Do Justly

Do Justly .....

The Diocesan Prayer Cycle is not something available from the Bike Factory, but something that is peddled by Church House. Each day of the year a parish is remembered in prayer by the members of Chester Diocese - in theory. Tarvin takes its turn - this year basking in the glow of prayer on July 21^st. Every year we have to submit a prayer request, and this year we asked the Diocese to pray for the reordering project at St Peter's, our developing ecumenical relationships and for the young people of the parish. So what should our request be for 2008? That is what I have been asked by Church House.

While I've been racking my brains (the PCC was too busy to discuss what our response should be) our saintly Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking on Faith Communities in a Civil Society on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11. Reading extracts I realised that our subject for prayer for the next year should be "that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God". These words are from the Old Testament prophet Micah. According to Micah, doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly are requirements of our God.

The prompt came in the Archbishop?s words. Inspired by Gandhi, Archbishop Rowan Williams says this (clearly having in mind many of the ways the Church has not done justice, loved kindness and walked humbly):

The nature of an authentically religious community  means that is does not fight for position and power

The Church is a trustee of a vision that is radical and universal, the vision of a social order that is without fear, oppression, the violence of exclusion and the search for scapegoats .

The Church is most credible when least preoccupied with its security and most engaged with the human health of its environment.

To witness to a truth that does not depend on worldly victory implies that we do not battle for its survival or triumph in the way that interests and parties do in the world around us? It is when we are free from the passion to be taken seriously, to be protected or indeed to be obeyed that we are most likely to be heard.

Jesus is the exemplar of this vision and way of living. Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly. This is so radically different from the way the media and our peers encourage us to live that bad habits frequently make us indifferent to justice, preferring self interest and posturing self-importance in our walk. Because God himself loves kindness and walks humbly, he is extremely slow to condemn us for our failures and patiently awaits our transformation.

Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly. That?s the way to follow Jesus. So let the Diocese pray for our parish, and let us as a parish pray together (not just for one day in the year, but everyday) that we may in-deed walk the talk.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's website

contains his sermons and speeches.

Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God

is a quote from Micah 6:8.

To find out more about Micah go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Micah