I get to preach at my home church today, kicking off a series “Minor Prophets: Major Justice” which gives a 7 week sweep of Micah to Malachi. I’ve been reading and rereading Micah and have decided to approach the message through the lens of “What this book teaches us about God”. I’ve come up with the title: “What Makes God Mad, Sad and Glad” – and OK, sorry if you don’t like the slick rhyming, but it highlights three themes that stood out for me. For those of you who know something about Micah, there are no prizes for guessing where I will look for my “What Makes God Glad” support. It’s Micah 6:8 “He has showed you O mortal what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Don’t you love the radical simplicity of it? Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God. How hard is that? It’s Micah’s radical summary of what it means to be a genuine lover of God.
Jesus was also willing to engage in a radical summary of what really matters – the Jesus Creed, as Scot McKnight so helpfully names it, being found in Mark 12:29-31. Answering the question “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (v28) Jesus replies: “The most important one” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” Ok, that’s a little more stretching. It’s the “all your” part that is so hard. Hold nothing back. Dive right in. Mind you the “as yourself” part of loving your neighbour is also tricky. It’s tough to value my neighbours agenda as highly as my own.
But I digress. I am not wanting a contest between Jesus’ summary and Micah’s, I’m rather moving in the territory of noting some things that are crystal clear. As per Jesus we must clearly love God with all that we have and are – and see what comes from that, and we must love our neighbour as ourself. As per Micah, we must act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. I love the focus of it. It almost invites you into checklist territory. Have I acted justly – check yes or note not yet accomplished. Do I love mercy – check yes, or note not yet accomplished. Do I walk humbly with God – check yes, or note not yet accomplished. Oh if it were so easy.
Now that little statement, “oh if it were so easy” should trigger a little alert. Remember the invitation of Jesus in Matt 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” Jesus’ invitation to us is to find the deepest of all rest – the peace of coming to Jesus and following what Eugene Peterson’s wonderful paraphrase of this passage calls “the unforced rhythms of grace”. Let’s not turn gospel into law, but remember that leaning into God’s love transforms us at the deepest levels – transforms us into people who love God and neighbour and justice and mercy and humility – not because we must, but because something has shifted deep inside.
Back to Micah 6:8 and justice, mercy and humility.
Justice
Note that the verse says that this is what the Lord requires of us. I like the word requires. This is not optional. It is not a minor preference (as if it could as easily be, “but if you don’t like justice, exploitation is also rather fun”). It tells us something fundamental about God. God requires us to act justly because God is just. And note that it is an instruction to ACT justly. It’s not good enough to love justice but then unhappily act unjustly (sorry, it turned out that justice was just too hard.) Justice is about action. It is about right pay, and right opportunities, and right laws and – well, you get the picture. It’s not a lovely theory, it is about what is done. And it is also about taking action to stop injustice. This is not a lazy conviction. It is a rally cry to action – action that the Lord requires of us.
Mercy
It’s a little intriguing that while we must ACT justly, we should LOVE mercy. True, there is a risk of reading too much into this, and I am sure we should also love justice and act mercifully, but for all that, action is attached to justice while love is attached to mercy. The love of mercy is in many ways the love of seeing and acting kindly. There is a very easy test to check if you love mercy. Simply reflect back on your conversations over the last 24 hours. Who did you speak about and how did you speak about them? Was their name safe in your mouth? There are so many ways to tell a story. How we tell it quickly reveals if we are people of mercy, or people who love the thrill of mild slander and the ongoing suggestion that everyone else is defective (which presumably makes us perfect).
How is this as a thesis? When we genuinely love others (even our neighbour as ourself) we speak about them differently. At its best, our speech invites, encourages and empowers the other to be a version of themselves that we can see. At some level we speak a new reality into being. That’s loving mercy.
When I spoke about this recently someone asked, “So we should love mercy. Fair enough. Love it for ourself, or for others?” An interesting question. For we all need mercy – over and over again. And we almost certainly love receiving it – far more than having someone explode at us for our wrongs. And that’s where experience and actions start to align. As recipients of mercy we become lovers of mercy – people who love to set others free.
Humility
There is something exceptionally beautiful about the invitation to walk humbly with God. To walk humbly – not arrogantly striding out ahead as though we know the path so much better than God. To walk humbly with – staying with God even as God stays with us. This takes trust. It also takes a realistic assessment. God is far wiser than either you or I. So let’s be faithfully followers. And how will we know where God is leading? Well, is it along a path of justice, and one where we show mercy. Those are two strong clues to note.
We live in an overcomplicated world. Micah invites us to embrace three big ideas – and they are so big that they change everything. Act justly – love mercy – walk humbly with God. Oh, and let’s do it this week, and the next, and the next…
Nice chatting…
Photo by Germar Derron: https://www.pexels.com/photo/peaceful-protest-in-baltimore-for-justice-36793423/
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