Today's message deals with justice, but I'm not going to venture into the question of the proper punishment for Islamic terrorists. It's still not clear to me what justice for the murderers of over 5000 people looks like.

As a wise man once told me, if you're going to preach on whether sinners can get into heaven or not, don't start by talking about Adolf Hitler.

So let me begin with a much smaller horror. An act that was certainly evil, but not all over the nightly news.

Back in 1980, a man named Andre Allard was murdered. He was shot in the face and then dumped in a field outside Montreal. His killers were never found.

Andre's brother Pierre went to examine the frozen body because he wanted, he says, to see "the ugliness of evil." Pierre had been a chaplain in one of Canada's roughest prisons, and the whole experience nearly drove him out of the chaplaincy. He had been preaching about reconciliation and forgiveness, but all of a sudden he wanted something else.

He wanted revenge.

Raw, naked revenge.

It's easy to understand this. It's a natural reaction. And it's not considered to be a problem by people who are pushing these days for tougher justice -- longer jail sentences and work camps for young offenders, as well as capital punishment.

There are plenty of Christians who fall into this camp, and who point to the Bible as an authority for tough justice. If there is serious injury, says the Book of Exodus, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (21:23-25). "Life for life" -- that sounds like crystal-clear justification for capital punishment ... if not raw, naked revenge.

But Pierre Allard found a different foundation in the faith. One night, back on the job, he found himself alone in the prison chapel, looking at the cross. Looking at an ancient means of capital punishment.

"I started crying," he confesses. "It was a real healing. The feelings of revenge just melted away."

Pierre started to reflect on the true meaning of justice -- and decided that it MUST include both the victim and the offender. Justice is not only for victims; it is also for offenders. He discovered that within Christianity, you don't have the freedom to exclude anyone. Even if you become enemies, you're challenged to love your enemies. Jesus didn't call for revenge on his own killers -- instead, he said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).

This isn't "tougher justice," but it sure is tough. In fact, it may be the most difficult type of justice to achieve. But a growing number of people are trying to pull it off, including Pierre Allard, who now says that he would like to meet those who killed his brother and tell them: "I forgive you." (Bob Harvey, "Christians and Crime," Faith Today, September-October 2000, 30ff)

Revenge has been replaced. Replaced by reconciliation.

There's a new movement in the justice system called restorative justice. It is based on the idea that within Christianity, you don't have the freedom to exclude anyone. It offers the guilty an opportunity to be restored -- restored by showing repentance, making restitution for damage, restoring the relationship, and making a commitment to change their criminal ways.

The apostle Paul would probably approve. In fact, if there is any biblical character who benefited from restorative justice, it is Paul himself, who started his career as a violent anti-Christian. On the road to Damascus, he was "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1), having just approved of the killing of the deacon Stephen. A light from heaven caused him to fall to the ground, but he was not killed -- he was given a second chance. He converted and went on to serve the first-century church.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul recalls that "before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed" (3:23). Call this the "tougher justice" approach -- an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, following the divine law that serves as a "disciplinarian" for us. "But now that faith has come," he goes on to explain, "we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith" (vv. 25-26).

In Christ Jesus, we are all children of God, all baptized into one body. Jew and Greek. Slave and free. Male and female. Young and old. Able-bodied and disabled. Victim and offender.

All one in Christ Jesus.

This is tough justice. It's tough because it doesn't feel fair. It doesn't seem right to lump together good law-abiding citizens and bad law-breaking criminals. It doesn't feel appropriate to say that in Christ Jesus we are ALL children of God through faith.

But listen to what a woman named Wilma Dirksen has discovered, just a few years after losing her daughter to an abduction and killing. She realizes that many people believe that there are certain people who are bad, and if we get rid of them we'll have a good world. "But the Bible says, for good reason, that if we extend our hand to our enemy, we will eventually find that our hand is extended to ourself." She confesses, "That's what I found when in the end I had to face myself."

All are one in Christ Jesus.

All. One.

Good and bad. Saint and sinner.

This is so alien to our current justice system, which emphasizes the punitive approach. These days, if you commit the crime, you do the time. Three strikes and you're out -- locked up for life. But evidence is mounting that where feasible, restorative justice has a chance to alter criminal behavior.

There's nothing naive or touchy-feely about it. It can actually work. Thirty years ago, when he was a young reporter at the Edmonton Journal, Bob Harvey took on the task of starting a program for teens at a neighborhood church. One of them confessed a deep, dark secret: He and several other bored teenagers had broken into a number of nearby homes.

Bob Harvey and a co-leader met with these young offenders and made a surprising suggestion: Let's go in a group to the homes that had been broken into, and apologize.

Now the homeowners had suffered damage to their homes, loss of property, and a sense of violation, and the teens quickly realized that a simple apology was not enough. So they started holding bottle drives and car washes so they could at least pay back the cash they had stolen. They also received a lecture from a couple of burly detectives about what would have happened if they had not worked so hard to repair the damage: An appearance in juvenile court.

The result? That was the last crime committed by any of those teens, and their victims became some of their biggest supporters.

Restorative justice.

The key to dealing with most criminal behavior may well be the application of basic Christian principles: Repent, make restitution, restore relationships, and change your ways. In our rush to extend jail sentences and build more prisons, we have forgotten that offenders are people, and that people can be transformed by the love and discipline of a committed community. "Crime is not primarily a breaking of the law," claims chaplain Pierre Allard. "Crime is primarily a breaking of relationships in a community, where real people have hurt real people." The secret to healing broken relationships is restorative justice, not punitive justice.

The apostle Paul certainly discovered this to be true in the spiritual world. He knew that the Jewish Law had once been seen as a means to restore ourselves to God, but this punitive approach turned out to be feeble, futile, and doomed to failure. A new form of justice came through Jesus Christ, one that made clear that a person is justified -- that is, made right with God -- not by the works of the law but through faith in Christ (Galatians 2:15). God has taken a fresh, new approach to justice through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, offering to be reconciled to anyone who has faith in Christ. This restorative justice approach replaces the old punitive justice approach -- one that really wasn't working anyway, according to Paul, "because no one will be justified by the works of the law" (v. 16).

So justice is changing, in the spiritual and secular realms. But does this mean that we should let criminals off the hook, provided they show sincere faith in Jesus Christ? Hardly. They still need to repent, make restitution, restore relationships, and change their ways -- and this work can be much tougher than sitting sullenly in a cell-block. Not all will be willing. But to those who want to change, we should give chances.

The challenge for us, as a community of faith, is to focus on reconciliation, not revenge. To become active in prison ministries, and work with ex-offenders. To educate ourselves about incarceration, and be advocates for restorative justice. To view criminals as brothers and sisters in the faith, and as sinners for whom Christ died. To see ourselves and offenders not as good people and bad people, but as one in the Spirit and one in the Lord.

Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Unity. Restorative justice.

They're never easy. But they ARE the call of a convict named Paul.

And a crucified Lord. Amen.