Editor’s Note: The
following was written for address to the 2022 MFSA (Methodist Federation for
Social Action, Iowa Chapter) Peace and Justice Rally at the United Methodist
Church, Iowa Conference, in West Des Moines at the Rec Plex, Saturday, June 4. Rev. Joshua Steward spoke on justice, one of
the components of the rally. The following
is a transcript of what Steward said.
By Rev. Joshua Steward,
Reprinted with permission.
We live in a world full of injustice. I lament that the Supreme Court chooses partisanship over precedent.
I lament that mass shootings are too often met with silence or platitudes. I lament that Stand Your Ground laws are too often used to protect killers who were not defending themselves. I lament that we are told to accept a simple story, that inflation is temporary and is caused by supply chain issues. Meanwhile, both profits for big business and income inequality continue growing at a faster rate than wages. I lament that my United Methodist Church can no longer agree on what it means to be Wesleyan or biblical.Still, I take comfort in the words of Harry F. Ward, a
co-founder of MFSA’s (Methodist Federation for Social Action) predecessor body,
the MFSS (Methodist Federation for Social Service), who said “In the struggle
for justice, there is no final victory, only the winning that is never really
won, mostly the losing that is never really lost.” African American
abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass put the quest for justice
this way: “In the struggle for justice, the only reward is the opportunity to
be in the struggle.” I thank each of you for being in the struggle together
today. I acknowledge all the griefs and laments you bring with you today. I commend
you for all the work of justice and liberation you are doing.
For Methodism’s Founder John Wesley, being in the struggle for
justice meant that grace enables you to seek a heart habitually full of love
for God and neighbor. Perfect love is possible.
This was not sentimentality for Wesley. He ministered with
coal miners, the imprisoned, and the sick, those hit hardest by life. He said
the poor do not have clothes to wear or food to eat because the rich “impiously,
unjustly, and cruelly” take what God has given for the poor. To have more than
you needed is to rob the poor. Wesley preached
against the monopolization of farms. He opposed slavery on the grounds that all
people had natural rights.
You see, grace enables love of neighbor, love of neighbor compels
good works, and good works are signs of love perfected. Only when injustice and
oppression end, can all people know that they are persons of sacred worth,
children of God, entitled to freedom from want and fear, and set free to love
God with their whole heart and to love their neighbor as themselves.
Following Social Gospelers like Walter Rauschenbusch, the
first Methodist Social Creed (1908) called for such things as the end of
sweatshops; the least amount of work with work for all; enough leisure for all;
living wages in every industry; and the recognition of the Golden Rule and the
mind of Christ as the supreme laws of society and the remedy of all social
ills. In response to capitalism's undemocratic control, enormous waste, and concentration
of wealth that led to the Depression, the 1932 Methodist Episcopal General Conference
declared their present industrial order “unchristian,” “unethical,” “and
anti-social.”
These two pieces of Methodist history remind us that to
believe in justice, is to trust that God has set a plumbline among the people, and
in every age, IN EVERY AGE, we are called to “do justice, love kindness, and
walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8, NRSV). Again, I lift up all the griefs and
laments you bring with you that might be unspoken today; and I thank you for
all the ways you are in the struggle working for justice and liberation.
Rev. Joshua Steward is pastor at the Dallas Center UMC. Additionally, he serves on the Iowa Peace Network
Joint Oversight Committee (IPN board).
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