The ancient Hebrew prophet Micah would have been a good TikTok user. He knew how to keep things short and succinct, and he had a knack for memorable phrases. He summed up the life of faithful covenant obedience as well as anybody before or since: do justice, practice lovingkindness, and walk humbly with God. Less than 40 characters, and it could easily fit on a smartphone screen! 

Lifetimes have been spent trying to live into Micah’s vision, and better minds than mine have mined the depths of these words – words like justice, lovingkindness (usually translated mercy), humility. Micah’s summary of the Lord’s requirements is a roadmap to a life well-lived, a signpost to the way of God’s upside-down reign of love, welcome, and communion. 

As I teach college students, speak to church leaders, and engage with my neighbours, I am more and more convinced that faith communities could use some help with one of Micah’s three calls to action: doing justice. We don’t seem to need much persuading to practice mercy, or loving-kindness: caring for those in our path who need to feel God’s love and compassion through our acts of care and service. And walking humbly with God? I have yet to encounter people of faith who would deny the need to walk in relationship with their Creator and Redeemer.

But doing justice? That seems to be a harder sell. Sometimes folks resist justice because it is deemed to be peripheral to the real work of loving God (‘walking humbly’) and loving our neighbours (‘practicing lovingkindness’). Or folks are skeptical because they believe justice to be about punishment, retribution, and judgment, even though when the ancient prophets, priests, and apostles used the word ‘justice’ (mishpat & tsedekah in Hebrew, or dikaiosune in Greek) they are referring to the work of restoring, repairing, and renewing all those broken relationships in our lives that need mending – personal, economic, political, communal, ecological and more - so that God’s creation can flourish. 

What a shame, to miss God’s invitation to justice! 

To practice lovingkindness without justice is to serve our neighbours experiencing hunger at our local soup kitchen, and not ask why they are poor in the first place. To practice lovingkindness without justice is to donate to an international hunger and relief organization, but not ask how our own decisions and the decisions of our leaders contribute to global hunger. It is to ask ‘What can we do?’ without also asking ‘Why are things the way they are, and how can they change for the better?’ 

In the same way, to try to walk humbly with our God without doing justice is to miss out on the fullness of God’s reign. To walk humbly with God without doing justice is learning to notice Christ’s presence in our lives through spiritual disciplines like scripture reading and prayer, while missing Christ’s promised presence in those who are hungry, imprisoned, and oppressed, as Jesus himself promises in Matthew’s gospel. It is to listen for God’s voice in prayer while missing God’s voice in the cry of the poor. It is, to paraphrase theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, to say ‘God loves you’ to the poor while ignoring the many ways that our world says to the poor: ‘You are not worthy of love.’

Of course, accepting all three parts of Micah’s invitation – justice, lovingkindness, and walking with God – is no small task! But one first step to walking the way of God’s loving reign in the world is to take all three seriously: to try, each day, in whatever faltering way we can, to do what the Lord requires of us: doing justice, practicing lovingkindness, walking humbly with our Creator.