Restoring Justice

Restoring Justice

The story of God's intervention into history, which we call Christmas, has a lot to do with restoring justice. There are many places where people are struggling under unjust conditions and living in the midst of conflict and poverty - we follow some of them in the news daily.   

Recently I have been hearing stories of good news and change from friends in Myanmar,  India, and reports of the good work of some of the non-profit charitable organizations we support.  Here is a story from Guatemala that I recorded in my journal several years ago.  Restoring justice is often a long and arduous, though worthwhile, process.

October 7, 2004, Cotzal, Guatemala

I am in one of the three towns that define the points of the Ixil triangle, an area with a dense concentration of Ixil people – one of the many ethnic groups that are descendents of the Mayan civilization of Mexico and Central America. I came here to witness a celebration of the restoration of justice. Tomorrow there will be a solemn ceremony to officially and joyfully dispense titles of land ownership to 30 Ixil families in the village of Xetze. These families have been laboring on this land and building a new community for over twelve years, and now they have achieved a great thing – full payment of their loans that Agros had given them.

This is an area that was heavily conflicted and repressed during the long civil war that raged for almost 40 years in Guatemala. The stories the Ixil tell of those terror-filled days over twenty years ago are now familiar to me. The most consistent story line is that some of the people had joined the revolutionaries but most had tried to stay out of the way of the violence.  There are stories of the Army swooping in, burning villages, slaughtering or stealing livestock and killing people – in an effort to deny the guerrillas any sanctuary.  Caught in the cross fires of the civil war the Ixiles had to make choices; flee into the surrounding mountains, find refuge in the towns and cities or make the trek to Southern Mexico and become refugees in another country. 

  

It is story of oppressors and oppressed; of the powerful and the weak. It is so much a part of human history going back hundreds of years – even to the time of the oppression of the people at the time Jesus was born and walked on this earth. 

What we witness now is a narrative of a people coming back to their roots, rebuilding homes and having the land restored to them. This is an inspiring thing we are seeing today - God’s people, both from here and those of us from a foreign place, joining together and symbolically restoring justice. This is a picture of justice; of God stretching out God’s hand against the anger and injustice of the foes of these people as the Psalmist wrote in a different though similar setting and time. 

There were many on both sides of this conflict who believed in the same God; those who thought they were totally right to take up the armed struggle and cause. How can it be that the same reality is seen and interpreted completely differently from two divergent perceptions? Both sides were willing to kill and destroy. Those in power did it to preserve a way of life and an economic and political system and maintain order. The revolutionaries saw it as a fight to throw off oppressors be means of force.

How this echoes down through the ages.  How aggressive and self-righteous we humans are – willing to sacrifice the lives of others and ourselves for a “righteous cause”-  now liberty, then justice, religion, oil, power, or just a way of life. Or so we try to convince ourselves. So, Lord, with your right hand, save us!

October 8,

Yesterday was a happy and celebratory time – seeing land titles issued to the people of Xetze and El Paraiso! How good to see people working together in harmony, with pride of accomplishment and a sense of having overcome hardship. 

I read from Psalm 10 this morning and thought about the marks of the presence of God – love, persistent hope and an unshakable faith. Certainly we must add reconciliation and justice as well as the commitment of people to work for the common good.  Within these communities there are now both the formerly oppressed as well as some of the former oppressors living as neighbors.

The women in El Paraiso are impressive as they work together on the land - earned through hard labor. They have had infinitely more burdens to bear than I have; yet we share a common humanity.  We have the same feelings, hopes, prayers and deep desires for our families, children and grandchildren. 

Reflection

The community leaders and Agros staff with whom I worked during those years had names like Bernardo, Juan Zedillo, Maria, Minor, Edna, Mario, Rafa and Helen. None of them ever went to an international conference on peace and justice but they worked every day in those isolated communities to help bring about the Kingdom that Jesus talked about.  The people in the Ixil communities were those who Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of liberation theology, called the little people, the same people Jesus walked among during his short time on earth.    

The Son of God was born into a little people, a nation of little importance by comparison with the great powers of that time. Furthermore, he took flesh among the poor in a marginal area – namely Galilee; he lived with the poor and emerged from among them to inaugurate a kingdom of love and justice. Gustavo Gutierrez, from The God of Life, Orbis, 1991

• Where do you see signs of hope and justice being restored today in your community, country or the wider world?