Do Unto Others with Kindness
Today is World Communion Sunday, so we have included with the sermon video the Communion liturgy used.
The past two Sundays I shared why the series we begin today is important to me. It’s because I struggle to get it and live it. By “it” I mean that humble, other-oriented, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing love of God. Considering what I see and hear from others who represent themselves as Christians, I’m not sure many others get it as well.
We are called to be ambassadors of the kingdom of God. We are the first fruit called to display the kingdom of God in our thoughts, words and actions. We are called to live out the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ crucified. We are to embody that as we do unto others as we want them to do to us. As we be the change we want to see in the world. This is the best thing we can do for the world.
Today, we are focusing on doing unto others with kindness. This is an opportunity, as each week will be, to reassess what it means to be God’s people, to live lives shaped in a peculiar way—a way shaped by a cross? What does it mean to live as a humble, other-oriented, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing person of faith in today’s world?
verse 8 Micah offers a completely different perspective with these well-known words. “He 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.”
In these words, Micah challenges the people to reassess what it means to be God’s people and how they practice their faith. He is saying that the crux of the matter comes down to your understanding of who this God is who holds the universe and your soul. Is God life-giving or death-dealing?
To do this, we turn our attention to the Prophet Micah and his challenge to reassess what it means to practice our faith.
Micah was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah. He saw the corruption of the political and religious leaders of the day. He saw how the lives of the people who claimed to be God’s people showed no evidence that they belonged to God. He saw how the corruption and false living had led to oppression and extreme poverty. Throughout Micah’s life, God used Micah to warn the people about their corrupt and false ways and the consequences if they didn’t change.