Sermon by the Rev. Dr A. K. M. Adam

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

In the Name of God Almighty, the Blessed Trinity on High— Amen.

So does God have low expectations of us, or what? That’s one (self-congratulatory) way I’ve heard Micah’s prophecy preached: Do justice? Yeah, more or less. Love kindness? Of course! Walk humbly with the Lord? No problem....

I know ninety or a hundred primary school children who might tell you differently. In the olden days, when I was young and strong, I used to serve as a day school chaplain. I used to preach five days a week, eight o’clock in the morning, to a congregation ranging — I hope I get the Scottish terms aright — from Nursery to Primary Seven (and to their teachers). Sometimes I lost their attention, sometimes we just had a hymn sing, but my youthful congregation was always awake and alert and eager to hear when my morning homily touched on the story from Genesis 2. They were fascinated by my elaborate descriptions of the garden, about God forming the first humans out of the mud, and especially when I came to the rules that God gave Adam and Eve. To be more accurate, to the rule that God gave them, the one, single rule in the whole world. My day school children loved that story, because they knew that even with only one single, simple rule in the world, people would find a way to break it. It wasn’t much of a commandment, but our first ancestors still didn’t live up to it.

So when we hear the prophet Micah telling the people of God that what the Lord requires of them is merely to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, we should beware of rejoicing that Micah found a simple way of expressing the true heart of God’s will for us. It does sound easy. It sounds comfortable, like the “comfortable words” that Jesus addresses to those of us who labour and are heavy laden—“for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” If we focused only on that easy yoke every Sunday, if we told people that all they need to do is to love kindness, we might win a lot of sympathy. Preach about everyone’s favorite topics, talk a lot about peace and justice to passers-by with full stomachs—that is a message with legs, as they say. That’s a message that’ll sell.

Micah’s summary of the Law has a comforting simplicity about it. And after all, who among us doesn’t do justice (more or less), who doesn’t love kindness, and walk humbly? But Micah — and my day school children — knew enough to raise a cautionary reminder that the simplicity of a rule doesn’t make that rule any easier actually to live by.

Why do you suppose my primary school students knew better than to believe in the oversimplified “love-kindness” demand, the easy-yoke gospel of God? It isn’t that these were stiffly pious, total-depravity-believing, sober-sided little Puritan kids. They fussed and teased and chased after each other, and much of the time they were impossible in class — but they knew themselves (and they even knew their parents) well enough to understand that no matter how little you ask of Adam and Eve, sooner or later they will find a way to disappoint you. They knew that if Micah had a single, simple command for us, there had to be more to it than just to be nice people.

Micah knew that, too. We heard only a little bit of Micah’s prophecy this morning, but Micah has a lot more to say than simply “do justice and love kindness.” Micah was willing to get specific for the people of Israel, and much from the rest of his prophecy is uncomfortably applicable on the streets of Glasgow and Clarkston this morning. Micah condemned the real estate entrepreneurs who kicked the tenants out of cheap flats, and built posh developments instead; he chewed up high-flying bankers, the ones who are always devising ways to make another shekel at the expense of their neighbours, the rich who get richer when the poor get poorer. He had a stern word even for people who didn’t treat their in-laws respectfully! When Micah demands that we do justice and love kindness, he’s not talking about having a pleasant attitude on life, he’s talking about real concrete behaviour, what we used to call “corporal acts of mercy.”

And Jesus is right there with Micah. In our gospel lesson, he blesses the poor, the mourners, the gentle, the peacemakers, those who are starving for righteousness, the persecuted. Throughout the rest of his sermon, he enjoins us to adopt a way of life that shows people what God is like: merciful, generous, faithful, loving to enemy — and Jesus means loving to our enemy — as well as to our friend. Our righteousness should exceed that of the most righteous people we can think of. Indeed, Jesus warns us that we should strive to make ourselves perfect, even as God is perfect. In the Sermon on the Mount, the keynote of that perfection is not freedom-from-error — Jesus knows that we will sin, and he offers us abundant forgiveness. As Paul points out to the Corinthians, God can make a lot out of imperfect raw material. The perfection to which we are called makes itself known by the integrity of what we think with what we say and what we do. God’s good will is not separate from God’s providence for us, which God made visible and tangible for us in Christ Jesus; in the same way, Jesus teaches us to make our good will indivisible from genuine good actions on behalf of God and neighbour, reaching toward perfection by uniting heart and speech and action in the testimony of a whole life to God’s grace and truth.

That’s the message, sisters and brothers; that’s the challenging imperative lurking behind the simple command that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. We can only claim to be on that path when the road we are taking leads on beyond the capacities we can claim for our own selves, stretching and blessing us right along to the point that our way and Christ’s way align more and more closely. God calls us not just to be nice people — you certainly don’t have to be a Christian to be “nice”; I don’t know where anyone would get that idea — but God calls us to be noteworthy people who embody living human examples of divine justice, divine kindness, divine humility. We’re called beyond general standards of niceness and vaguely good behaviour. We’re called to a standard that leads us closer to the godly behaviour that distinguishes disciples of Jesus from the world round about them. We are called not to the slogan common on bumper-stickers in the USA, that we commit random acts of kindness and of senseless beauty, but we are called to characteristic acts of kindness, and deliberate beauty, for in this we draw near to God, we are transformed by God into the likeness of Christ, and in Christ’s likeness we bear with us the beauty of God’s holiness.

Jesus calls us to this extraordinarily just and kind life because it is in fact possible for all of us, and because we won’t know that possibility — no one might know that possibility — unless we who love God are willing to put our lives on the line to show it. If we want to show God’s justice to the world, we may start with simple fair-mindedness; that’s a quality that Scripture commends to us, a characteristic that we should all aim at. But once we close in on fair-mindedness, we need to keep pushing ahead to find the justice that seeks to redress wrongs, to set straight crooked dealings, even at some cost to ourselves. As Jesus says, it’s no trick to aim at even-handedness, but disciples of Jesus care more for their neighbour’s well-being than for their own. If we want to show God’s kindness, we can begin with cultivating a warm-hearted and agreeable disposition, but we need to keep going toward a heartfelt generosity that’s no longer constrained by possessiveness or self-interest. “Do justice,” indeed, but do justice. “Love kindness,” yes, but love kindness.

That’s a lesson so emphatic that my elementary-school students heard it loud and clear. Somewhere in their rambunctious hearts they could tell that we didn’t need Micah to remind us that we ought to be decent people; we needed Micah to remind us that among God’s people, integrity and charity are the baseline of a minimal obedience, but also the transcendent vocation of an all-encompassing way of life. We didn’t need Jesus to tell well-intentioned, comfortable people that they are blessed, but Jesus came to offer blessing to suffering, destitute souls.

In this fallen world, God calls us constantly to defy the downward pull of mortal gravity; down here we always feel the appeal of wriggling under God’s commands rather than living up to them. But just as there is no commandment so easy that we won’t try to evade it, so there is no command so hard that we cannot live it out, supported and encouraged and lifted up by God’s Spirit, nourished by the holy food and drink of our communion with Christ. God’s justice is awesome, and you can do it. God’s kindness is unsearchably profound, and you can love it. God’s presence comes to you with a broken heart and empty pockets—and you can walk humbly in the presence of your God.

Amen.