Doing Justice and Loving Kindness

“Love God with all that you are.”

Jesus said that was the greatest commandment.

But he didn’t stop there. He reminded us that another is like it. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

That’s the way of Jesus. To love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

That way of living is echoed in the words from our passage today: “What does the Lord require of us, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God?” It’s another way of summing up the commandments—of loving God and loving neighbor.

Maybe that’s why this verse is so well known. And so loved.

But there’s a lot going on before this passage that takes it to a different level, a deeper level.

When these words were first written, Israel was in the middle of a revival of sorts. The temple was crowded. Giving was over budget for the first time in years. But Micah knew something was wrong. He knew that Israel was arrogant and uncaring.

And so the prophet pictures God charging Israel with a crime and taking them to court. God calls the mountains, the hills, and the foundations of the earth as witnesses for the prosecution. And God’s accusation is that they are selfish people. They have forgotten God’s generosity. And they have also forgotten something else. God sees how their lives fail to reflect the justice and kindness that they have received.

That’s what the prophet Micah knows—that God is watching our lives and our living—and so he invites us to consider the way of life that God desires—even requires—of us.

The scene Micah paints at the opening of the chapter reveals that God is none too pleased with the people of Israel. In fact, Micah tells us, God has had it up to here with them. While God had been completely faithful to the covenant—to his promise to be their God—the people had failed miserably. They had forgotten God’s promises, turned from God’s ways, and lived as if they were on their own.

And so, Micah tells us, God drags the people into court, demanding that they state their case, asking them to produce one shred of evidence that God has failed them.

God then brings up story after story after story from their relationship together, detailing the countless ways that God has been present in their lives, showing up with power to save, intervening in their lives in a way marked by grace.

The people heard again how God had breathed into them the breath of life; how God heard their cries when they were being persecuted and afflicted; how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt; how God had led them through the waters of the sea. In a stunning sequence, God rehearses for them their entire history, and what the people saw was that God had done so much for them that they had to respond.

But how do you respond to such extravagant grace and care?

And that’s where our passage turns today, with the people asking that very question. In light of all that God has done for us, how do we respond?

At first, they just don’t get it. They think, “We’ve done so much in the name of God. We’ve come to worship. We’ve given. What more do you want from us, God?” And so they ask: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?”

And when Israel asked that question, they dared to offer some possibilities. “Surely you want some thing, God. Name it and I’ll give it to you. Do you want a burnt offering? Not enough? How about calves a year old—they’re costly, right? Well then how about a thousand rams or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Still not enough? Then let me give you my first-born child, the very fruit of my body to save me. Just tell me what you want God, what thing do you want me to give you to give thanks for all that you have done?”

We do that, don’t we? We do it in our relationships. We try so hard to please somebody else that we keep trying to do more and more things—or give more and more gifts—when that’s not what’s needed at all. And we do that sort of thing in our relationship to God.

“Tell me, God! What do you want me to do? What can I give you to satisfy your complaint?” That’s what Israel was trying to do as they stood before God’s generosity, God’s faithfulness.

Thankfully, another voice interrupts Israel’s mis-guided attempts to figure out what God wants from them, a voice that reminds them that God has already shown them the response God desires.

(God) has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

 What God wants, in other words, is not a thing at all, but rather the complete re-focusing of life.

What God wants is for our lives to be marked by doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with God.

The response God wants from us, is us.

What God wants is for us to think of our lives as an offering poured out in response to the overflowing generosity and faithfulness of the God who created this world in love, and who loves it still. And God doesn’t just love the world, but all the people in it.

And that’s the challenge for us in the church. To love as God loves. Not to look out for ourselves alone. Not even to look out just for those like us. But to open our hearts to the heart of God, and to shape our lives around the One sent from God—the one whose life embodied the justice we are called to do; the one who lived the kindness we are called to love; the one whose life was marked by a humble obedience to the God who sent him to us as a sign of God’s love for the world.

And that means that—if we want to live as God intends—then we will commit to doing justice, and to loving kindness, and to walking humbly with our God. So what do our lives look like when we do those things?

To do justice means that justice isn’t just something to simply value or cherish, but rather justice is something we do. Justice has been described as wanting for others—for everyone—what you want for those you know and love.

Too often we reduce our thinking about justice to mean simply someone getting what they deserve. But that’s not what this is about at all.

Justice is about wanting things to be right. And one of the best ways to measure whether we are doing justice is by looking at how the most vulnerable—those who are hurting the most—are treated in our communities.

In other words, who are the most vulnerable in our world right now—and how are they being cared for?

To love kindness means to form a community of enduring relationships marked by faithfulness to one another. Frankly, this is one of the key things missing in our culture today: Simple kindness shared between one person and another rather than a competition for resources; building relationships of caring and trust rather than seeking to get ahead of the next guy.

If you’re looking for a particular way to love kindness, stop by the Open Doors table in the narthex today to discover ways you can build relationships with our neighbors without shelter, and also do justice by offering food and shelter and friendship and hope.

To walk humbly with God is to abandon all self-sufficiency and to acknowledge in your attitude and actions that life itself comes to us as gift from the God to whom we belong. But it also means something more. That word “walk” implies that it has to do with your whole life—your whole way of living before God, and God wants our lives to reflect that understanding in every way.

Now it’s not going to be easy. The climate in the world right now—especially in our nation—makes it downright dangerous to seek to do justice and to love kindness. There are people who will call you a traitor to our nation for doing justice and loving kindness.

They will tell you, as one politician did recently, that there are times when you have to set aside your Christian faith to get things done.

They will tell you that we should fight fire with fire, not turn the other cheek.

They will tell you that we have real enemies—and to treat them as people worthy of compassion is a threat to our country’s existence.

But the gospel calls us to a higher concern. To love God and neighbor. And it turns all conventional wisdom on its head.

You will see that clearly when we stand together to say what we believe. This is one of the lines we will affirm:

“We believe God sends us to risk our own peace and comfort in compassion for our neighbors.”

Is that treason? Or is that the gospel?

And then we’ll go on to say this: “We must not limit our compassion to those we judge deserving, for we ourselves do not deserve the compassion of God.”

The prophet Micah asks us to consider the right question: What does the Lord require of us in response to all that God has done in our lives? The final verse from one of the hymns we sing often in the church seems to capture a worthy answer:

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

What does the Lord require of us?

To do justice. To love kindness. And to walk humbly with our God. May God help us to do these things, especially in times like these.

 

An Affirmation of Faith (From A Declaration of Faith)

God sends us to exercise compassion.
In his concern for justice in the social order
God has never forgotten the needs of individuals.
In the end, the Lord will judge all persons
by the simple, unremembered acts of kindness
they did or failed to do
for the least of their sisters and brothers.
We acknowledge God is at work here and now
when people show personal concern for each other
and work to make helping agencies,
including the church itself,
more compassionate.
We believe God sends us
to risk our own peace and comfort
in compassion for our neighbors.
We are to give to them and receive from them,
accepting everyone we meet as a person;
to be sensitive to those who suffer in body or mind;
to help and accept help
in ways that affirm dignity and responsibility.
We must not limit our compassion to those we judge deserving,
for we ourselves do not deserve the compassion of God.

***A sermon preached January 29, 2017, with the people of Massanutten Presbyterian Church in Penn Laird, VA.