Loving Mercy and Doing Justice

As we look at our own commission as disciples of Christ, let’s start by looking at Isaiah’s commission, as found in chapter 6 of his writings. You’re familiar with this text, but let’s look a little deeper:

¹In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Notice when Isaiah remembers seeing the Lord – in the year that King Uzziah died. Except for the end there, it was said of King Uzziah that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He had reigned in Israel for 52 years – since the age of 16. And now we see at the time of his death the Lord appears to Isaiah.  Sometimes we can only see God clearly when that which we have set our focus upon is removed. Even the most worthwhile things upon which we set our focus can distract us from God.

So now that God has Isaiah’s attention, what is the response? It is at once intensely personal:

⁵Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

But never private:

⁸Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

As we see with Isaiah, our calling as Christians is at once intensely personal, but never private – let’s revisit that text in Micah that tells us so clearly “what the Lord requires”:

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.
                                             —Micah 6:8

A previous post covered the personal nature of discipleship in what it means to “walk humbly with your God.” Now we turn to the public ministry, as we look at what it means to “act justly” and to “love mercy.” 

MLK Still Speaks Today

So many of the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still ring true today. While many people tried to pigeon-hole Dr. King, particularly toward the end of his life, he was taking on more and more issues, seeing all intertwined within his calling. On this day honoring his legacy, then, I will let a rather lengthy excerpt from his speech delivered at Riverside Church in April of 1967 speak for itself in light of current events:

… when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do …we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

…For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!

…America’s soul … can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.