29th Sunday 2022
Exodus 17: 8-13; 2Tim 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8
“He will see justice done to them, and done speedily.”
Excuse me, Lord, but are you sure about that? You see, there seem to be so many people who don’t receive justice, or, if they do, it takes a long time.
I am thinking first of people who were abused as children. Take the pupils in the indigenous schools in North America as an example. They didn’t receive justice, did they, at least, not in their lifetime? Some justice is being done now, but most of the victims are dead. Presumably they have justice in heaven, buy would you really call that speedy?
Then there are the adults who have survived childhood sexual abuse. How many of them are still suffering psychologically? They say that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” but that doesn’t appear to be true for them. Many of the perpetrators are being punished now, decades after the events, but that seems to me to be very much delayed as an instance of justice—and how far does it really help the victims? I know someone who had to attend her father’s funeral, and listen to his praises being sung, while she was bearing the inner wounds of a childhood in which he had sexually abused her. Was there justice there, or must she too wait for eternity?
Also, there is what might be called the other side of the coin. You don’t need me to remind you of the police officer, a good friend of yours, whose work was based on abuse cases, and who commented ruefully “It is the one case where you are guilty until proven innocent, and juries cannot be trusted”.
Of course you and I know how true that last remark is. Many people are familiar with the case of Cardinal Pell, who was twice convicted by juries, even though it was physically impossible for him to have committed the alleged offences, a fact finally accepted by the Australian Supreme Court, who tore to shreds the behaviour of the lower courts. In the end, the cardinal received justice, but only after serving a long time in jail, with all the accompanying opprobrium.
Nor do we have to go Down Under to find such cases. You and I know of at least two priests in this country who also were imprisoned for offences which it was impossible for them to have committed. In the one case, the judge told the jury three times that, if it was one person’s word against another, they must acquit, but they ignored his instructions: in the other, as you will recall, the prosecution did not challenge the evidence of impossibility, but the jury convicted and an innocent man died in jail.
What about the Jews, the original chosen people, and all that they have suffered through the ages, reaching its nadir in the Holocaust, but not ending there? Did the Nuremberg trials bring them justice? And now, some of their descendants, in the form of the State of Israel, are acting unjustly towards the Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian.
I suppose that we have to seek an answer to all these contradictions in what happened to you. You were denied justice. You received a mockery of a trial, and underwent dreadful physical and psychological abuse, before being subjected to a brutal execution. You were vindicated and recompensed in your resurrection; and I suppose that we must look for a similar vindication, a similar recompense, for all who suffer unjustly; but, if I may say so, one might have hoped for justice in this life. And when you ask whether, on your return, you will find any faith on earth, please excuse me for suggesting that these delays in justice have contributed to the loss of faith for so many.
