To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

What does the Lord require of you?
To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6.8 

A Sermon by The Revd. David Moore
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 20 January 2013

If you search the internet for films about Border towns you may be surprised how many there are. You will all have seen such films - often sinister, always a danger of the bad guys arriving; often with a no nonsense sheriff and of course Mexican dozing under big hats! Border towns are often places for people fleeing violence, poverty, cruelty - all looking for safe lodgings or safety or revenge.

Micah lived in a Border town at a time when human settlements were more or less associated with tribes. The implication from his words is that he lived in a violent place, where killing strangers appears to have been a godly thing to do. Probably surrounded by tribal communities - small nation states in the making - knocking ten bells out of each other much of the time.

This was the world of the Prophet Micah who called his fellow citizens to adopt a very different approach to life! He called them to act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly before God. Micah appears to carry a message similar to that of Isaiah’s, namely to: beat your swords into ploughshares. At a time when other small nation states were slaying each other in the name of God there were a few Jewish ‘dreamers’ with a very different approach to international relations.

We might conclude that many of these films about border towns were revisiting stories as old as the Bible - and this has been the perpetual struggle of those who would provide leadership on the world stage ever since - how to make peace in the midst of diversity, misunderstanding and cultural difference, and competing territorial claims (cf Falklands!).

The recent Cornerstone discussion document on Diversity disappointed me in that it explores diversity solely within our own religious community. My sense is that the burning issue for the Church in Britain is to understand and express the diversity of the world in which we find ourselves and for us that is the experience of Milton Keynes. The word ecumenical refers to the ‘whole inhabited world’ - ecumenism is a quest, a calling, a burden, as well as the holding of everything together in the name of Christ.

Listen to this short letter from a newspaper and as I read it, I invite you to switch your imagination to ‘high definition’ and your memory to that of being a teenager again. This letter comes is by Dinah Hall and was in the Guardian letters page a few weeks ago.

There is nothing like a teenage diary for putting momentous historical events into perspective. “This is my diary entry for 20 July 1969. ‘I went to the arts centre (by myself) in yellow cords and blouse. Ian was there but he did not speak to me. Got a rhyme put in my handbag by somebody who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH. Man landed on moon.’”

Four words about humankind’s most momentous adventure ever and 66 words about teenage hormones!

This story makes clear the power of our personal agenda to override the most spectacular world-changing events. How is it that our interests, fears, passions have the power to override or hide what is happening outside of us?

And that is also the tragic story of the church: we produce some of the most beautiful music, literature and art the world has ever known, but are beaten down again and again by the bigotry of our own ignorance. And we are not free of it here at Christ the Cornerstone, far from it.

There are very few people remaining who were here at Cornerstone when the decisions were made to build this church. Clearly, a project as ambitious as this does not ‘just happen’. Meeting after meeting after meeting. People like you engaged in discussion after discussion; having major disagreements and eventually finding sufficient agreement to move forward.

It was, by all accounts, an invigorating and taxing time - a time when church members and bishops lost a great deal of sleep! When countless critical decisions had to be made almost on a daily basis, members of the church HAD to find ways of trusting each other! There are now few of those left who carried the full weight of that cost.

As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins, what might the ecumenical vision now mean for us today 21 years on from the opening.

What is clear is that there is hardly any first-hand memory, that we have difficulty in recalling or imagining the exact emotions and order of events. If memory and interpretation is that hard to grasp, how much harder will it be to envisage the Bible stories - and therein lays a problem. We today are perhaps not unlike the girl in yellow jeans - our emotions colour all our horizons. Putting our personal agendas to the fore can be a way of missing what God’s word for us today might be.

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. Micah 6.8

This week I invite you to reflect/muse upon faith as ‘radical trust'; love as course of action, rather than a cluster of beliefs about which we endlessly argue or worry. 

The Border town prophet spelt out a radical belief:

Act justly - this is first and foremost about putting others first - not allowing the ‘yellow jean syndrome’ to flood our horizon with our ‘hormones’ or cultural myopia. (Myopia = nearsightedness, lack of imagination, foresight or intellectual insight.) Act justly.

Love mercy - think of ‘love’ as a verb ... a doing word; love as action rather than sentiment or sentimentality; putting first that which puts the other person first. (The trouble is we think we know what is best for others!)

I cannot pass the word ‘sentimentality’ without comment - the sentimentality we go in for at difficult times - eg death - is so damaging, so deadly!! How dare we voice that American drivel about not being dead but just in another room. When we die we are gone for ever - the crematorium sees to that. Justice is also about the persistence of truth.

Walk humbly - to take this lifestyle as no big deal - this, quite simply, is the reason why it can be a very disturbing way - the radical nature of ordinariness when lived with purpose.

When I came to work here I was more than a little bruised by my previous experience of being sacked ... I came into a team of remarkably gifted human beings ALL of whom treated me as if I had more to offer that I could imagine. I remember all their names and the tone of their voices.

One of the things I personally find most difficult as a Christian is the way other people assume to know what, for me, being a Christian means .... the assumption is that it’s about believing in impossible things, like God, the Trinity, being good!

For me being a Christian is first and foremost NOT these things but about becoming a pilgrim, having a clear purpose you can articulate.

What I have in mind is ‘love’ as a verb and not just or even a feeling.  I am drawn by the disturbance Jesus caused to the establishment because of his capacity to focus on the most important things, and my quest is to redefine what that means for us today.

I cannot affirm with any sense of purpose or excitement the historic creeds - I do not want to get rid of them - they are marker posts in the ever-changing sands of Christian history. However, I do invite you to make time this week to muse upon my minimalist affirmation: faith as a journey away from certainty, rather than a primary source of certainty. I understand faith as a call to action, rather than a cluster of beliefs which we argue about or feel forced to conform to.

The disturbance Jesus brought to the establishment of his day, because of his capacity to focus upon the most important things and to redefine and refine what that was, is my primary interest.

The very thing that ‘captured’ me when I arrived at Cornerstone was that people were living by faith - not in pious ways but practical, intelligent, adult ways. That is the reason I am still here. I do, however, fear now that the Diversity discussion, as wonderful as it is, lacks the political clout required to face up to the long-term disasters being heaped upon future generations by the present Government.

I do not believe that Jesus would settle for the present level of silence between believers and the world.

Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God. These characteristics do not immediately spring to mind in either the political or religious world of today.

We all adore Desmond Tutu. I wrote to Tutu many years ago when I was organising an ecumenical confirmation service, asking him to send a letter of greeting to those who were being confirmed. He obliged, sending me a letter, whereupon I, with skilful 1990 photocopying and careful use of pen AND ink, rewrote the individual names plus Desmond’s signatures. I photocopied the letter with handwritten names and signatures. Fifteen or so people between 12 and 80 left clutching their letter as if holding hands with God!

My small brush with fraud is nothing compared with the courage and clear-headedness of Desmond Tutu but we appear to have no such prophet in the land! We applaud the example but few even attempt to follow his example - we all have a long, long journey ahead. How will we rise to the challenge?

Peter Sharrocks, a retired Methodist minister living in Milton Keynes, has written songs for most of his life and he completed this one just yesterday. In conclusion I offer Peter’s vision of the ecumenical quest, in the hope that we here at Cornerstone may continue with a vision which is greater than self-interest:

TRANSCENDENT LOVE

Transcendent Love, lift us above
the petty squabbles that divide –
the spats of jealousy and griefs
that split a family apart;
with mercy, grace and deeper love
help us to heal and reconcile.

Transcendent Love, lift us beyond
the need to dominate and rule –
above the fears that come between
the nations and religious creeds;
let mercy, grace and justice be
the means by which we build our peace.

Transcendent Love, lift us above
beliefs that differ and divide;
compassion calls, and God’s served best
when neighbours needs are recognised;
humbly we walk, with hearts aflame
for justice in a world of pain.

Rejoice in God who raises up
the Way of Christ, the Best of Love;
there is no way than this to peace,
no meaner path than sacrifice;
the prophet’s call rings out today,
let faith be trust in Jesus’ Way.

©2013 Peter Sharrocks