Justice, Kindness, Humility
A Sermon by The Reverend Dr. Robert W. Prichard on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 29, 2023.
Micah 6:1-8, Psalm 15, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Matthew 5:1-12
From the Book of the Prophet Micah: “ What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Three of the four lessons that we have heard this morning have been selected to make a very simple point, but one that is not always entirely understood. The point is this: that a true faith in the living God involves a commitment to justice, kindness, and humility.
The prophet Micah was a rough contemporary of the author of the first portion of the Book of Isaiah. Like Isaiah, he wrote in the final years before the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in about 600 BC. Micah was from the small city of Moresheth. When he came to Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, he was distressed by what he witnessed there—particularly what he regarded as perfunctory religious observance. His preaching centered on the importance of a faith that touched the heart and the way in which one behaved toward neighbor. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Psalm 15 tells us about the holy life of the faithful person, expanding on the provisions in the last five of the Ten Commandments—those that deal with behavior toward neighbor. The author goes beyond the requirements in the 6th (“Do not murder.”) and the 7th commandments (“Do not commit adultery.”) to declare that a person who leads “a blameless life” should do “no evil [of any kind] to [a] friend.” The psalmist goes beyond the 8th (“Do not stead.”) and 10th commandment (“Do not covet.”) to declared that the person who “[does] what is right” does “not give money in hope of gain.” and does not “take a bribe against the innocent.” Finally, the author goes beyond the 9th commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”) to say that the one the one who seeks “a blameless life,” does “not heap contempt upon [the] neighbor,” speaks “the truth from [the] heart,” and does “not take back [one’s] word.”
The Gospel lesson is from the beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, the list of blessings with which our Lord begins the Sermon on the Mount. There is a little bit of indirection here. Rather than telling us what believers ought to do, Jesus gives a glimpse from God the Father’s point of view. God blesses those who are “poor in spirit, . . . those who mourn, … the meek, …the pure in heart, …the merciful, … the peacemakers, [and] those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
The three lessons join together in a kind of full court press against any view that reduces religion to perfunctory external performance of religious rites in order to secure God’s blessing. So far so good.
There are, however, some Christians today take this to be a kind of either/or proposition: One either does what is just and kind OR follows the letter of the law. But that is not what the lessons say. They do not declare that all religious rites are abolished or that ethical behavior makes the content of faith itself irrelevant. Nor do they declare that the Jewish adherence to the Law of God is futile and without merit.
If we take a second look at the lessons, it is evident that they do not reject the importance of following the Law of Israel. Take the prophet Micah, for example. The book as a whole alternates between words of condemnation and words of hope. What is condemned is not the religion of Judah but its misuse. Micah describes this problem back in chapter 3:9-12, where he denounces Jerusalem as the place where “rulers give judgment for a bribe; ... priests teach for a price; … prophets give oracles for money; [and] yet they lean upon the Lord and say, ‘Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.’” It is not institutional religion of Judah that is condemned but the corruption that has distorted the institution.
The Psalmist makes the same point. The blameless life that is described is not an end in itself but the deportment for those who “who may dwell in [the Lord’s] tabernacle” and “abide upon [the Lord’s] holy hill.” That is to say, it links that deportment with worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, rather than setting one against the other.
And of course the Gospel lesson from Matthew, which names those who receive God’s blessing, is followed immediately by the strongest statement by Jesus in all of the New Testament about the importance of the law: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
The call of our lessons today is not a call to adopt an internal disposition of justice, kindness and humility as part of a program to reject the Law and the Prophets, but rather an invitation to adopt a changed heart while observing the Law and the Prophets. It is a call to continue in public worship, to live in accordance with the Ten Commandments, to give thanks for God’s Law, and to do so with a converted heart, with humility, and with love of neighbor.
There is a beautiful ivory cross located in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is alternatively known as the Bury Saint Edmunds Cross (for the location in England from which it came) or the Cloisters Cross (for the place in which it is located at the museum). One-time director of the Museum Thomas Hoving spent a good deal of time puzzling over the inscription above the cross, which unlike the Biblical accounts of the crucifixion read “King of the Confessors” rather than “King of the Jews.” He concluded that the text was a deliberate misquotation, written at a time in which England was involved in its greatest anti-Jewish pogrom, a time when the vast majority of the Jewish population was ejected from England. The creators of the cross wanted to deny Jesus’ Judaism in order to excuse their own misconduct [1].
Two years ago Amy-Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Duke University, was invite to preach at the Washington National Cathedral [2]. She focused her attention on the way the arrangement of lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary at time suggests that the Law of Moses has become a bad thing and was made obsolete by the teaching of Jesus. As she rightly pointed out that is not what Jesus has to say about the Law in Matthew’s Gospel and it conflicts with much of what St. Paul has to say.
In part because of her preaching and speaking at the National Cathedral and at other Christian places of worship, the 2022 General Convention of the Episcopal Church considered three different resolutions calling for attention to the way in which Biblical lessons have been used in the church and in society at large to support anti-Semitic views. They came from the Diocese of Washington, the Diocese of New York, and in a resolutely jointly sponsored by deputies from Diocese of Virginia and the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. The third of these was passed as submitted and the first two were combined into a single resolution. Committees are at work, taking a careful look at the way in which we arrange and preach about lessons related to Judaism.
This is, of course, not a new concern. Some in this church today may remember the only thing that changed in the text of the Book of Common Prayer between its submission for first consideration in 1976 and its adoption on second reading in 1979—a prayer in the Good Friday service directed to the conversion of the Jews was dropped. It does make sense to re-examine the way in which we talk about the Jews—our elder siblings in faith, to whom, as Paul suggested in Romans 11, we related like “a wild olive shoot . . . grafted . . . to . . . the rich root of the olive tree.” This is particularly true nin a time of rising anti-Semitism. This is, however, a problem that calls for continuing vigilance over time, and will not be permanently solved by whatever measures the Church decides upon.
“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
[1] Thomas Hoving, King of the Confessors (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981).
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, National Cathedral Sermon (March 7, 2021), Dr. Amy-Jill Levine - Washington National Cathedral.