do-justice

A sermon preached at Convocation, September 16, 2026, at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Micah 6:6-8

Last week, a company the university hired to help increase graduate student enrollment asked all the deans to create an elevator pitch, a concise 60-second summary of our various schools that quickly explains its value to a listener. It’s not a bad exercise; I’d love to hear your responses. But it’s also not an easy exercise; I found it challenging for a couple of reasons. One is that the first thing that occurred to me is this scripture passage, though I’m sure that’s not what they had in mind. The other is why it occurred to me.

A number of years ago, Simon Sinek gave a TEDTalk about “Why We Start with the Why.”[1] Sinek drew what he called the “Golden Circle.” He said most organizations start from the outer ring of that circle when making their pitch.

(Referring to a large sheet of paper with three concentric circles drawn on it, and pointing to the large, outer circle, labeled “What”): Here’s what we do. We’ve got great computers.

(Pointing to the middle circle, labeled “How”): Here’s how we do it. They’re different and better than our competitors.

(Pointing to the inner circle, labeled “Why”): But inspiring leaders and organizations start from the center and move out. Here’s what we believe. Here’s what we’re passionate about. Here’s a way of life, a cause, a movement. And here’s a product or a service or an activity that will let you be a part of it.

In his TEDTalk, he kept repeating, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” Now, if you bristle at the word, “buy,” I’m right there with you. So replace it with the word, “invest.” Or the phrase, “commit to.” People don’t commit to what you do. They commit to why you do it.

And that brings me back to the Micah passage. The people of God that we meet in the Hebrew Scriptures would look at the injustice and cruelty around them and sink into hopelessness. That’s not hard for us to understand. We look around and see racist ideologies that are killing people; we see creeping totalitarianism; we see economic policies that create billionaires at the same time they guarantee that one in five children will be food insecure and the planet will keep heating up; I could go on and on. It’s easy to lose hope. If there’s no hope, there’s no reason to act. If things can’t change, then you might as well not bother to try.

The Old Testament prophets spoke up and spoke out to counter this kind of hopelessness. They understood how past and current oppressive realities point to a despairing future. They remembered what God requires, and they saw how forgetting and ignoring God’s heart, God’s hopes, God’s dreams for God’s people would result in a dystopian future.[2]

Not much is certain about Micah; he may have prophesied around 725 to 701 B.C.E. What we know is what he saw. He saw powerful landlords driving farmers off the land where they’d made a living for generations. He saw dishonest business practices. He saw unscrupulous priests and greedy judges. He saw worship that talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk. And so Micah reminds the people of what God wants for God’s world. Micah is saying, loud and clear, that injustice is not the norm. When people are being exploited and oppressed, it means something is broken, something’s gone wrong. It gives tremendous hope to those who are being exploited to know that their suffering isn’t just the natural order of things. And by challenging injustice in God’s name, Micah reminds the people that it is God who establishes what is just, and who judges those who violate God’s justice. He describes a time to come when peace will be so much the norm that people won’t even bother to learn the skills of war. A time when people will sit unperturbed under their own vines or their own fig trees – which means they’ll have their own vines or fig trees – and “no one shall make them afraid.”[3]

It’s a beautiful vision. It’s what Jesus described again and again with his metaphor, “the Kingdom of God.”[4] If it you don’t like the word, “kingdom,” if “commonwealth” or “kin-dom” or “reign” work better for you, use those words. The point is that it’s the life and the world that God designed, that God desires, to which God calls us and helps us co-create. It’s God’s reconciling community,[5] God’s will being done on earth as in heaven. Jesus said it’s “at hand”[6] – within reach, available to everyone, inviting our participation, calling us to rethink everything and reorient our lives. It’s completely unlike any kingdom you’ve ever experienced, said Jesus, because God is the ruler and God is all about love; God so loves God’s world. And if love is God’s way, then our calling is to reconciling, healing love. We are called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. When I think about an elevator pitch for SFTS, our “why” is not attracting more students to our campus or our online programs. As much as I want to increase enrollment, and believe me, I do, that is not our why. Our why is not to keep or justify our jobs. It’s not to get converts and it’s certainly not to save souls. It’s not to preserve these buildings or keep the campus intact. It’s not even about serving others and working for social justice, as important as those are. Service and justice are still a “what” and a “how,” not a why. It’s not even training our students to be agents of change, agents of the love and healing and justice to which we’re called. That probably should go in our elevator pitch, but it’s still a “what.” It’s not even keeping this seminary, this seminary I dearly love, afloat.

Our “why” is that we trust this vision, we hope in this vision, and we live into this vision of God’s love for God’s world; a vision of peace and justice to be lived here and now in the daily lives of all people. We can’t achieve it on our own, but we can move toward it by doing justice: proclaiming, as Jesus read from the scroll in Luke, freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, setting the oppressed free and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.[7] We move toward it by loving kindness: extending compassion even when it’s really hard. We move toward it by walking humbly with God: remembering God’s ways aren’t our ways, and not assuming that we’re always the good guys or God’s favorites.

Some of you might remember, years ago, a Hebrew National TV ad for kosher hotdogs. A smiling Uncle Sam holds a hotdog in his hand as a voice over explains that government regulations say Hebrew National could make its hotdogs from frozen beef. “We don’t” says the announcer, and Uncle Sam’s smile falters. “The government says we can use artificial coloring and add meat by-products.” “We don’t,” chimes the announcer, and Uncle Sam’s smile fades again. “The government says we can add non-meat fillers,” and the announcer concludes; “We can’t. We’re kosher. And we have to answer to an even higher authority.”[8]

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.

(Pointing to the outer circle): What: We train agents of transformation, people who strive to help create and lead a more just and loving world.

(Pointing to the middle circle): How: Through a rigorous curriculum of academic study and lovingly guided spiritual formation.

(Pointing to the inner circle): Why: We answer to a higher authority; a higher authority who loves this world and everything in it; and calls us to a future in which all enjoy the fruits of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

[2] Luther E. Smith Jr., Hope Is Here! (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023)

[3] Micah 4:4.

[4] Or in Matthew’s gospel, the Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew respectfully avoids the name of God by using, as it were, the dwelling for the dweller, just as, mutatis mutandis, we do by announcing, ‘The White House says …,” when we mean “The President says.’ For Matthew, “kingdom of heaven” means exactly the same as “kingdom of God.” John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 118.

[5] Brian D. McLaren, https://brianmclaren.net/q-r-what-is-the-gospel/.

[6] Matthew 4:17.

[7] Luke 4:18-19.

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1eeV5-M4U

Lesson: Micah 6:1-8

Those of us who preach regularly, who interact with Scripture regularly, usually end up with some favorite passages, touchstones that shape our faith. Micah 6:1-8 is one of mine, and in particular Micah 6:8:

God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

If you’ve ever wondered what God wants, there it is. Right there in black and white. One simple yet powerful verse. Bam!

In earlier chapters, the prophet Micah explains that God is unhappy with the way God’s people have been living. Micah spoke to the Southern Kingdom of Israel, called Judah, in the 8th century B.C.E. Micah saw that the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. More than that: the rich were getting richer because the poor were getting poorer. Those with land and power foreclosed on the small plots of land held by farmers. Wealth became concentrated in the hands of a small group of people, while many others were driven into poverty. Compassion and mercy were in short supply, but pious people just went on “worshiping” as though nothing important was happening around them. People went through the right motions, but their hearts were hard and their faces turned away from the suffering of those around them.

Sound familiar?

So, in Chapter 6, the prophet envisions a gigantic courtroom where the people are being called on the cosmic carpet. The prophet calls upon the mountains, the ancient witnesses to all of Israel’s history, to serve as the jury and listen to the case against Judah. The people have become “wearied” by God, which probably means that they’ve become tired of following God’s moral demands. God reminds them of the exodus from Egypt and the deliverance from the hands of the Moabite Balak as evidence that God has delivered on all the divine promises. Judah has no grounds for defense.

Judah doesn’t admit guilt or ask for forgiveness but rushes quickly to “Okay, okay; how can I fix this?” “What do I have to do, God? Just tell me. I’ll do whatever it takes. Burnt offerings, year-old calves, thousands of rams, tens of thousands of rivers of oil?” The defendant can tell that all this still isn’t enough and in desperation, offers his first-born child. “Will that take care of it? Is that what you want?”

But of course, that is not what God wants.

The people of Judah want to fix their relationship with God by doing things that show on the outside but don’t necessarily change them on the inside into people who care about the person standing right in front of them. Is Micah saying worship isn’t important? No. The people are already worshiping. What Micah is saying is something along the lines of that old adage: Sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car. He’s saying that our faith should show in our lives, every day, in every encounter, not only in how we spend Sunday morning.

Micah tells the people they’ve missed the point. God wants and requires nothing less than that they live into their covenant with God. In other words, God wants them to become decent human beings. Micah boils this down to three basics: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

I worked with an associate pastor who used to say, “It’s all that simple, and it’s all that hard.” That certainly applies here.

“Love kindness” might seem like the easiest of the three but it’s more than being “nice.” The Hebrew word which most Bibles translate as kindness is hesed, and it can mean mercy, charity, or compassion. Walter Brueggemann wrote that there is a covenantal and community element here that the word “kindness” doesn’t capture. Christine Pohl writes, “Kindness is far more than a single or random action; it is part of a way of life characterized by moral attentiveness that is both respectful of – and helpful to – others. Kindness involves a recognition of our common humanity and frailty that leads us to care about each person’s particular well-being and to treat him or her as deserving of generous response and respect.” I would summarize this, “Treat everyone you meet as though they are a child of God – because they are.”

“Doing justice” is tough for a couple of reasons. For starters, people have a hard time agreeing what justice is. Our politically polarized nation is dramatic proof of this. And besides that, it is so easy to feel overwhelmed. Brueggemann wrote that to “do justice” means to be actively engaged in the redistribution of power in the world, to correct the systemic inequalities that marginalize some for the excessive enhancement of others.” Yikes. That is a big, big job. Can any of us do enough?

Which points us to the third on Micah’s list of requirements: Walk humbly with your God. To “walk humbly with God” means to abandon our sense of self-sufficiency; to understand we can’t do what we need to do alone; we need other people and more importantly, we need God. Walking humbly can be a means to doing justice. By acknowledging that our views are a partial expression of gospel truth – as are the views of those who disagree with us – we make room for the other in our midst. Walking humbly also means understanding that we really can do only so much. When you bang your head against institutional inertia long enough you figure out that systemic change doesn’t happen without the personal transformation of others within the system, and sometimes we can’t just make that happen. Sometimes we have to trust in the grace of a merciful God. So walking humbly with God might mean saying the Serenity Prayer and asking ourselves the question, “What’s worth doing even if we fail?”

That is where many of us find ourselves these days. It helps to have a North Star, an orientation to keep us putting one foot in front of the other: Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. It’s all that simple. And it’s all that hard.

Resources:
Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly Gaventa and James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, James D. Newsome, ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
Christine Pohl, “Recovering Kindness: An Urgent Virtue in a Ruthless World, in The Christian Century, October 18, 2012, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-10/recovering-kindness.
Scott D. Anderson, “Living By the Word,” in The Christian Century, January 30, 2011, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-01/sunday-january-30-2011.
Brené Brown, Daring Greatly (New York: Gotham Books, 2012).

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