It is a cliché to say that we live in a divided society, and some of us worry about how we can recover from the deep-seated divisions all around us. In the immediate short run, how can we resolve our disputes? And of course, frequently the answer to that is to resolve it inside a courtroom. Racial injustice, corporate wrongdoing, financial wrongdoing, even election results – all of these issues have resulted in trials that have to be resolved by a judge or jury. Personally, I am glad for that, given the alternatives. Trial by combat? No thank you. Let the powerful autocrats decide for us? I don’t want to live under an emperor. In some ancient societies, they decided by lot: throw some dice and let “the gods” decide for us.
Of those options, letting a judge or jury reach a measured and thoughtful decision based on the rule of law seems like the best one. But we see over and over that trial by law is not perfect, and it is easy to get upset about how trials turn out, or think the system is corrupt. The other problem with trials, unlike elections and protests, is that ordinary people like you and I have no control over them. The decision is made inside a small room that you are not allowed to go into. And of course, one truism about any court case is that some people think the outcome is just, and some don’t. There has probably never been a court case where everyone walked away happy. Where shall we turn to for comfort and guidance?
If you are Christian, you can turn to the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about justice? A lot. In my co-pastor’s Bible study class, you are looking at the Psalms, where the theme of justice comes up over and over. But I am going to turn my attention to a much shorter book: Micah.
Micah was one of the minor prophets – his book is tucked in among Obadiah and Nahum and Habbakuk, toward the end of the Old Testament . The book of Micah is only seven chapters long, and in my Bible, it takes up less than seven pages. It takes about 20 minutes to read the whole thing. Unlike the book that appears before it, Jonah, there are no memorable stories in it. Much of it is dire prophecies about the downfall of Jerusalem, and a Swedenborgian can interpret the symbolism of what Jerusalem represents in our lives, but others may miss this.
Still, there are three parts of the book of Micah that stand out. One is a passage I used to begin this service: “Come and let us go into the mountains of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths.” (Micah 4:2). And there is a prophesy we use in the Christmas pageant every year: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.” (Micah 5:2).
Then in Chapter 6, after recounting the story of Balam and Balaak, and discussions about burnt offerings, you find a phrase that has been made into posters and embroidery, and even tattoos, and I am not the only one to consider it a favorite passage in the Bible:
“What does the Lord require of you?
To act justly
To love mercy
And to walk humbly with your God.”
It doesn’t take a Swedenborgian eye to decipher the symbolism – it is clear and simple and beautiful, like a gap in the clouds where you can see blue sky. Anyone can understand the message. But, like any part of the Bible, it also contains unlimited depth. Even passages that seem clear on their face are worth looking into more deeply.
What does the Lord require of you? Three things. The first is to “act justly.” Before looking it up again, I had remembered it wrong – I thought it said to “seek justice.” I looked through many translations, and none of them said that, but I also discovered that many people who made plaques and embroidered signs also used the phrase “seek justice,” so I’m not alone. In some translations, it simply says “do justice.” What is the difference between acting justly and seeking justice? There are two differences that occur to me: one is that acting or doing justice puts the focus on your own actions, while seeking justice can be focused on looking at the injustices brought upon by other people. In regard to racial injustice, for example, I can examine my own actions and try to find ways that I act unjustly toward people of other races – but that is quite different from joining protests or pushing to change unjust laws. The other difference I see is that “act” and “do” make it sound so simple: you know what is right, so do it. To me that sounds too simple, as though we always know what acting justly looks like, and we can always tell when we have done it. So I prefer the word “seek,” which sounds like trying to approach an ideal, but also recognizing that you can’t do it perfectly, and it is a lifelong effort.
Here I would like to talk about the job I recently retired from: I was a trial consultant, working for a company that advised attorneys on upcoming trials. That involved doing mock trials all across the country, which is why I missed many church services over the years. I’ve done roughly 10 mock trials a year for the past 25 years, in most states in the country, on a wide variety of cases – patent disputes and murder trials and medical malpractice lawsuits and false advertising claims. We would bring in 25-40 mock jurors to hear every case, so if you do the math, that means I’ve heard perhaps 10,000 people wrestling with how to decide a legal case. It has made me reluctant to make sweeping generalizations, but here is a rare exception: from what I could see, all 10,000 of those people cared about justice, and were doing their best to “act justly.” Caring about justice seems to be universal—whether you are religious or not, and no matter where you live in the country or what demographic categories you fit into. Also, whenever I work on a case, there are usually about half a dozen or more lawyers there, so I’ve met probably a thousand trial lawyers over the years, and I can say, they are all seeking justice.
The issue, of course, is that everyone has a different idea about what “justice” would be: to some people that means harsh punishment, to others it means accuracy (making sure that the defendant is actually the person to blame). And yes, there are people with bad motives who want to escape justice – but they know that, and telling them to seek justice won’t do any good. So, out of those three things Micah said we should do, “acting justly” seems like the thing that people need the least reminding about.
Then we get to the second thing: “love mercy.” This, I would say, is less universal. And here again, people who are in trouble want mercy, but when you are called on to judge others, it is not so clear. I would even say it gives some people pause – “Are you sure that’s the right thing to do?” For many people, that directly contradicts Micah’s first instructions. “No! No mercy! Lock them up and throw away the key!” And for some people, even “locking them up” is too merciful – why can’t we execute them in a gruesome fashion, as they used to do in medieval days? (And still do in some parts of the world). This is where I stop and think about where that universal desire for justice comes from, and why the love of mercy is not so universal. There can be a burning emotion behind the desire for justice: anger or zeal, or perhaps a resentment about injustice that has happened to you – “I have suffered, and someone must pay!” But what is the emotion behind the love of mercy? It feels entirely different. And, I would suggest, it is a higher love – and a calmer emotion.
Going from justice to mercy, we have risen up a step. We are moving closer to heaven, a heaven that is not fundamentally about rightness and equity and fairness: it is a heaven that is founded on love. Love for who? Love for the neighbor – which entails trying to understand what they have been through, and forgiving them for shortcomings. Justice can be outraged that a sinner “got off scot free” – mercy, on the other hand, is delighted that a sinner is redeemed. The tale of the woman caught in adultery shows this: the pharisees wanted to see her punished, Jesus wanted to heal her. After Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” they walked away – perhaps frustrated that justice was not met. Jesus’ motivation was to turn her life around, which is why he forgave her, but ended by saying “Go and sin no more.”
Back to the courtroom: everyone inside a courtroom is seeking justice. But not everyone is seeking mercy, and for some of them, that seems wrong. Does that mean that criminals should not be sentenced? No, I think we need to struggle with what “mercy” looks like – and for some people, the inside of a prison cell is where they will turn their life around, so putting them in that cell is merciful. If they had not faced punishment, their life may have gotten even worse. Mercy is not the same as “leniency,” and sometimes being lenient is not doing the person any favors. But it does mean approaching the situation from love, and instead of thinking about “What does that person deserve,” think about “What would be the best thing for that person’s eternal welfare?” Not everyone in a courtroom has that attitude.
Then Micah asks us to rise one level above that, and even fewer people are inclined to do that. Of those thousand lawyers I’ve worked with, how many have sought justice? All of them, from what I could see. How many of them loved mercy? Some of them. How many have “walked humbly”? Even fewer. Of those 10,000 jurors I’ve seen deliberating on a case, how many “walk humbly”? There are certainly some. But those are the people who are not consumed by the fires of desire for justice. They also don’t come in so soft-hearted that they are motivated to “cut the defendant a break.” The point is, they have an attitude of not already knowing what the right answer is – that is not walking humbly. And the full phrase is, “Walk humbly with your God.”
To me, walking humbly with your God means taking yourself out of the equation: it is not about you, or your intelligence, or even showing the world how much you love others. It is being an instrument for the Lord. It is saying “I am utterly dependent on the Lord to show me what is right, and my own intelligence will not take me there.” The world is full of people who claim they are walking with God, but they are not doing it humbly – or if they profess humbleness, I am a little suspicious of their sincerity. The more certain they are that they know what God wants, the more harm they cause to the world, it seems. When researching that phrase from Micah, I even came across a Baptist preacher whose mission was to ‘correct’ people about how they all interpret it wrong. If your mission is to correct the ignorant masses, are you really walking humbly with God?
So, in this little passage buried in the middle of the minor prophets in the middle of the Bible, there is an encapsulation of your whole spiritual journey. In the road of life, you may slowly progress from one step to the next—or may get stuck on one and not progress—and it may seem that it gets harder and harder the higher you go. But what can be easier than walking humbly? And how do you do them all once: seek justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our God? You may think, “Pick one, Lord – but don’t ask me to try to juggle all three.” But if it seems that way, that may be because of your view of what justice and mercy and humility look like. You need a clear image of what all three look like together. You need a role model of someone who did seek justice, and loved mercy and walked humbly.
In my Bible, all you have to do is flip forward about 25 pages from the book of Micah: “The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way….”
Amen
READINGS
Old Testament Reading: Micah 6:7-8
“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, 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.”
New Testament Reading: John 8:1-11
Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
Reading from Swedenborg: Secrets of Heaven #2417(7):
A person is in charity and mercy who exercises justice and judgment by punishing the evil and rewarding the good. There is charity in punishing the evil, for to this are we impelled by our zeal to amend them, and at the same time to protect the good, lest these suffer injury at the hands of the evil. In this way a person consults the welfare of one who is in evil, or his enemy, and expresses his good feeling toward him, as well as to others, and to the common wealth itself; and this from charity toward the neighbor.
