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Act Justly by Bekah Legg
He has shown you, o mortal, what is good. and what does the lord require of you? to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your god. Micah 6:8 (NIV)
It seems so very simple when put like that, yet somehow within the walls of our churches and the details of our theology, acting justly has become a point to debate or a subject for a conference. It fills the lyrics of our songs but as the tune continues to haunt us, the words fade from our memory in the busyness of everyday life.
Time and again God addresses this disconnect between our words and our actions in Scripture. I work for Compassion UK and one of our core texts is Isaiah 58, a passage where God challenges the Israelites about their attitude. He holds nothing back as he pours scorn on their religious feasts and pious fasting. He declares their acts of humility as unacceptable, mere window dressings to look the part. His message, through Isaiah, is this:
Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Isaiah 58:6–7 (NIV)
I have had the privilege of meeting some astonishing pastors, both in the UK and overseas. Compassion works entirely through the local church in 26 countries. It doesn’t set up projects and fly in administrators, it partners with nearly 7,000 churches and their leaders. And these men and women live out Micah 6:8 in a way that challenges me every time I meet them.
JUST LIFE: YVES BONCOEUR’S STORY
Earlier this year, on a visit to Haiti, I met Yves Boncoeur. He lives in a small town called Petit Goave, just miles from the epicentre of the earthquake that hit six years ago. He beamed with pride as he introduced me to his team of staff, each of whom dedicate their time, often for free, to serve the children in their community. He took us around the classrooms where children were learning not just to read and write, but business basics and leadership development. And then he sat down to tell us how this project, serving 198 children and their families began. Thirteen years ago, Yves was a man who was passionate about music and passionate about God. Another man, Cely Delassin, came to learn the saxophone under his guidance. Together they started to meet as church. They began to create invitations to give people in the neighbourhood and then borrowed a building. They showed the Jesus film and invited people to come and see it.
The church began to grow. So far, so normal. In 2010, Haiti was rocked by a devastating earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. It’s estimated that more than 250,000 people died, and the same number again were left homeless. Houses, schools, hospitals and businesses lay in ruins. This relatively new church in Petit Goave was not spared, but Yves and Cely looked out to the community. Cely remembers, ‘We were a young church; a new assembly and we were overwhelmed by the enormous need we saw as we looked at our community. People had lost their homes; they were living in makeshift tents. The children couldn’t go to school; everyone was traumatised. So we took them in.’ Just like that. Yves, Cely and the rest of this congregation started running a club in the church grounds. Lots of music and singing, stories about Jesus and a meal when the church could afford food. Yves explains that the most important thing was to entertain the children and help them find hope.
The church grew exponentially and Yves’ pastor heart grew as he got to know these children. He realised they held gifts and talents buried beneath the effects of poverty and trauma and he wanted to help them realise them. But the church had run out of funds. Yves started to look around for someone to partner with. He heard about Compassion, discovered that they worked with churches to provide child development and he applied to become a partner. The process took a couple of years. The church met with Compassion Haiti, received training and started a building programme in order to meet requirements. Pastor Yves talked to his church about the need to feed and clothe those in their community. He shared his vision to provide a safe place for those who had lost their homes and to give children a chance to exceed their dreams. He told them that a child who dreams can change their country and he took a collection.
It was not enough; his congregation are poor themselves, so Yves went to the bank and negotiated a personal loan, one that would enable him to not just talk about feeding the hungry and releasing people from injustice but to actually do it. Pastor Yves was a music teacher with a heart for his community. Today he stands in a building looking out at a congregation that know God loves them because Yves has loved them. They know that God has seen their pain because Yves saw their pain. They know that God is faithful because Yves has been faithful. They know God has plans to give them hope and a future because Yves has built a school and run a project to help their children have just that. I was incredibly moved by the humility of Yves and Cely. These two unassuming men saw the need in front of them and responded in all the ways they could. They didn’t set up movements or petitions or Facebook pages, they just stepped out of their tumbledown church and invited their neighbours to share the little they still had. To me, they are the embodiment of what it means to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
FROM HAITI TO HOME
I live in a country where my church has not fallen down in a natural disaster; my community’s needs lie hidden behind firmly closed doors and people don’t see an invitation to watch the Jesus film as the highlight of the week. How do I make sure that I am not just a mouthpiece for justice, that actually my whole life tells the story of a God who brings good news to the poor and proclaims freedom for the captives?
It’s about integrity in everything we do. It’s about the way we speak to those we work with, how we respond to the needs God puts in our way. It’s in what we choose to do with our money, who we choose to share it with and where we choose to spend it. It’s in the coffee we drink and the chocolate we eat. It means making the right decision even when that means we get overlooked or lose some status. It means honouring our promises and calling others to honour theirs. It’s about challenging injustice where we see it even when that makes our own lives uncomfortable, even when it costs us personally. In this country, it will mean going out of our way to discover the injustices that lie in our neighbourhoods; getting in touch with social services to find out what our church can do. We can partner with organisations that feed the hungry, give shelter to the refugee and hope to those enslaved to debt. We have to be prepared to get dirty in order to help someone else become clean; be willing to walk into the dark to take someone else the light. And we have to lead by example. You see, we can put on the greatest Sunday services with the best worship in town. We can prepare inspirational talks that move our congregations to tears. We might even be the reason someone else starts a great new movement. But if our lives and, actually, the lives of those who look to us as leaders don’t reflect the words that we speak, it’s just words. Words alone don’t bring glory to God and the Bible is clear they don’t please him. Jesus came to preach good news to the poor, but he didn’t just preach, he was good news and he calls us to be it too.
Bekah Legg is PR and Media Manager at Compassion UK, editor of Liberti Magazine, and a part time MA student, studying preaching at Moorlands. At home she is kept on her toes by five teenage girls and a husband, who occasionally dices with death by singing The Sun will Come Out Tomorrow when he thinks she looks like she’s at the end of her tether; it rarely helps.
