These fractures were hardly created by the actions of this General Assembly even if it may have exacerbated some of them. We can all agree to the needs for justice, loving kindness, humility. However, it is perhaps ironic that it may be these very things — or at least our differing understandings of them — that are dividing us.
The fact is, we don’t agree on what “justice” is. You see, the word Micah uses for “justice” (mishpat, for those dusting off their Hebrew) is a word that refers to the processes of governing, to the making and the application of rules for the ordering of life and society. As one who ministers to those who live and work in the environs of our nation’s capital, it comes as no surprise to me that there is hardly unanimity about what counts as a “just” outcome to be structured into our laws. Even if we should agree both in society and in church that people should not be discriminated against because of their patterns of sexual attraction, we disagree about the rules and laws that should set the parameters within which those attractions may or may not be acted upon. And we disagree about what specifically constitutes “justice” in a host of other spheres as well, including economics, relationships among nations, and among racial and ethnic groups within nations.
The fact is, we don’t agree on what “loving kindness” is. Scholars of the Hebrew language have debated long and vigorously about the nuance of the phrase Micah uses (particularly the word chesed). Some have stressed the commitments, bonds, and obligations that love places upon us. Other scholars have emphasized the mercy and grace of love that is truly unconditional. As any parent knows, both these things are true of the most profound expressions of love, and the two strands can sometimes come into conflict with each other. Nothing can make us not love our children, but sometimes the loving thing to do is to hold them accountable for their actions, to make them live up to their obligations rather than mercifully excusing every destructive act. The hard thing is discerning which aspect is required within a specific situation.
The fact is, we don’t agree on what “humility” is when it comes to our “walk” with God. Does it mean that we submit completely to the dictates of Scripture without question or reflection, or does it mean that we remain in relationship with God, allowing it to grow and develop as all relationships do without demanding that it stay (or become) what we might demand it should be? And frankly, Micah is of the least help here, for the word that he chooses occurs nowhere else in Scripture. In Hebrew it could refer to “humility,” as it is traditionally translated, or it could refer to “wisdom” or “discernment.” Is Micah calling on us to admit and accept our own human limits, or is he challenging us to exercise the gifts that God has placed in our lives?
The fact of these disagreements makes clear what is truly fracturing the church. Fights about ordination standards, about definitions of marriage, and about all the things that divide us are ultimately fights about how we understand Scripture. It isn’t that one side in the struggle holds to the authority of Scripture and the other finds it outmoded in a modern world. No, both sides are convinced that God’s requirements that we “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God,” and so with one another, are the only hopes not only for our church but for the world.
For that reason we probably need to place our emphasis on the one word from Micah’s oracle that is clear, at least in Hebrew. The imperative to “walk with” isn’t simply a reference to getting from one place to another by use of our legs and feet. It is the call to remain in relationship with someone, as in the old saying about only knowing someone when you have “walked a mile in their shoes.” That relationship here is explicitly with God, implicitly with one another. For all the disagreements in committees and on the plenary floor, the fact is that both sides of our church gathered together again and again throughout the Assembly to worship, to be wrapped in our relationship with God. Only in that relationship is there any hope of learning the justice and love that can heal our fractures as we humbly and wisely walk through life together.
Timothy B. Cargal is pastor of Northwood Church in Silver Spring, Md., and vice moderator of National Capital Presbytery.
