Require of You . . .

Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-178 Sunday 14 Oct 2001

Reading: PSALM 82 – WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF YOU? (See Micah 6:8)

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘Lord, your Word is open before me. Help me, by your Spirit, to be open to you, willing for you to change me.’

I recently enjoyed a radio interview with Albie Sachs, which was interspersed with his favourite music. Justice Sachs is now a senior judge in South Africa. In the years of struggle against apartheid he was one of the few white members of the African National Congress (ANC). A record stretch of solitary confinement was followed by terrible injuries in a car bomb attack in Mozambique. As a legislator in the new South Africa, Sachs has chosen to renounce membership of the ANC for the sake of credible impartiality. In several recent trials his judgements have benefited people who formerly hated and harassed him.

Sachs is no orthodox believer. But I found his exacting commitment to the practice of justice and mercy probing my response to this poet’s vision. In the court above all courts, powerful ‘gods’ of civil society face the charges of the Judge of all the earth (vs 1,6,8).(See Amos 5:10-12; Jer 7:1-7) They have overseen the wholesale distortion and corruption of justice (v 2); they are indifferent to the ‘non-entities’ of society, those with no one to stand for them (vs 3-5).

There are many ways to ‘bow before the text’ (the writer Walter Brueggemann’s phrase) of this psalm: in serious reflection on, and confession of, our own partialities and prejudices; in practical commitment to act against injustice and practise mercy; in informed intercession for ourselves or others as political leaders, law makers, those responsible for exercising justice in ever more complex situations; in indignant prayer on behalf of the weak, poor, parentless, oppressed. Be open for prayer to lead to involvement.

‘The test of our work is not … profit … or … status … but its effects in creation. Are persons impoverished? Is the land diminished? … Is the world less or more because of my work?’ (Eugene Peterson, Earth and Altar, IVP, 1985).

– Pauline Hoggarth

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001