So I joined a new club this week: the sit-in-an uncomfortable-little-government-room-all-day club, a.k.a., JURY DUTY. However, for someone without a shred of good luck, the court system gods smiled at me and I was not selected.
When I first arrived to the fourth floor of the New Hanover County judicial building, I immediately spotted a parishioner. (I had a feeling that I would see someone I knew, as Wilmington is not a big place). My first thought was, ‘Dammit. I had planned on reading/planning for the Lenten service I am leading on Wednesday. Now I’ll have to actually talk with someone.’ In my mind I was thinking that the experience would be like an airport: waiting, showing someone your ticket, taking a seat, more waiting, watching an instructional/safety video, and all while having personal space of not having to really interact much because we’re all just a little miserable. I wasn’t too far off in my assumptions. Now here was this person who threw a monkey wrench in it all.
And I am so thankful for her.
We talked and swapped stories. We laughed and commiserated at the inconvenience of the whole thing. The jury duty experience was not enjoyable by any means but she did make it infinitely better. She ended up getting selected but she carried a smile and was much more positive than I would have been.
Aaaahh the 90’s. What happened to Pauly Shore? Anyone know?
The whole thing got me thinking about why I was so uncomfortable with jury duty. As a Christian, as a follower of Christ, as someone inclined to forgive before judging others, I am bugged by whole idea of retributive justice – which is what jurors are there to decide: what is a just punishment for a crime? How much should so-and-so pay so-and-so for the hurt caused?
Are legal justice and Christian justice at odds? Legal justice focuses on retribution and is devoid of love. Retributive justice is not devoid of virtue, though, as one could argue that a penal sentence of time in prison for a crime serves the public good through removing that person from society. We still call prisons “correctional facilities” in the sense that we hope a person who spends time in one of these places is corrected and released back to society to contribute in positive ways.
Many Christians fall into this worldview, sadly, based on a legalistic reading of scripture. They see God as solely wrathful and that we, being sinful, deserve punishment and hell. Jesus is still in the picture but in a distorted way. For example, the medieval church’s view of merit-based salvation posits that good works can gain you salvation. Again, this is a view of divine justice as retributive, albeit divorced of love. Conversely, during this Lenten season we still have our sights on Easter, on the end and it is from within the midst of this sight we recognize our own sinfulness and need for forgiveness. In legal justice that sight is lost because love (in the form of charity, almsgiving, forgiveness, and restoration) became a merit or means to an end rather than a quality of the end itself.
My point is this: the Christian ethic of justice should never be separated from love. Where reciprocity in the legal model meant retribution, in the Christian model it means restore. Jesus came to restore. He came to show that God’s justice is a restoration of a broken relationship. We are restored to relationship with the Father through an act of love. Romans 5 says that “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
I would have been a terrible juror. The Christian model bucks the legal model in that we practice love in the form of forgiveness because we have been forgiven. Where the legal model would punish in retribution, Christians forgive. 2 Corinthians 5 says:
“if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The Christian narrative of following Jesus, the restorer, overwhelmingly points to loving and letting forgiveness be the justice that restores our broken relationships with each other, even in the face of injustice. This Lent and Easter, how can we continue that work of reconciliation and restoration begun at the cross and empty tomb?
The Rev. Deacon James Franklin is the assistant rector at St. James Episcopal Church, Wilmington, NC. He, his wife, and 13 month-old daughter moved to the area from Austin, TX where James was in seminary at Seminary of the Southwest.
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