Unjust Unjustice

Imagine two people coming into your meeting. One has a gold ring and fine clothes, while the other is poor, dressed in filthy rags. Then suppose that you were to take special notice of the one wearing fine clothes, saying, “Here’s an excellent place. Sit here.” But to the poor person you say, “Stand over there”; or, “Here, sit at my feet.” Wouldn’t you have shown favoritism among yourselves and become evil-minded judges? My dear brothers and sisters, listen! Hasn’t God chosen those who are poor by worldly standards to be rich in terms of faith? Hasn’t God chosen the poor as heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the wealthy make life difficult for you? Aren’t they the ones who drag you into court? (James 2:2-6)

I just got back from a cruise. Normally, cruises are my favorite kind of vacation, especially as a pastor. Parishioners will actually accept that you are not coming back to do their loved one’s funeral when you are on a ship in the middle of the ocean. And normally it has been a pretty stress free experience.

But not this time.

This time we were plagued from the beginning by misplaced transportation, failed networks, malfunctioning room keys, misheard requests, and then to cap things off, stolen property. Basic rule of thumb for a successful vacation: do not spend hours in line at guest services trying to get things rectified.

The theft was the big issue. It activated my overdeveloped sense of justice. It was like I was in 10 Commandments high gear. Do not steal!  For reals, people!  It, like all the 10 commandments, has unintended consequences.  Maybe when you steal something you think, “Well, they will just be out this swimsuit cover, and these sandals, and this Fitbit. They are on this cruise. They can afford to replace these things.”  You know what? All that is true. But there are other things that are harder to replace. Time spent not only in line at Guest Services but with three different security personnel. The indignity of having your own room searched to make sure you are not “mistaken” about your “lost” items. The violation of having something taken, which for me has been a consistent, recurring theme this year and triggered all kinds of emotional reactions.

And then there was the feeling of not being understood. There was very literally a language barrier at work. The first security guard was from Nepal. He and I and the Jamaican spa manager stood in the women’s locker room arguing about the fact that they could not open the lockers to see if I was just mistaken (apparently there are a lot of mistaken people on cruises) about which locker I put my stuff in.  And whether I was mistaken about actually locking the locker, even though I told them I tried three other lockers that did not work – why would I suddenly stop checking when I hit the fourth one? But I told them, standing there with the Fitbit app on my phone, that they did not need to search the lockers at all.  And then I pulled down to refresh my app, only to get a message that there was no device found.

So here I was, all psyched up to use my technology to find the thief and bring said perpetrator to justice!  We could walk the cruise and when my device is found, we have the thief! But the man from Nepal just shook his head. First he did not understand what I meant by a device that could be tracked.  Then, once I adequately explained all he had to do was walk me around the ship and we can find who took it, he said, “No. That is not our policies and procedures.”

I spent all week going around and around with people who insisted on their policies and procedures. And by the end of the week, frustrated by the bureaucracy, when I finally just asked for a refund on my spa expense, which was roughly equivalent to the cost of my items, and I was told one more time that this would violate their policies and procedures, I hit the roof. I started yelling. And I kept yelling. I yelled at people for the rest of the week. And to one of them, a manager, I yelled, “You should be empowered to do something about this! You should be empowered to make a decision that would rectify this situation!  The powers that be should let you make things right!”

And this man, a tall man from India, leaned forward, and whispered, “Listen, ma’am. Twelve years on this ship. Twelve years. I know,” and I felt it. I saw it in his eyes, he wanted to say, “You’re right. I should have that ability. I should be able to treat you like a human, with dignity and as an equal. Just like you should be able to treat me. We should be able to come to a reasonable agreement with one another.”

But instead he said, “I know… our policies and procedures. And I cannot do that, ma’am.”

I went insane.

I was wearing a t-shirt that said, “I love Jesus. But I cuss and drink a little.” Part of me was grateful for the honest declaration about where things were imminently headed. But part of me, part of me realized I had “Jesus” emblazoned across my chest and I was treating a fellow human being exactly how Jesus would not treat this human being.

And that was the thing. I knew who I needed to yell at. I knew I needed to yell at the people who put the policies and procedures in place. The people who probably never set foot on the cruise lines they own because they own their own private ships. I needed to yell at those people, whose pockets are lined by policies and procedures that keep justice from happening, that cause me to lose my stuff and my shit, and cause other people to have to stand there and lose their humanity because some entitled American tourist is pissed about her missing Fitbit.

The people I needed to yell at put the poor of the world between me and them. So I was yelling at the poor, many of whose eyes drifted away from mine as I got louder, going into their minds to some place where they were treated with dignity, which was not this space and certainly did not include being present with me.

And then the words of the prophets, and the words given above in James, burned into my heart. You know, like Scripture is supposed to do. Yes, Scripture is at times supposed to warm our hearts, and at other times it should give us heartburn. And then at times it should burn so brightly we are consumed, and I was caught in just such a blaze myself. I had sin that needed to burn off of me, but I was also caught in corporate sin that needed consumed by God’s holy fire.    

In a strange twist of the above passage, I was privileging those with privilege by not speaking with them. While the above passage talks about the flattery we offer the rich before us, ignoring those in rags around us, I instead gave all my attention to those in rags because I couldn’t even see the ones with the most privilege. But the attention I gave was a call to repentance, only it was a misdirected call, aimed at the wrong people. This passage in James, like much of the letter of James, points out that our words matter, and too often we misuse our words. We use them for harm instead of good. We use them to perpetuate broken systems instead of challenging them. I was absolutely guilty of that on my vacation. But I was not the only guilty one. The ones who deny the possibility of communication are also at fault. The ones who create language barriers.

I knew, even as I felt like a victim, that I was far closer to being a victimizer. I knew I had a life the people working on that ship were fighting to have for their families back home. And I was fighting to be as entitled as the people who make the policies and procedures.  And the people who make the policies and procedures do not care one whit about me except that if enough people like me get frustrated with their policies and procedures, then they won’t be able to afford as big a boat as they would like. But before that happens, people like the man from Nepal or the man from India will lose their jobs. 

I would not have justice on my vacation. But you know what else? I doled out a fair amount of unjustice. And yes, I know the word is injustice, but I don’t know, it seems better to call me out for being unjust. And to recognize that the only way to rectify this situation is the unmake the system. To undo. To unrest. To see that a lot of our problems are because the wealthy have put the courts in our way, in this case in the form of policies and procedures. They have built systems that protect them from having to engage with people as real human beings. To treat each person with respect and dignity. And then we all get caught in this vicious web. The poor are consumed by my misplaced anger. My soul takes a hit for perpetuating oppression. And the rich get farther and farther away from a relationship with us and with Jesus – that eye of the needle they need to squeeze through to reach God gets smaller and smaller.

I repent of my sin. I am sorry for yelling at the wrong people. But I won’t be sorry for yelling. We need to yell. We need to yell until the walls of Jericho come crashing down, and we all find ourselves on level ground, all equal in the eyes of God, and each other.  And all the language barriers are finally lifted, and we hear and know each other all as one people, one love.