Stated Clerk urges conference attendees to ‘be grounded in Christ’s ministry of justice’
The Rev. Jihyun Oh reminds Young Adult Advocacy Conference participants to act with compassion and love
LANSING, Michigan — The Rev. Jihyun Oh gave a message Saturday at the Young Adult Advocacy Conference that served as a reminder that justice was a central part of Jesus’ ministry and should be a guiding force for Christians today.
There is a “whole movement of people who call themselves Christian” who say that God’s justice and the good things of life are only for a particular segment of people, said Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). To counter that, “we must talk about and act on and advocate for justice where there is injustice and negate that message as being something that comes from Jesus because it doesn't.”
Oh, who also serves as executive director of the Interim Unified Agency of the PC(USA), spoke those words during a morning worship service in Michigan at the “Jesus and Justice” conference, which has been held by the PC(USA)’s advocacy offices for the last three years to teach young adults to do social justice advocacy.
“I think it’s of vital importance that you continue to remind us in your local congregations, but also on the national level, that the voices of young people need to be heard,” PC(USA)’s advocacy director, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, told attendees gathered at First Presbyterian Church of Lansing for a day of worship, workshops and networking. “We are a church that, right now, is seeking new ways that we can engage with young people.”
Oh joined the conference fresh from a recent visit with PC(USA) partners and Young Adult Volunteers in South Korea. While in Michigan, she took part in a number of activities, including a joint conversation with the Rev. CeCe Armstong, Co-Moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024) of the PC(USA), that took place Saturday afternoon.
Greeting the audience during worship, Oh said, “It is really good to be here,” and referred to the conference as “an important event” that she wanted to be present for.
Moving into what she described as more of a meditation than a sermon, Oh read from Luke 4:16-30, a passage that harkens to a time when Jesus was at the beginning of his ministry and ready to declare that a new day had come.
In that passage, Jesus visits a synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and stands up to read a scroll containing words from the prophet Isaiah.
Jesus “unrolled the scroll and found the place where it’s written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
After rolling up the scroll as all eyes were on him, Jesus declared, “Today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” and the people were amazed at his gracious words, though they eventually became offended and drove him away.
Jesus’ goal had been to share a particular vision of his ministry that was directed not just for the people he’d grown up around but “anyone who has been bound and pressed down and treated as less than,” Oh said.
That includes “anyone who has felt powerless in the face of the rich and powerful, in the face of unjust economic and social systems, in the face of unjust health care systems” as well as “anyone who has been made to bow down, made to feel crazy, made to feel like they don't matter in society and to God,” Oh said.
Jesus’ reading of the words from Isaiah was a message of justice is everlasting. “It’s a reminder that God has always been about justice, and that the vision of the reign of God is a vision of justice yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Oh said. “God has been and God is, and God always will be about justice.”
And what does that kind of justice look like? It means “all needs are met,” Oh said. “Nobody is hungry, nobody is suffering because they can’t pay for care and healing. Nobody is jailed because they can’t pay a debt or pay a fine. There are fair scales and fair wages and ways for people to dig out from enormous economic hardship.”
Oh also explained what God’s justice is not. For example, in Jesus’ ministry, “religion isn’t used to keep people from wholeness.”
Jesus knew that “justice only for us and not for anyone else is perhaps vengeance, but not God’s justice,” Oh said. “Justice for us at the expense of ‘them’ is not God's justice.”
Oh went on to encourage conference participants to “act with humility and compassion,” remembering that “God’s justice, God’s love, is for everyone, and that we are called to love our enemies.”
She concluded by saying, “as we continue to think about how we engage in this world, how we engage in our words, in our actions and our advocacy, may we be grounded in Christ’s ministry of justice that was also grounded in love and compassion and to continue to live out a counter-cultural narrative that it is not just for specific people but for all people.”
Earlier in the worship service, attendees from various faiths had listened to the song “I Need You to Survive,” which stresses the importance of standing together and all being part of God’s body.
Michigan State University student and conference participant Sam Putt followed the song by saying, “We might be Presbyterian, we might be Lutheran, we might be, you know, whoever, but Jesus died for our sins no matter what. And like you just sang, across all denominations, Jesus is our need for survival. It’s incredibly important to remember that.”
Read a story about the opening day of the conference here.
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