To Love Mercy

This past Sunday our Scripture text was Micah 6:1-8. We heard it from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The basic text is – What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

Many of us have memories of the same text as it is recorded in the King James Version of the Bible. But he has shewed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

This verse from the Bible has been called “biblical ethics in a nutshell.” Ethics, as a word, is that foundation given to us that forms the basis of our moral actions. In this case, it is God who has given us this ethical framework.

It is definitely life-changing to “love kindness” and to order our lives around this value. But it is also important to shape our lives and make our moral decisions around the framework of loving mercy.

This past week it has been difficult to hear the coverage of the savage beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. It is a floodlight being shown on policing in this country. I daresay most of us have not heard of something called Scorpion Squads as a way to deal with crime in this country. Brutality and dehumanizing are too often the choices that are made. Some serious questions need to be answered.

Yes, there are more weapons on the streets than there are police officers. Yes, every day when a police officer leaves the house there is no guarantee that there will be a trip home. Yes, the stress of dealing with violent crime and with the toxicity of drug use makes this a high- risk profession. Yes, the verbal abuse is real and dehumanizing.

That is all the more reason we need to get our head out of the sand and look at how practices and institutions have given birth to police practices such as we have witnessed over and over. How do we as people of faith take the ethical imperative of “to love mercy” and transform the way we do what we do. What happened in Memphis, Tennessee was most definitely not an example of mercy. And the result is that Tyre Nichols is dead, but the lives of others are also ruined. We need to do the hard work of examining what can we do differently.

To love mercy is not to negate responsible law enforcement nor give acceptance to illegal actions. There can and there should be consequences for actions. To love mercy is to be sure those consequences are fitting for the act committed.

To love mercy is to treat one another in light of how we see God at work in our world. Our scriptures tell us about God as One who judges between good and evil. Our scriptures also tell us about God as merciful.

This is the basis for how we are to conduct our lives: But he has shewed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Rev. Clara