Walk the walk
The May Invitation
During May I am making an invitation to you to become part of the Wharfedale Vineyard. Some of you are already and to you the invitation is, “do you want to do this for another year?” To those of you who are not the invitation is, “would you like to join in?”
What does that mean?
- Week one - I introduced our theme for the coming year from Micah 6.
I invited you to re-align with God. He has saved us and calls us into a covenant relationship with him in which our part is to do what is good, to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. That is what this church is going for. Do you want to join in?
- Week two - giving starts with receiving. I made an invitation to give money.
We are recipients of His extraordinary grace and generosity and part of our response is to give by giving to His church for the fulfilment of the mission He has given us.
- Week three - I invite you to walk the walk. To live lives which demonstrate justice, kindness and walking humbly.
- And then in the fourth week (22 May) we will gather it all together and provide you with an opportunity to respond to the invitation. By then I would love you to have prayed and pondered on what the Lord has called you to. In what ways do you want to join in with the life of this community? Do you wish to carry on exactly as before? Do you wish to do something different?
I would like you to sit down and prayerfully consider your resources. How much energy, time and money will you have during the next year? Thank God for His provision and ask Him how you can join in.
Everyone’s circumstances are different, and changing. Some can give more or less. Others can do more, some less. Some have more time than others. That’s OK.
We will then all make our responses (which can be anonymous of course). We can then measure what we are heading into next year, what our budget will look like, where there is passion to minister, how people are going to pray for this family.
Micah 6:8 Walk the walk
Amongst many things, this scripture provides us with a real challenge to the way we are going to live our lives. We have to grapple with this from the perspective of our community here … how do we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God as a group of people? We will look at that more next week.
This week I want to ask questions about what this is like in our own lives – our daily, humdrum, working lives.
Do justice
This is to do with righteous judgement by judges and the courts. Micah was railing against the injustice in the system and in the society and was calling the leaders and people to look after the poor and marginalized. The challenge to us is different in that our society is based on 000s of years of this very judeo/christian ethic so that in the UK we have an enforceable legal system and a social security net.
Justice extends to issues of social justice, human rights, politics and care for the environment. We will look at those issues in more depth another time. We also see extreme poverty in our own society.
Today we are focussing on our working lives and a more personalised take on doing justice.
In your daily life, especially at work, where do you sense a challenge to justice?
Where do you perceive issues of right and wrong to which you have to face up?
Filling in expenses accurately, not making fraudulent insurance claims, not going along with office banter which is racist, sexist or celebrating alcohol or unsafe driving. Or bigger issues to do with drawing up deals and contracts on a fair basis, facing up to favouritism, politics within organisations. You get the picture.
Love kindness
This is to do with an otherlyness, an altruism which we pick up in more detail in the sermon on the mount. Love your enemies, blessed are the meek, humble, kind, patient, peacemaker etc.
In business or work are we aggressive and competitive in a way that also values the other person and contains love and grace? How do men in particular behave with grace and mercy without losing their place in the hierarchy of machismo?
Sometimes we are in danger of caricaturing this behaviour – we think doing justice means aggression and severity. It isn’t. We think loving kindness means being spineless and a doormat. It isn’t.
Fighting strongly for justice and loving kindness – what on the surface appears to mean having either a masculine or a feminine characteristic but not both – may seem to be unachievable in the same person.
But we see both in Jesus. He was unafraid to take on conflict and stand up against what was wrong. He walked into hostile territory and challenged the livelihood of the market traders in the temple, He brooked no challenge from the fishermen who followed Him, He was fearless in taking on the religious leaders of the day (probably the equivalent of Jeremy Paxman), when dealing with the leaders of the community, Roman centurions or the Bishops you never see him overawed, He faced violence and aggression from the authorities with great courage.
And yet, as you read about Him and the way He related to people, particularly the weak and powerless, he valued them, thought of their needs, went out of His way to care for them. Miraculously providing enough wine to floor a rugby team or two. Feeding thousands, touching the untouchable, speaking kindly but firmly to those caught in a trap.
But that is the challenge for all of us. To be strong in the pursuit of justice but to be unswerving in our value of the other person, to love being merciful and gracious to them.
Walk humbly
This is about alignment. It is about recognising that He is God and we are not. That we are hugely privileged to be invited to walk beside Him and know His hand on our lives.
It is subsequently about aligning our lives and priorities and values to His calling.
It is about being partners in the covenant relationship in which He has done the saving acts.
So how do you hear His voice and see Him in action in your daily life, in the humdrum of work, in the heat of the commercial moment?
How do you know that the trajectory of your life and career or retirement is in alignment with Him?
Questions we asked a panel of guests - what would you answer?
- To what extent are you doing what you do because it is in line with God’s purpose for your life?
- Can you give me an example of when you have found yourself doing something, or not doing something because you are aware of a justice, kindness or humbleness before God issue?
- When we have this challenge of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly, what would you say is the thing you find most difficult?
David Flowers, 15/05/2011