When Dr. Thomas Tewell began his ministry as pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, these were the introductory words he spoke in his opening sermon:

As we launch another new church year together, I want to begin by affirming the past, the past 151 years of ministry and mission here which have helped to build our foundations and to establish the traditions of this congregation. Surrounded as we are by "so great a cloud of witnesses," I am deeply aware of and grateful for the leadership and the labors of those who have preceded us in this place - the people who, down through the generations, have worshiped in these pews, preached from this pulpit, worked for the cause of Christ and reached out to others in His name. What our Presbyterian forbears in the faith have passed on to us is priceless, and as the Quaker theologian Dr. Rufus Jones described it many years ago, "...We are the heirs of a vast...inheritance, and there is nothing we could ever exchange for that."

With all of that said, I also stand before you today in my tenth year as pastor here and lift up the hopes and dreams which God has in store for the future of this church. Together with the elders and staff who have chosen our theme "A Vision to Guide Us," I believe that as we focus our eyes and our lives on Jesus Christ, He will lead us forward toward the future with great expectation. And if we trust in Him, remembering that He said Be not afraid, then He will come alongside us to guide us and provide us with all that we need for the journey ahead.

The text which I have chosen to help us chart our course is taken from Micah 6, verse 8: What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

Although those words were first heard by ancient people who lived long, long ago, in the 8^th century B.C., Micah’s prophecy still speaks to us today. And this morning, I want to look at these three requirements in reverse order, for they can help us envision our personal relationship with the Lord, how we need to live together and love one another in the church, and finally, what our role and responsibility ought to be as Christians in this world.

So let us consider, at the outset, that we are to walk humbly with God. One of the realities in Micah’s day was that far too many of the people and their leaders had become complacent in their faith. Under a succession of kings named Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, the nation of Judah had grown prosperous and through political maneuvering, they had avoided invasion by the Assyrian armies.

But in their prosperity and false sense of security, those people developed an attitude of self-sufficiency which bordered on arrogance, as if to say "We are the ones who have made this nation great and this is our day in the sun"!

So Micah came into Jerusalem with a word of prophecy for them: What does the Lord require of you, but to walk humbly with Him? The word was humility, they needed to hear it, and all these centuries later, so do we.

The phrase "In God We Trust" is printed on our currency, but with the stock market still up, inflation down and more than enough money to go around, we can quickly forget that God is the source of all our blessings. Moreover, our elected leaders have been sent to Washington, D.C. to represent their constituencies and yet, some of those leaders, as they gain power and authority, lose sight of their duty as public servants and expect others to serve them.

You’d think it would be different in the church of Jesus Christ. But far too often, we play the numbers game of financial success and the size of our congregations. And sometimes we act as though "my" theology, "my" faith and "my" view of Biblical interpretation is actually superior to everyone else’s.

C. S. Lewis, in his classic book Mere Christianity, took a hard look at our attitudes and this is what he said: "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than someone else...it is the comparison that makes us proud: the pleasure of being above all the rest." Lewis called that "The Great Sin," and he went on to say that "the virtue opposite to it is...humility. Humility."

Christian friends: If we want that virtue to be more deeply ingrained in our lives, if we truly desire to walk humbly with God, then we need to open our hearts and fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself, took the form of a servant and became obedient, even to death on the cross (Philippians 2:7-8)

That’s what happened to Dr. Roland Walker. He was a prominent Professor of Bible and Religion at Ohio Wesleyan University a generation ago. But early on in his life, as a proud young intellectual pushing his way up the academic ladder, Walker felt empty and began to burn himself out. Finally, in desperation one night, he went into his study and wrote the following letter:

That was the turning point of his life! And so it can be for you and for me. Unless, until we let go of the controls and give over to God our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, we cannot, we will not find the peace and joy and hope we seek, which He alone can give us through His Son, our Savior Jesus. If you have come here today looking for that kind of personal relationship with the Lord, or if you want to discover a deeper faith than you have ever known before, then you are in the right place at the right time because that is why this church is here - to help us all draw closer to God. And the key that unlocks the door is an attitude of humility. Micah said What does the Lord require of you, but to walk humbly with Him? And that is where we must all begin.

The second step in our journey of faith which the prophet Micah envisioned is to love kindness. To love kindness. We’re talking now about how to live together and love one another in the church.

Two little brothers were getting dressed one Sabbath morning, preparing to go to Sunday School. An argument broke out and as they started to shout back and forth, their mother came upstairs to calm things down. With frustration in her voice, she said "Why can’t you just be nicer to each other"? The older brother looked up and answered "Mom, I already know how to be a whole lot nicer than I want to be."

Well so do we. But the reality is that living together and loving one another with kindness as sisters and brothers in the church requires much more than simply being nice and sharing some polite conversation at the coffee hour.

Because when we hurt each other, as we sometimes do, we need to work through the difficult process of forgiveness and reconciliation. When we disagree, we need to listen carefully and learn how to speak the truth in love. And when one of us, anyone of us suffers from illness or heartbreak or failure or fear, we in this body of Christ need to reach out to that person and let them know that they do not walk through the valley of the shadow alone.

That is what Micah meant by loving kindness, and that is the vision which his prophecy sets before us today. We are all called to be sisters and brothers in this family of faith. And if we truly desire to make our witness for Christ clear and compelling to those around us, then what greater description could be said about us than this: "See these Christians, how they love one another!"

Now there is a third requirement in Micah’s prophecy which takes us from walking humbly with God and loving kindness in the church and moves us out into the world. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice said Micah. To do justice.

Justice is a Biblical word, repeated in the Old and New Testaments more than 120 times. King David said in the 37^th Psalm: Depart from evil and do good...for the Lord loves justice (Psalm 37:27-28). The prophet Amos proclaimed Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream (Amos 5:24) And it was Jesus Christ Himself who declared Woe to you...if you neglect justice and the love of God (Luke 11:42).

So justice is a Biblical word which lifts up the equality of all of God’s children in the human family on earth. And whenever, wherever, injustice rears its ugly head, we in the church of Jesus Christ have been called by God to reach out and to speak out for those who are poor, or forgotten or forsaken or oppressed.

On the third of November, 1957, in the midst of the Civil Rights struggle in the south and all across our nation, 80 Christian pastors signed the Atlanta Ministers Manifesto. There were six basic principles which they affirmed, and one of them said this: "Hatred and scorn for those of another race or for those who hold a different position from our own can never be justified. That Manifesto was printed on the front page of The Atlanta Constitution, The New York Times, and it was the cover story in Life Magazine, including a photograph of eight ministers who had helped to draft and who signed the Manifesto, among them, Dr. Harry Amos Fifield, who was then pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta and who is sitting here with his wife Margaret today. It was an act of courage, and Harry Fifield told me just this past week that he had the unanimous support of the Session and the overwhelming affirmation of this entire congregation They were "doing justice" in those days. All these years later, we still seek to do the same.

I am glad and grateful to report to you that in August, just last month, your Session decided, after much discussion and heartfelt prayer, to join our hearts and our hands with other churches of different races, in different places, from different denominations across America in what is called the Micah 6 Project. It is an ecumenical effort which will help to strengthen not only our own ministry and mission here in this church but will also help us to learn from other Christian congregations what they are doing and to share with them some of the unique things happening here and through us in this city and out into the world. You will be getting information about Micah 6 in the next few months, but suffice it to say for now that our hope and prayer as this new year begins is the same as it was 151 years ago and the same as it was in Micah’s day when he envisioned that prophecy. Our hope and prayer is that we will walk humbly with God as we draw closer to Him, that we will love kindness in this church as we come to affirm and accept one another; and that we will do justice out there in the world, a world that "God loves so much that He gave us His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but will have everlasting life." That is a great vision, a glorious vision, and that is the vision which will guide us in the days and weeks and months and the new year, leading toward the next millennium which is just off on the horizon.

What does the Lord require of you and of me? To walk humbly with Him, to love kindness in the church and to do justice in the world. Even so, let it be!

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

A VISION TO GUIDE US

Dr. George Bryant Wirth

Rally Day

September 12, 1999