Many of us think being a Christian means that we focus on our own relationship with God and leading a happy life.  That is crucial.  Without that relationship with God, our lives are powerless.  Yet, the problem is many of us stop there.  We have narrowed God’s heart to something very small: me, myself and I, and my family.  This sermon is about the reality that God’s heart is bigger and broader than that.  It is about God’s heart for justice.

Jeremiah 22:1-17 tells us four things:

• God’s heart for those who experience injustice. God calls his people to seek justice for the oppressed, immigrants, orphans, widows, poor and needy, and God says: “Is that not what it means to know me?” We are called to both a relationship with God and social justice.  It is both/and.
• Proximity to those experiencing injustice. We have to get close to places where there are injustice and the people who are experiencing injustice.
• Changing the narratives that justify oppression. To defend the cause of the oppressed means to change the narratives that is underneath every oppression. To change the narrative means to engage in three layers of repentance: personal, communal/national, and systemic.

Prophetically speaking out.  We must speak truth in love to a world needing to hear it.  The church must be the prophetic voice of conscience for the world.  We need to speak out and change the narratives that justify injustice; we need to critique old systems of oppression and present a new vision of the Kingdom of God.  That’s our call.