In a community of faith, seek to live just, kind, and humble lives
God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to seek justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8
It is not uncommon for people of faith to get caught up in religious practices or specific doctrines and lose sight of what the Lord requires. For Micah’s contemporaries, it was the familiar and well-defined practice of sacrificial offerings which got in the way. Micah seeks to clarify what God requires. Rather than being consumed with religious practices that justify oneself, people of faith are expected to be just, kind, and humble.
If one were to remove the comma following just, the title of this article would read “just kind and humble.” Certainly, Micah would be quick to say that to be “just kind and humble” is not what God requires. Seeking justice is the first prerequisite within the trinity of requirements for people of faith. So much of our Christian faith is rooted in justice…seeking justice for the poor, the young, the marginalized, and the oppressed. This is at the heart of biblical teachings. According to theologian Walter Brueggemann, “justice is to actively engage in the redistribution of power and to correct the systemic inequalities that marginalize some for the excessive enhancement of others.”
Like Micah, Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount also clarify what God requires. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he confronts religious leaders who are arrogant and more concerned with justifying themselves through keeping the letter of the law than with being kind to those in need. In the beatitudes Jesus offers what is just and kind: hope, inner strength, and well-being to those who mourn and to those whose spirits are weary, respect to the peacemakers who absorb hostilities they do not deserve, gentleness to the meek, humanity to the merciful, and compassion to the persecuted.
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We have talked about what it means to be just and kind. What does a humble life look like? To be humble implies an attitude of reverence and openness, coupled with a sense of personal integrity, candor, and honesty. A humble life acknowledges one’s need for forgiveness, negating the necessity to justify oneself. Although being humble is the final prerequisite within the trinity of requirements for people of faith, being humble comes first because without it one is incapable of being just and kind.
Last month as we honored the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Westminster hosted a community event with remarks by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and NAACP Springfield Branch President Teresa Haley on the proposed 1908 Race Riot National Monument. The unspeakable violence in the hometown of President Abraham Lincoln, whose leadership ended slavery in our country, was an awakening for the collective conscience of America’s soul and instrumental in the formation of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People. Two black men, Scott Burton (defending his barbershop) and 80-year-old William Donnegan (married to a white woman), were lynched during the riots. Their lives are remembered and honored at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, founded by attorney and author Bryan Stevenson, who writes:
"We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others."
May we hold fast as a community of faith and a nation of citizens and together live just, kind, and humble lives. This is what the Lord requires. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Blythe Denham Kieffer is pastor and head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Springfield.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Faith communities must seek to live just, kind, humble lives
