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| But none of these worship practices meant anything in isolation, said Micah. While there is nothing wrong with burnt offering per se, real worship must have three elements: people who practice justice, people who love kindness, and people who walk humbly with God. The justice here is shalom justice. God wants everyone to have shalom, which includes peace with God, peace with other people, peace within ourselves and peaceful living with all of creation. Shalom means that everyone has enough to eat, dignified labor and a decent house to live in. So if someone in the community is hungry, no one has shalom. In shalom justice, people get what they need, not necessarily what they deserve (as contrasted to the American justice system). To love kindness means to love it when people get what they don’t deserve. Closely related to shalom justice, this concept is another way of understanding grace. God’s grace to us is always undeserved. Jesus continues to promote this concept of loving kindness with the stories of the Prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32, where the older brother doesn’t not love kindness) and the parable of the workers, where the people who only work an hour get the same wage as those who work all day (Matthew 20:1-16). Walking humbly with God is a vivid word picture the Hebrews used to describe obedience. Instead of using an abstract term such as the word obedience, they understood that to obey God meant to walk—humbly—wherever God went. These three concepts helped explain true worship to God’s people, and to us today as well. |
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