JUNE 2026

By Dr. Amanda Udis-Kessler

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Holy require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Dear UCCMA members,

We are now in ordinary time, the period that falls between major church seasons and that is focused on spiritual growth and daily discipleship. As we work with our pastors to choose worship music for this period, we may well choose hymns, choral pieces, and worship songs that reflect the priority of this part of the church year.

For me, the two most important sets of verses in the Bible are Micah 6:6-8 and Mark 12:28-31. They lift up a simple yet profoundly difficult set of priorities for our lives: justice, kindness (or mercy), and humility (that’s Micah) and love of God, self, and neighbor (that’s Jesus). Ordinary time is a particularly good part of the church year to program music that centers justice, kindness, humility, and love – not just as values we should cultivate but as opportunities for the spiritual growth and daily discipleship at the heart of ordinary time.

Most of us probably have a sense of how cultivating kindness, humility, and love involve spiritual growth and daily discipleship, but I think working for justice does as well. Especially in times such as ours, justice work is difficult and may not seem to bear fruit much of the time. The sheer number of injustices we face are overwhelming and can stun us into immobility, which is exactly what the forces of injustice are counting on to happen. We must get up every day and ask how we might be a force for justice in the world today, however modestly. The resilience and bandwidth to do this are strengthened and expanded by our spiritual practices. We cannot share God’s love and God’s fierce commitment to justice if we are not ourselves enriched and empowered by that love and that commitment.

Finally, it’s worth saying something about the relationship between justice and discipleship. A disciple is a student of a particular religious or philosophical school or teacher. Jesus had disciples; so did Socrates. Our commitment to justice comes directly from our attempt to follow our teacher Jesus closely and prioritize what he prioritized. And we know from the Synoptic Gospels that the Kingdom/Kin-dom of God Jesus proclaimed was a just realm of love, not a hierarchical nightmare of inequality. Our work to co-create that realm requires our commitment to justice. We do well to make sure that we use ordinary time to draw connections between justice, spiritual growth, and discipleship.

All peace, Amanda

amanda@amandaudiskessler.com