Dear All,.
Last month I was privileged to listen to Bishop Mary’s address on Justice and Trust. Such was the calibre of her words , I felt it needed a larger audience. Hence, with her permission, I produce it here for your thought processes!
Happy reading and contemplation. Heather.

17th May 2025, Partners in World Mission day conference
Isaiah 58.1-12; Luke 19.1-10
What does justice look like?
Over the course of this rich day, I’ve been asking myself a question: ‘What does justice look like?’ ‘What does justice look like?’ Perhaps, after a day full of profound, challenging, imaginative words, you might like to sit in silence with that question for a few moments. ‘What does justice look like?”—
Does justice look like the settlement at the end of the First World War, when Germany was so humiliated by the Allies, so impoverished, that what was meant to end conflict provided fertile ground for the rise of Hitler’s evil ideology? I don’t think so. Or does justice look like the broken promises Britain made to India during the Second World War, holding out and then withdrawing the promise of independence in return for so many brave Indian soldiers who fought and died with Britain. Of course not. Or does justice look like paying reparation to plantation owners but not to those who had been held in slavery? That’s not a justice I recognise.
What does justice look like? It might well look like speaking for the women forced too early into the grave in Kimberley and Kuraman, or advocating for the richest version of reparation in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands – reparation of mind and body as well as finances - or prophetically modelling in the church a radical inclusion of people of all castes in Nandyal. God, your kingdom come, your will be done.
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In our Gospel reading from Luke we trace three contrasting answers to our question, ‘What does justice look like?,’ answers suggested by the actions and attitudes of the people of Jericho, by Jesus and Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus is chief tax collector to Jericho. He is, then, a collaborator with the occupying power, someone who legitimises the enemy regime, denies Israel’s nationhood and makes poor people even poorer. More than this, he himself hints that he has taken even more than he should have done; that he’s a cheat and a thief beyond anything the Romans demand of him (Luke 19.8). No-one disputes that he is, as the people of Jericho point out, ‘a sinner’ (19.7).
So what does justice look like for Zacchaeus?
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For the people of Jericho it looks like exclusion. Luke tells us that, in order to catch a glimpse of Jesus, Zacchaeus climbs a tree because ‘he was short in stature’ (19.3). But that’s not the full story, is it? I’m sure that children were put in the front of the crowd that day so that they could see Jesus. I imagine that toddlers were put on their Dad’s shoulders, that with a bit of shuffling people made way for each other.
Not so for Zacchaeus. Is it that people deliberately form a wall in front of him, shutting down Zacchaeus’ view, seeking to bar his way even from the kingdom of heaven? The people of Jericho are powerless to stop Zacchaeus, backed as he is by the power of an empire, but they can live as if he doesn’t exist. They can exclude him. For them, this is some kind of justice.
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What does justice for Zacchaeus look like to Jesus? – just the opposite to how it looks to the people of Jericho. To Jesus, justice looks like inclusion. Before that, actually, justice looks like – well, it looks like looking. Luke 19.5 ‘Jesus looked up.’ As some of us were pondering in the workshop I led earlier, as for others, so for Jesus, perhaps, the work of justice begins, at least, by making visible; by bringing someone or something into the light that they might be seen. ‘Jesus looked up.’
Seeing Zacchaeus, Jesus includes him, draws him into society, into community. ‘I must stay at your house today’ (19.5). For Jesus, justice looks like inclusion, like the work of a gathered people, like integration.
As some of you might know, before I was ordained I worked in the Prison Service for ten years as a Prison Officer and latterly as a prison governor. My experience bears out this understanding of inclusion as a factor in justice, in the richest sense of justice. After the courts had tried someone, sent them to prison; once the prisoner had engaged in the education and rehabilitation the prison had to offer – what, in the end, made the greatest difference to their behaviour on release? It wasn’t, you may be unsurprised to learn, their Probation Officer, if they were lucky enough to be allocated one, or the qualifications they’d gained in custody. No, what led to prisoners leading lives of justice on release was a community that would welcome them, a family that would embrace them once again.
Inclusion is key to justice. Nothing changes when we separate, fall back into our tribes, shut out the voice of the disturbing other. No, reconciliation is borne of complex storytelling and courageous listening. Stories need to be attended to before justice can come. Attention must be paid.
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Thirdly, for Zacchaeus justice looks like extravagant generosity. Having been included by Jesus, Zacchaeus is transformed. ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything I will pay them back four times as much’ (19.8). Having experienced generosity, Zacchaeus himself is open-handed in response. Without being told to do so, his every impulse is to over-compensate. He has been given so much in his restoration, there is nothing that he will hold back.
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When a crime is committed, when someone is terribly abused by another, when a person’s right to live safely is disregarded, then justice is about expressing society’s condemnation of the wrong that has been done, about keeping society safe from further harm, about signalling the absolute importance of the victim or survivor and committing to accompany them on the long journey towards healing. Whatever else might follow, nothing can compromise these absolute priorities. In the past, the Church has got this wrong. We repent.
In other disputes, though, justice is more mediated, more negotiated. In our Gospel reading we traced three different answers to the question ‘What does justice look like?’ We noted the multiplicity of answers, not to privilege one over another but to give proper attention to each. For in complex cases of dispute there will never be the peace and settlement that comes from a feeling that justice has been done, when only one side feels that they have been given what they need, that they have been properly attended to.
We need not, then, dismiss too quickly the version of justice set out by the people of Jericho. They have been cheated. They’re angry. Their anger is only exacerbated by Jesus’ inclusion of Zacchaeus: ‘All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner”’ (19.7). You know, I don’t blame them. They’ve been badly wronged. How is it that the perpetrator gets preferential treatment?
What we don’t know, what Luke doesn’t tell us this, is whether they find justice in Zacchaeus’ compensation scheme. Gradually, do they make space for him on the crowded streets of Jericho? Do people catch his eye as they pass him on the street? Share a pint with him? I hope so.
It is the same with some of the urgent, painful conflicts in the world today. Justice for one side only may not feel like justice at all.
One of the highlights of my time at Coventry Cathedral as Canon for Arts and Reconciliation was hosting an evening with a Palestinian Christian and a Jewish woman. Both in their twenties, both from Bethlehem, they spoke of the conflict in Israel/ Palestine each from their own perspective. What was justice for the Palestinian woman, was not justice for the Jewish woman. Peace, I fear, will not come until a way is found for each to be accommodated in that land that we call holy but feels so far from it.
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This kind of justice - that feels like settlement to every perspective in a conflict - is rarely secured by humanity. More often we are left feeling that there are winners and losers. All too often those who see themselves on the losing side rise up again in reprisal and so it begins again. No, a fully just settlement to humanity’s conflicts might be reliant on the intervention of God who, Isaiah tells us, will draw the nations of the world to Godself, who will teach them, arbitrate between them, lead them to beat their swords into ploughshares, to take war off the curriculum (Isaiah 2.1-4). God, O that you would rend the heavens and come down and secure true, rich justice for the wronged, unlimited freedom for the oppressed, everlasting hope for the despairing. O that you would rend the heavens and come down (Isaiah 64.1).
But falling back on God, depending on God for justice, doesn’t excuse us now from working for it, fighting for it. Far from it. No, we worship God now, we were reminded in our first reading, when we do what we can, where we can, for justice; when we ‘undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke’; when we ‘share our bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our houses, when we see the naked to cover them’ (Isaiah 58.6-7). This is true worship, God says, and through it we allow people to glimpse a deeper, richer, more comprehensive justice; the justice that one day God will establish over all the earth.
Sisters and brothers. Remember to look up after the practice of Jesus who has looked up to notice us. Look up and look for the one who has been excluded and make them visible; seek to include them. Where you are caught up in conflict, commit to telling your own story with richness and complexity, and to listen to your enemy’s story with courage. Dare if you can, if it is safe for you to do so, to work out what a shared justice might look like.
Amen.