Walk Humbly with Your God

Prophets do not argue. Nor do they propose programmes for future growth. They throw words at us, critical or hopeful, but nonetheless insightful — future changing rather than future predicting. They call for a response, then leave us to deal with it in whatever way we can.

The words of the Hebrew prophet Micah’s statement of what God requires from us: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8 — NRSV version), have stimulated responses over the centuries from Christians — perhaps because they capture so succinctly the core of Christ’s own teaching. They call for a response in our times too. My reflections in this article are confined to the last of these three requirements: walk humbly with your God.

Walk

Walk is about life as a journey, a metaphor for process, perhaps even progress. It implies that life is motion from somewhere to somewhere. No standing still. No holding to a fixed position. Not just wandering aimlessly either. The journey has a direction though we can only just sense the end-goal. The early Christians called the teaching of Jesus the “way”, a life journey that seeks to discover and immerse us in the deep reality of the realm of God. Jesus’s disciples are a pilgrim people: a group of travellers, with some running ahead, some up front leading the chant, some acting as navigators, some stragglers, some wandering off for a time, some just catching up, some needing to be carried, some tired and irritable, and some guarding the boundaries. We seem to have lost this image of the “pilgrim people”, so prominent in the Second Vatican Council’s reforms, and replaced it with more static ones like parish, or diocese, or religious institute, or integrated school.

Humbly

The proposal to walk humbly opposes the temptation to stride proudly. It defies equally the military march of the victory parade with its threat of organised destruction and the liturgical procession of vested clergy with its promise of special divine favour.

Humility does not mean abasement. It means having a strong sense of the delicate but precious part we play in the intricate reality of God’s dream for the world. Importantly, it scorns the many forms of human arrogance. We have become used to, perhaps even a little immune to (because many of us have to include ourselves in this), the arrogance of the people who have dedicated themselves to power, wealth, or recognition. Yet few of us have learned how to deal with the arrogance of the human race itself — the attempt and the failure to dominate everything else in the Earth. Collectively, we still need to find a place and a role within that larger reality, a role that is neither foolishly arrogant nor unrealistically debasing.

With

The little word with carries a powerful social meaning. Accompaniment. Not “below”, not “kneeling before”, not “above all”, not demanding attention. Not under a great ruler, not before a judge, not directed by a powerful administrator. This is companionship. Most of our formal liturgical prayers have the sense of a courtier before a king, praising the king, professing our own unworthiness and petitioning for favours. Micah’s words are not about this; they are about walking with God as our companion.

Your God

With your God. Micah probably never considered that any walking could be done without God. For many of us today, there are so many dysfunctional, oppressive images of God crowding around us. We have to get rid of most of them. Pushing against these oppressive images are the opposites — those domesticated images of a god who serves mainly to comfort our distress and preserve our personal unrealities — not a real God then, not a companion, but just a friendly servant to our needs. Faced with so many competing versions of “God”, many settle simply for a permanent agnosticism.

Those of us today who have been influenced by modern individualism probably take from Micah an image of God and me walking together. Me and my God! Imagine that! But Micah is addressing us, not as individuals but collectively. This is about “our”, not just “my” God. This God relates to us as a people, as communities who recognise the God they have in common. A God who accompanies us, not just me. We have to make accommodations, personal sacrifices, negotiations in order to walk with others. This is not a God of individualism or personalist spiritualities (my successes, my achievements, my spiritual advancement, or my personal holiness). We walk together, as communities, as peoples, as networks, as movements, as nations, as families; not as individuals estranged by individual choices, personal preferences, our own agendas, our treasured rights or our individual freedoms.

Companion Creator

We walk with God as our companion. Yet within us arrogance may still be a stalking predator. Let us not allow ourselves to diminish this image of God. Recognising God as our Companion should not belittle this Companion. Compassion and immense power combine here. This Companion is not one who just walks beside us. This is a Companion who embraces us, a source of light surrounding us, a cradle of warmth among us, a wellspring of energy for doing justice and loving kindness. This Companion is a voice that tantalises us with whispers of future wisdom and tall stories from the past, a Companion who laughs along with our own little stories and treats them as treasures held forever in the memory of God. This Companion is also our Creator.

This expanded sense of “companionship” includes all those others for whom God is a Companion. This is the sense of the first part of the quote from Micah—those to whom we “do justice” and “love kindness” become the body of our Companion God. Here Micah and Christ agree. “Love God” and “love your neighbour” was Jesus’s way of saying it. And Jesus spent his life demonstrating that these two are both the same. To love God is to love all those within reach around us; and to love these is already to identify God as Companion. To walk humbly with God is already to do justice and love kindness, and those who are not humble cannot do justice or love kindness.

Fragile humans travel in trust if we are humble enough to walk with wonder and respect for our many companions within this Earth.

Be close, Companion Teacher
Be close that we may know
to live within wonder
to act with respect
to use without waste
the better to know You
the closer to seek You
the gentler to touch You
and by You be touched.*

* Part of a prayer in Neil Darragh At Home in the Earth: Seeking an Earth-centred Spirituality Accent Publications, 2000: 74

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 253 October 2020: 6-7