O Eastern Star, Splendor of Eternal Light

O Eastern Star, Splendor of Eternal Light,
And Sun of Justice: Come—
And illumine those in darkness sitting,
Under the shadow of death.

God’s justice is tricky for some folks…When they think of God’s justice, they think along the lines of the justice that John the Baptist tells us about in Matthew 3:

But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” -Matthew 3:7-12

For many, God’s justice is about the Final Judgment, where God will decide who gets into heaven and who’s thrown into the eternal, “unquenchable fire” of hell. It’s an image that scares folks—because it’s meant to scare them. It’s meant to scare folks into repenting and leading a good life. Sadly, when we speak of God’s justice, we’re not primarily speaking about that moment when some will be cast into the lake of fire and others won’t. That’s only part of it—and a minor part of it at that!

Christ embodies God’s justice fully and that’s good news for us. It’s good news for us because we know, no matter who we are, that we can’t live up to the glory that God has desired for us since before the dawn of creation. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but because of God’s lovingkindness, we are made right with God through Christ on the cross—through no goodness of our own.

This justice, this righteousness that God shows us in Christ is a backward kind of justice than the world teaches us. It’s a justice that shines with divine clarity, with divine love, with divine mercy. It embodies the full splendor of deity, as the first light of dawn pierces the darkest hours of the morning. It’s a justice that demands the repentance of all, a justice that will illumine before the world all arrogance and evil and demand a conversion.

God’s justice is more than merely God’s decree on us about our lives lived—rather, God’s justice is about reconciling us to the original order of things, about restoring us to communion with each other and with God, about bringing us into the fullness of life from out of the haunts of death.

O Eastern Star, Splendor of Eternal Light,
And Sun of Justice: Come—
And illumine those in darkness sitting,
Under the shadow of death.

Read:
Malachi 4
Romans 3:19-21

-DS