Isaiah 1:11-17; Romans 13:1-7
Let me start with a question: for whom is justice to be carried out?
One answer could be seen in the title of today’s service: Matins for His Majesty’s Courts of Justice. His Majesty’s Courts. The King is the authority in whose name and under whose coat of arms courts meet and dispense justice. The King gives authority to others in part so that they may, in words from the Book of Common Prayer, ‘truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice and to the maintenance of thy true religion and virtue.’
The historic office of High Sheriff bears witness to this relationship between authority, justice and law and order. As we read in words from this year’s High Sherrif, the office had in years past considerable law enforcement powers, undertaken in the name and on behalf of the Sovereign, whose personal appointment they were. The High Sheriff was responsible for maintaining the King’s peace – and could call on extensive powers so to do. Nowadays some of these powers rest with the courts who are required to take steps to maintain law and order – as was the case after the riots of last summer, most locally in Sunderland.
Our second reading this morning, from the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in first-century Rome, would seem to support the idea that justice is something to be exercised by and for those in authority. The apostle writes, ‘Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.’ There is even a nod to the High Sheriff’s uniform when he writes, ‘the authority does not bear the sword in vain!’.
The view that justice is something simply undertaken by those in authority to protect law and order, and thereby the status quo, is one that seems increasingly attractive not only to totalitarian regimes but also administrations of a populist hue where leaders seek to project an image of all-encompassing power. Justice is in their eyes there to serve the needs of those in charge, those with power, however it has been acquired.
Such a narrow view of justice, however, is challenged not only by a more careful reading of our second lesson but also by passages elsewhere in scripture, including our first lesson from the prophet Isaiah. For as in Romans we read that authority is something instituted by, and therefore accountable to, God, so in the passage from Isaiah we actually see this accountability taking place. Isaiah brings the word of the LORD to the civic and religious leaders of the 8th century BC – and back then they were largely the same people – and it is a word of judgement. ‘I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity’, is the divine word of accountability. ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.’ Here are those in authority being held to account. Those used to doing the judging are themselves being judged – and told to choose another path.
The path of justice they are called to pursue is not about preserving the status quo or maintaining law and order but rather about caring for those with the smallest voice and the least agency in the ancient world: the oppressed, the orphan and widow. Justice, therefore, is about attending to those with least power, to those who do not have the means to enforce it for themselves.
One of the enduring legacies of Magna Carta, which we at Durham Cathedral are celebrating in our Magna Carta and the North exhibition this summer, is that justice is to be available not simply to those with existing power. ‘To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.’ This is the outworking of what Isaiah called for centuries before, and it is a call that is seen in justice exercised today.
It is seen when the rights of the asylum seeker are maintained in the face of a society which seems sometimes to want to look the other way.
It is seen when the voices of postmasters and postmistresses are heard and their cause upheld against a business – publicly owned we must say - that did not want to admit the truth.
It is seen when those who have the least going for them have the chance to be heard.
When I was a vicar I got to know a retired judge who had sat in the Family Court. What I remember most was his recounting to me what he described as the best accolade he ever received. Not from a judicial peer or a person of similar dignity but from a woman who had appeared before him more than once. ‘That Judge Main’, she had said, ‘he listens.’
Now I know that the funding and capacity challenges within our courts and prison service are such that implementing the high ideals of equal access to justice is demanding to achieve, but that does not take away from its priority nor the support and prayers merited by those who work in this area, many of whom are among us today.
So we pray today for His Majesty’s Courts of Justice, and with them the High Sheriff and all those involved in supporting the administration of justice. As we do so we are invited to recall the distinctive but sometimes overlooked contribution that the Christian faith makes to an understanding of justice. Yes, they are His Majesty’s Courts of Justice but the Sovereign himself, and all who are put in authority under him, are themselves accountable to God in whom there is no partiality. God, whose compassion and mercy is seen so fully in Jesus Christ, is the one before whose judgement seat we will appear, and that future reality is to have a bearing on how all of us with power exercise authority in the present.
Justice, therefore, is not simply for the maintenance of law and order, as if the needs of those in authority were paramount. Justice is also about recognising the dignity and rights of each person made in the image of God, including those whose voices are easily silenced. Such a justice rightly reflects the God who, in the words the anthem which follows, comes ‘with righteousness to judge the world and the people with his truth.’ Amen.