those who bring him? Jesus puts his finger in the fellow's ear then touches his tongue with a little spit and then everyone is able to see that the man they brought for healing is really not a bit different from anyone else. Where did the greater healing occur? In the deaf man or in those who brought him to be healed? Establishing God's justice on earth does not mean doing away with all diseases and disabilities, all differences, so that we have nothing to be prejudiced against, it means eliminating the prejudice itself so that we truly can love one another.
The passage from Isaiah today concludes with a description of a parched, arid land that suddenly bursts forth with streams, rivers, pools and springs of water. It is a metaphor that we can easily relate to here in our drought stricken central Texas. With every passing shower—no matter how small—we give thanks and see the goodness of God. Justice is like relief from a long drought. It takes the heart of the human race, long dry from the absence of communion with God, and saturates it with the living water of Jesus who makes God available to our world and who levels the field for all humanity regardless of seeming inequalities that we have perpetuated.
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