Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly

I wanted to write a post on a theme which seems to have been hitting me strongly over the last couple of weeks: that of a link between worship, social action and evangelism. Readings from the Old Testament prophets with passages about God's anger towards those who oppress his people, whose worship is rendered meaningless by their actions outside the temple, remind us what God really requires of us. Not all the razzmatazz of bands and PA systems, or censors and vestments. Not a specific form of words, or a certain type of song, or music at all. These are all ways we can engage with God, aids that can lead us to worship.

What is worship? Giving God his rightful place, acknowledging him as Lord over everything, including ourselves, committing ourselves to do his will. It's an attitude, an attitude that says God's will will be our will.

Micah 6 vs 8: 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.

I wonder what the attitude of the world would be if the church's first concern was (and was seen to be) to "act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?" It's certainly not the view most people today have of the church. Non-Christians often see the church's claim to be 'right' and to have the 'truth' as arrogant. Society today doesn't look kindly on any group of people which claims to be able to tell others they are wrong. It's an understandable point of view. I don't like being told I'm wrong. But (thinking of my driving lessons) on the other hand, if I was about to do something that put me in danger, I'd hope my instructor would warn me!
You see what I mean? That's not the same as just telling someone they're wrong. It's helping them to become better.

Now some people might find the idea of Christians behaving like this just as unpleasant as confrontational damnation. It has the potential to sound terribly patronising. But that's where I think it relates to the other two sides of my triangle. If our focus is on God, and if our actions bear out the story we tell, everything will seem that bit more believable. Especially because that's no easy way out- no escape from our responsibilities as human beings, no cop-out that it doesn't if everything's a mess now because we'll be rewarded in heaven. It places the emphasis on us to live up to what we say and sing about:

"We must go, live to feed the hungry,
Stand beside the broken, we must go,
Stepping forward, keep us from just singing,
Stir us into action, we must go."*

I think we'd all admit we're a long way from matching up to God's standards. Some people, of course, are closer than others. And everyone uses the gifts God has given them to serve others in different ways: for some people that might be out on the streets giving out sandwiches to the homeless, for others it may be fundraising for third world charities, for others it may be listening to lonely elderly people and helping them with their shopping. But there's something each of us can do, in worship to God, to reflect his love onto the people we meet. Maybe you can give your friends a cup of tea and a listening ear to your friends when they need someone to talk to, maybe you can go on mission to Uganda.

Putting the judgements on Israel for not doing what God requires of them into this context is quite scary. Obviously things have changed- we no longer live under the old covenant, but are fully and eternally forgiven by Jesus' death. But the Israelites couldn't see that they were doing anything wrong. They were presenting the sacrifices required by the law, observing the festivals they were supposed to. But their hearts weren't in it- they had failed to see what it was that God required of them. It wasn't sacrifices, or empty words of repentance. It was changed attitudes and soft hearts that broke when they saw the misery their fellow Israelites were in because of their oppression, and actions that showed their repentance.

It makes me sad that even if individual churches can make progress towards living out this ideal, negative attitudes towards the church and its message will probably still prevail. The church mostly has only itself to blame for this, we've not been the best witnesses ever- probably because for so long the church took it for granted that people would come to it- it didn't ever think about strategies to make itself attractive to outsiders, or ways of retaining the interest of casual attendees. Yet the church has an important message for society today. Just as the prophets called to Israel to return to God, we need to call the church's attention to the poor, the outsiders and the oppressed of society- never more so than in this time of economic hardship and worry for many.

So worship leads us to consider social action, which in turn leads to people understanding and appreciating who God really is, and that he loves them, which leads them to praise and worship him. Through worship we are re-energised and equipped for both social action and evangelism. Of course, if only it was all as neat and simple as that...


* "God of Justice" by Tim Hughes. My church's worship leader Simon Bray has recently written a song on this topic which spells out the link between acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God and not offering an empty sacrifice of praise, and how we have to rely on God to fill us with his Spirit to allow us to carry on his work.