Today at church, on this "Celebrate Hispanics" Sunday, the sermon was entitled "Social Justice". It seemed odd at first as Jimmy (our pastor) began the sermon by saying that in a recent survey of the church, the majority of the people wanted to hear more about social justice issues. The strangeness to me was due to the fact that it seems as if most sermons touch on social justice in some way.

Anyways, so Jimmy spent the morning discussing social justice, holistic missions, and the like. At the end of the sermon, we broke into discussion groups and went over a sampling of "social justice issues". While in the groups, we talked about which ones meant the most to us at this time in our lives. The list was quite extensive, to say the least. On it were 35 issues, that covered hunger, racism, genocide, war, medical ethics, health care, disease, economics, homelessness, environmental issues, education, domestic violence, the prison system, etc.

At first, we were a bit frustrated because we were having trouble narrowing down the list to 2-3 issues that meant most to us. Jimmy then comforted us by saying that the beautiful thing is that even though as Christ-followers we'll really only be interested in and able to be involved with a few of the items on the list, the church as a whole is able (or should be able) to tackle the whole of the list. Just as in 1 Corinthians, when Paul talks of the one body having many parts, we should all take up concern for the poor and oppressed in the way that God has gifted us. Not everyone can work to wipe out homelessness, and not everyone can work to rid the word of genocide. But, if every follower were to seek justice in the area that they can best serve, then perhaps the Church would be getting somewhere.


Now, to be getting somewhere myself...