In modern literature, no figure quite so represents the ideal of a person standing up for justice in the American legal system as does Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird. I understand well that contemporary critique and Lee’s own long-delayed “sequel” make Finch a morally ambiguous figure who, while defending a black man unfairly accused, did little to challenge the racist systems around him.
So it may be time for the fictional Atticus to be replaced in the American imagination with someone like Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy and the real life defender of scores of unjustly accused people of color. He is also an activist for changes in the justice system to end bias and unfair treatment. We desperately need heroes like Stevenson who will stand up in court for the oppressed.
People of the Bible ought to understand that the Lord Himself is that kind of hero, a defender of the oppressed and champion in opposition to injustice. That’s the picture the prophet Micah paints for us in his book and particularly in our text for this Sunday, Micah 6:1-8. As the text begins, God is in court, with a case against His own people. Though a large measure of that “case” is God’s charge of unfaithfulness, their idolatry, against Judah, we can see in the rest of Micah that God is almost, if not equally, upset about His people’s injustices against each other. That can be seen just in what follows in chapter 6, verses 9-12, God’s complaint about wealth gained by lies, cheating, and violence.
But that God is concerned not just with His own honor is clear in the part of our text which deals with the legal concept of restitution, verses 6-8. The prophet wonders for himself (although the NLT has him speaking in the plural for his people) how to make restitution for the wrong done to God. He considers the offering of sacrifices as a way to “pay his fine,” for his sins. But God’s case has a different object in mind. Like Stevenson’s advocacy, as opposed to Atticus Finch’s, God wants wholesale changes in the system. He wants people who don’t just pay for particular offenses but who amend their lives so as not to commit injustice any longer.
So our text ends with God’s beautiful response to the prophet’s pondering about restitution through sacrifice. No, the Lord has said, this is what is required: “to do what is right [just], to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.” As all the pictures of judgment in Micah show us, God will win His case, has already won it. Now the question is whether we will abide by the judgment against and do what the Lord’s court has ordered us to do: justice and mercy in humble communion with that very same Lord.