Christian Aid Week May 2021
Whaley Bridge
Micah 6: 1-8
God’s justice & climate justice
(People called to stand)
Please remain standing.
People of Whaley Bridge Parish, you are brought here today to stand trial before God’s holy court to answer grave charges. You, and indeed all the Christians of this country, are charged with
failing to act justly and
failing to love mercy and
failing to walk humbly with your God.
How do you plead, people of Whaley Bridge Parish? ….
Please be seated.
How do we all plead to a charge like that? But charged we are. The reading in Micah chapter 6 is what is called a covenant lawsuit and, in it, God is the judge, Micah is his prosecuting counsel and the mountains and foundations of the world are the jury.
As a lawyer it struck me that even with the rather lovely adaptation of the reading which we heard, we can lose some of the power of what is going on in this reading, so I hope that you’ll forgive me for my indicting you a moment ago to bring the point home.
The reading of the indictment, the formal charges, is a moment of solemn drama in any criminal trial. The wrongdoing is crystallised into its essence. The key elements which the prosecution must prove if it is to succeed are identified and, for anyone in the dock, there is a sense that the chickens might finally be coming home to roost.
In our reading today, the whole nation of Old Testament Israel is in the dock for breaking their covenant with God. And we, of course, are people of the new covenant and the charge applies to us today so, in a few minutes, I’ll explore the evidence against us and see what mitigation we can offer.
Today is Christian Aid Sunday when we, with people all over the UK, pause to stand with people in poor and climate ravaged parts of the world who are struggling because of the unfair way in which power, wealth and resources are distributed.
Most people here may be familiar with Christian Aid but, for anyone who isn’t, for over 75 years they have worked to challenge inequality and stand with the world’s poorest people. Their website says “Poverty is an outrage against humanity. It robs people of their dignity and lets injustice thrive.” Those are strong and true words and I think we should hear them afresh today.
And I know that Whaley Bridge Parish, along with lots of C of E parishes up and down the country, has a long and honourable tradition of taking these issues seriously, generously giving of time and money to support the causes Christian Aid has supported.
Our service today makes clear that these problems haven’t gone away. It’s true that progress has been made. In 1940, over 40% of people across the world lived in extreme poverty. That is the equivalent of a dollar a day. By 1980 that had fallen to about 32% and by 2015 it was down to about 10% or so. So that is progress, and we should be proud of it. In numerical terms though there are still an outrageous number of people living in that terrible level of degradation. 10% of 7.3 billion people is over 700 million people. 700 million people living in extreme poverty. Christian Aid, like all the aid agencies, still has work to do. They haven’t yet worked themselves out of a job.
And their job is getting harder. Today we’ve been asked to pay special attention to the impact that climate change has on the poorest people of the world. Global warming, caused by CO2 emissions from heating and transport and industry, is having a serious effect on the often-fragile environments in which the poorest live. And there’s a terrible irony in that. The lifestyles of the poorest 10% mean they hardly emit any CO2 at al. Most carbon emissions are by developed nations. You and I. Yet it’s the poorest countries which are suffering the worst effects of global warming, driving them deeper into poverty. So Christian Aid’s work is far from done. It’s good that we remember that today and commit ourselves to doing something about it.
Which takes us back to our Crown Court trial as set out in Micah, Chapter 6. I really liked the way that the reading was presented today. It’s good to hear the bible in different forms and translations to keep it fresh but I want to look a little more closely at some of the text as it’s more precisely translated.
Micah is one of the Old Testament prophets of justice. And Micah chapter 6 literally puts the nation of Israel on trial. So the opening words of Chapter 6 in the NIV are
“Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.
“Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation;
listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the Lord has a case against his people;
he is lodging a charge against Israel.
Israel, you’ll remember, was the beneficiary of God’s special Covenant. They were the chosen people, rescued from slavery in Egypt. They had a special relationship with God but they had blown it, forgotten who they truly were and Micah has arrived with the reckoning.
I think that its really interesting, in the context of our concerns about climate change today, that the jury in this trial are the “mountains” and “foundations of the earth.” In the reading they remind us that God is the sovereign creator of everything, but I wonder how we would fair today if our conduct was put on trial before a jury made up of our broken, globally overheated planet? I wonder.
So Micah’s charges are against Israel, but we’re the people of the new covenant and the God of the Old Testament is the same God of Jesus and the New. We are in the dock as well. Micah accuses us as much as he did the people of Israel back in about the 7th and 8th centuries BC.
And what, I hope you’re asking, are we charged with?
I think that our Gospel reading can help us here. John boils it down to the simplest yet most profound thing possible. “Love one another”. Love one another. It can seem a little saccharine if we’re not careful, but it is, of course, the most profound heart of how we’re meant to relate to each other.
I suspect that if we really did love one another, as John sets out, then climate change and poverty would have been eradicated many years ago. But they haven’t, so perhaps we need to go back to Micah and his charge sheet to get the detail of what we should have been doing all along.
In the standard NIV translation, this reading ends
“He has shown you, O mortal, 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.”
To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. These aren’t words which some woolly liberal, bleeding heart liberal C of E vicar has come up with. This is God’s expectation of how we will live our lives. It is His benchmark, His measuring stick, His plumb line. This is strong stuff and there are three key words we need to clock.
The first is mispat which the NIV translates as ‘act justly’. It does have a legal overtone but fundamentally it means to set up every area of life in accordance with God’s will. A just society is one where God’s will for justice is reflected.
The second key word is hesed which the NIV translates as ‘love mercy’. Mercy certainly is one translation of the word but the commentaries tell us it means so much more. It implies a binding together of poor and rich, weak and strong, female and male. Care of and between all in covenant love. You might think it echoes a vision of the Kingdom of God.
The final key word is hasnea which the NIV translates as ‘humbly’. We are directed to walk humbly with God but in fact hasnea means so much more. It implies it is such a humble, loving walk that we can truly act justly and love mercy. We are walking with God and if that’s the true orientation of our heart, then all these things are truly possible.
So Micah has put us in the dock and charged us. And if we can’t honestly say that we act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God then we stand convicted. As a lawyer, my job is to assess the evidence objectively and give frank and fearless advice. I have to be honest, I think the facts condemn us. The world’s poorest people are indeed suffering the effects of climate change caused by us all, myself included.
All is not lost though. We can support Christian Aid and all their good work. We can campaign and lobby for better climate policies and there’s lots to join in with here in Whaley Bridge. Yesterday, Acclimatise Whaley met here at Holy Trinity to run the Teracycle project which enables things which the normal recycling services reject to be recycled. It’s a really good news thing and it’s great that Jamie and Sophie put so much love and care and time into making it happen.
All is not lost but time is ticking. We’re in the dock and the Judge is frowning. The jury is our bruised and battered planet and the poorest countries stand in Micah’s shoes demanding justice. Whose side are you on they ask in cross examination. How do you answer?
Amen