Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly
“Listen, O mortal: / God has made abundantly clear / what ‘good’ is; / what does Yahweh require from you / but to simply do justice, / to love covenant loyalty, / and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:8.
Traditionally, some of the words in verse 8 of Micah are translated this way (quote): “...to do justice and to love kindness,...” One of my commentaries says to translate the Hebrew word, hesed, as “kindness” is disastrously weak. So, I’ve used the translation that commentary recommends (quote): “...to love covenant loyalty...”
But what’s wrong with “kindness?” Isn’t it good to be kind? Well, yes. But covenant goes beyond kindness. And in this passage God constantly invites us to refocus life in terms of covenant categories, covenant possibilities.
To spell it out: to do justice is to be actively engaged in correcting systemic inequities which can place some people on the margins of society and, conversely, grant excessive power to others. In short, equity is blessed.
Covenant loyalty, hesed, means we are called to reorder the life of the community so that enduring relations of fidelity, faithfulness, are normal, not an exception. This is the type of kindness— covenant loyalty— being addressed.
To walk humbly with God is to abandon any premise of self-sufficiency and rely on God. Walking humbly says the presence of God is tangible in the covenant love offered to our neighbor and returned by our neighbor. Loving God and loving neighbor is blessed.
But how does this deep kindness, this covenant loyalty work in real life? (Slight pause.) One speaker I heard at Bangor Theological Seminary Convocation this week when I traveled to Bangor and back was Julio Medina. Mr. Medina holds an Master of Divinity from New York Theological Seminary and is a Doctoral candidate there.
Julio is, in one sense, an entrepreneur, the founder of Exodus Transitional Community, which has a budget of over a million dollars. That program works with people in transition from incarceration. It strives to create a safe community for them and to instill hope. It has cut the recidivism rate of those who enter it by 50%.
And why was Julio moved to create it? He knew first hand the issues of transition. He spent 12 years in Sing-Sing. And Julio’s work illustrates how one aspect of covenant loyalty works— serving others while striving to correct systemic inequities. (Slight pause.)
Julio took questions and responses after speaking. The Rev. Mr. Mark Doty, Pastor and Teacher at the Hammond Street Congregational Church in Bangor, stood to explain that the people of his church have been working with some folks in transition who live in half way houses.
With supervision, these prisoners are allowed two hours of free time in town on a Sunday. With that time they choose— choose— to come to the Hammond Street Church. Why?
They tell Mark and the parishioners a lot of church people visited them in prison. The folks from the Hammond Street Church are the only ones who did not judge them. And that, my friends, is how another aspect of covenant loyalty works. (Slight pause.)
In a couple of minutes you will be invited to examine and vote on the budget. Any trustee will tell you I take budgets seriously. But I also want to suggest covenant loyalty needs to go beyond what we do with the funds with which we’ve been entrusted. Covenant loyalty means God invites us to refocus life in terms of covenant categories, covenant possibilities.
Equity is blessed. Loving God and loving neighbor is blessed. Covenant loyalty is blessed. (Slight pause.) You will find that the covenant of this church is printed on a beige sheet in the bulletin along with some other parts of our By-laws. The covenant is on the top of that second page, page 2. If you pull that out, won’t you please join with me in reciting that covenant?
We commit to creating and maintaining a Christ centered community that nurtures and values each member and fosters our spiritual growth. We assume personal responsibility to use our personal and collective talents and resources to reach out to each other, the wider community and the world. Amen.
01/30/2011
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “These words are from Article II of our By-laws— purpose: ‘The purpose of the Church shall be to unite in covenant followers of Jesus, the Christ, to share in the worship of God, and to help the Divine Will have dominion in the lives of all persons, individually and collectively, especially as that Divine Will is revealed in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.’”
[1] This Annual Meeting of the Church was held within the context of worship.
[2] It needs to be noted that sections of the By-laws were an insert in the bulletin.
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