Presented by Tiger Han
Good morning everyone!
My name is Tiger and I am an associate with Justice Together, and I am also part of the Disciples of Christ community at Hillside Christian Church. I think most of you probably have seen me and greeted me at some points, and I wanna start off by thanking you all for all the hospitality and inclusiveness here in this church.
I moved to Wichita because of this job with Justice Together, and today I would like to share a bit about myself, especially how this faith journey has guided and shaped me to the work I am doing today. I was born in China, came to America by myself when I was thirteen as an international student. Most of you probably know, Christianity is not a thing in China. Luckily, I went to a Christian school in San Diego California, and have become a Christian ever since. Throughout the years, I have done tons of mercy and charity works, outreaching to homeless, food pantries, all kinds of things. I have seen poverty, vulnerability, and I felt especially devastated when I helped those marginalized folks today, but what about tomorrow? In Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” Please take a guess what is the most important word in this verse? It is the word “and”, meaning that justice is as important as mercy and faithfulness, but often easily neglected. In Matthew 23:23: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
As followers of Christ, we do faithfulness well—we gather for sermon, worship, prayer, and study to encourage our walk with God, and to remind us to be faithful.
We also do mercy well—helping people in times of crisis, especially vulnerable individuals that are in need of help in actions like Family Promise, food pantry, shelters, etc.
But what about justice? Justice means addressing the root causes of problems to ensure fair treatment of all people, especially the poor, the widow, the orphan—the most vulnerable in our midst. Biblically, justice is holding accountable the King and other decision-making officials, nowadays it would be the Mayor, City Council, School Board, business leaders and others, making sure the fair treatment for all people.
And here’s the truth: individual people, even individual congregations, don’t have enough power to transform systems on our own. We need a powerful voice to speak to powerful systems.
That’s why we are part of Justice Together. We are building that voice—not just to provide charity, but to hold leaders accountable for fair and lasting solutions.
In Nehemiah 5:1-13, the Bible taught us how to do justice successfully. Nehemiah is Cupbearer of the Persian King, and he went back to his homeland, Jerusalem seeing people raise an outcry of injustice to him.
Because of drought, crops failed, and people were forced to borrow money to buy food and pay taxes. When the drought continued a second year and the people could not repay the loans, the money lenders took advantage of it: their fields, vineyards, orchards, even children were taken away to be slaves for the purpose of paying their debts.
Nehemiah was very angry when he heard those cries… and he thought it over. He had two choices at the moment. He could either do a mercy ministry by opening a food pantry or doing credit counseling, which he could temporarily get through this hardship in short period of time. Second choice is that he could hold the money lenders accountable for justice, fairness and righteousness. This was Nehemiah’s two choices. Nehemiah even with the status of the Cup Bearer to the King of Persia, knew he couldn’t do it alone: he needed more power from organized people.
Verse 7 of Chapter 5 tells us that he organized a “Great Assembly” of people and brought the money lenders before it. When the money lenders are pressed during the assembly, the money lenders agreed to restore everything they had taken from the people. As a result, people get everything back.
In order to do justice, Nehemiah sets a perfect example for us, which is to build our capacity to organize great assemblies here in Sedgwick county. We build our power by joining with other congregations who are also part of our bigger justice ministry, and together, we exercise our power to do justice by turning out thousands of people to a great Nehemiah Action Assembly each year to win justice.
Riverside Christian Church has a vision to turn out our average Worship attendance of 60 people to the Nehemiah Action each year. If 60 people attend worship services 52 times a year, we can certainly turn out that same number at least once a year for justice. We call that Vision “52/1”! More than just that, we will also be outreaching to our local community. In order to achieve the goal, we will organize our congregation into a justice ministry network. It is a formal network of relationships within the congregation.
Amen