6. Justice and Peace Are Not Just Platitudes

Question:       Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the

dignity of every human being?

Response:       I will, with God’s help.

True justice as a religious and spiritual ideal in Judeo-Christian scripture is grounded in ensuring that all people benefit from the same rights and privileges as others.

Peace, likewise, is a state of being where security and well-being reigns over all when all are fed, cared for, and able to be at ease, as the Prophet Isaiah described numerous times, including Isaiah 65:17-66:2. Real peace is intertwined with true justice for all people. It is therefore inseparable from true respect for the dignity and worth of every human—as our Baptismal Covenant has been leading us to this conclusion in our promises about how we treat our neighbors and even our enemies.

This means, that in most of the Episcopal Church, we acknowledge where we ourselves have failed historically to maintain this standard, as we seek to acknowledge injustices against African Americans, Native Americans, and other persons of color. It also means as individuals that we are called to thank God for the gift of diversity that makes all life possible. It means that we not only tolerate but welcome and affirm the dignity and worth of all people regardless of race, creed, sexual or gender orientation, national origin, ability or disability, language, culture, wealth, or status.

In our Baptismal Covenant with God, we disavow dehumanizing, stigmatizing, or scapegoating others, and instead affirm everyone’s full equality and belovedness before God and before the Church.

As our former Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry famously and repeatedly insisted, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” This is the basis of our faith in God as revealed in Jesus. And we uphold it with God’s help, in faithfulness.

Going Deeper:

One of the phrases you may hear especially in the Episcopal Church is “the communion of saints.” Most saints are not and were not perfect people— St. Peter was really impulsive; St. Paul had a tendency to humble brag; St. Nicholas once punched someone he thought was a heretic.

But saints are people who love God and in some way make Jesus visible and who inspire us to ty to embody what President Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

That’s why in the Episcopal calendar of saints, there are people included who have not been officially designated as saints in the way that requires miracles performed by their intercession. We celebrate people as saints including those who embodied the prophetic voice of speaking truth to power, which is usually not a way to become popular or the life and soul of the party.

One of saints added to the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a famous advocate for the full citizenship and freedom of all persons, regardless of race, ethnicity, or creed. His use of nonviolent protest was nonetheless often considered to be against the law, and he was arrested multiple times. King was especially gifted at clarifying, as when criticized by so-called “moderate” religious leaders in Alabama, what words like “peace” and justice” really mean.

Too often today, “justice” is taken to be a synonym for “punishment,” as in the phrase “bringing someone to justice,” or the concept of “vigilante justice.” Likewise, “peace” is too often used to describe when people have been cowed into not speaking up for what is right, or for denying not just the right but the obligation to protest when we see injustice, inequality, or other forms of oppression.

In a sermon entitled “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious,” Dr. King described peace that is obnoxious, or hypocritical and empty of meaning, because it prizes order and control over ensuring equality and liberty for all. Instead, Dr. King insisted, true peace is grounded in doing God’s will. True peace is grounded in positive good—as justice is, as well.

Justice is grounded in mercy, compassion, and respect.  Even when presented with wrong-doing, justice that rehabilitates is grounded in mercy and reconciliation wherever possible, rather than simply retribution. God’s justice also particularly is a state of society that uplifts the poor, frees the oppressed, and protects the marginalized, as Jesus’ mother Mary sang out in her song of triumph known as the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55, and as Jesus described in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12.

5. Serving Jesus by Serving Others

Question:       Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Response:      I will, with God’s help.

It can be easy to think you see Christ in the person sitting in a pew next to you. It can be easy to see the face of Christ in a person serving in worship, or standing at a food pantry distributing food or a warm meal.

But we are also challenged to see the face of Christ in the clients at the food pantry or at the soup kitchen. We are called to see the face of Christ in the refugee, in those fleeing death, chaos, and persecution in their homelands, in children orphaned or facing starvation due to war.

We are called to see the face of Christ in those the world considers outcast, in the exploited, the oppressed, in those who labor under the burdens of racism, sexism.

We are called to see the face of Christ in those of different faiths from us, and those with no faith at all. We are even called to love and pray for our enemies or those who hate us. These people are also our neighbors. We don’t have to be perfect, but we should never let the inability to be perfect get in the way of the chance to be good—with God’s help.

Going Deeper:

All persons means all persons. “Neighbors” is not shorthand for “people just like us,” as Jesus himself emphasized repeatedly. In fact Jesus frequently got criticized for hanging out with people others looked down on. In our Baptismal Covenant, we Episcopalians are called to commit to embodying the love of God that Jesus literally embodied in human form, however imperfectly.

Now there is a note that needs to be made here. There are some people who are coming from such a place of pain that they inflict pain on those around them. We are not called to be abused emotionally, physically, or spiritually when people are awash in their own pain. We can still love them—but we can love them from all the way across the room, or even from another building altogether.

A wise rabbi once remarked in a seminary class, “Love of neighbor begins with love of yourself. You love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. If you do not compassionately love yourself, you cannot love anyone else, not even God.”

4. Sharing God’s Light and Love With Others

Question:       Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Response:       I will, with God’s help.

Sharing the Good News of God in Christ is a part of that path of reconciliation and generosity that is at the heart of God’s relationship with us. It begins with the understanding that we are all interconnected by our common source in God’s creative activity in the world, and that we bear mutual obligations to each other to care for each other.

Sharing the Good News of God in Christ means sharing the peace you’ve found in the love, healing, and teaching of Christ with others.

Some wise person once said, “Preach the Gospel often; sometimes use words.” 

Sharing the Good News of Jesus can mean being brave enough, if someone asks you why you may be showing more evidence of kindness, patience, equanimity, perseverance, even in the face of difficulties, that you share as you can in the ways you have experienced the presence of God in transforming your life.

But your loudest testimony is often simply living a life of integrity, or attempted oneness, with Christ’s examples of generosity, healing, compassion, empathy, teaching, and meeting others where they are. It can be through living a life that centers building up good and seeing others as beloved of God.

Episcopalians have often been reserved. We are not prone to flashy displays of piety. But we must also share our testimony of God’s goodness in a world that can seem cruel and vengeful—even among our fellow Christians.

Going Deeper:

 “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

-- Madeleine L’Engle, celebrated author (and Episcopalian) who wrote the classic A Wrinkle in Time, correctly made this observation in her book Walking on Water.

Likewise, Anne Lamott, a popular writer of humorous novels and spiritual reflections Once famously said, “You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Sharing the Good News of Jesus starts from a place of positivity. It does not have to mean knocking on strangers’ doorbells, or standing shouting on streetcorners with a Bible in our hands or cornering people so that they can’t escape and telling them all the ways they are wrong, or sinful, or less-than. It doesn’t mean scaring people with images of a fiery eternity of torment. It also means, in the Episcopal Church, taking the Bible far too seriously and reverently than to take it literally or use it as a bludgeon to denigrate others.

Sometimes, sharing the Good News means reminding us all that the same God who has had mercy on us means also reminding us that God calls on us to likewise ground our actions in mercy; this reminder is especially important to those who hold power over others, as Episcopal Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde witnessed on January 21 of 2025 in a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral.