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Micah 6:1-8
My sermon this morning is going to include more teaching than I usually do, so before we read our scripture I need to give some context and back story. Micah was a prophet, a younger contemporary of Isaiah. According to Walter Brueggemann, a Hebrew Scriptures scholar, the prophets of Israel performed two primary tasks: criticizing and energizing. “The prophets disturb our status quo, question the reigning order of things, help us see the normal state of affairs in a different light, and advocate a new way of living—all this in every dimension of life: personal, social, spiritual, economic, political. The prophets afflicted the comfortable and the complacent. [As another scholar stated it] Don’t read the prophets if you don’t want some sort of helmet slap.”[1] Now, an important point here is that you cannot call yourself a prophet just because you like to criticize and chastise. “The prophets also energized God’s people. They comforted the afflicted. They intended to ‘generate hope, affirm identity, and create a new future.’ They weren’t just negative naysayers; they offered positive affirmation, and encouragement.”[2] Typically the vinegar comes first—pointing out the people’s failures, predicting devastation, etc. Then they offer the honey of comfort and encouragement.
The book of Micah begins with reproach in legal language. God brings a case against the people, particularly the leaders. He has harsh words for both the false prophets and those who follow the false prophets because they like the message. “Invoking bitter sarcasm, Micah says that the perfect prophet for these people was a liar and a deceiver who said, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer’ (2:6–11).”[3] (Since it’s Super Bowl Sunday, even I can prophesy that for today!) Micah says that if you merely feed the false prophets, they will proclaim peace, and if you pay them enough, they will say “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us” (3:11).
Having appropriately castigated the religious leaders and their followers, Micah turns his attention to the civic, cultural, and political elite. This is how that same scholar words it: “Micah paints a horrifying picture of political oppression and economic exploitation by the strong and powerful against the weak and dispossessed. The powerful dictate what they desire — they all conspire together. These leaders [to quote the scripture] ‘tear the skin from my people,’ and ‘break their bones in pieces.’ They despise justice, distort the right, take bribes as a matter of course, and are ‘skilled in doing evil with both hands.’ . . . Making it worse, the religious leaders sanctioned this, they legitimized the status quo, and said it was all God’s will.”[4]
And people say the Bible isn’t relevant today! Seriously—listen to this again, thinking not of ancient Israel but to us today. “… a horrifying picture of political oppression and economic exploitation by the strong and powerful against the weak and dispossessed. The powerful dictate what they desire — they all conspire together. These leaders ‘tear the skin from my people,’ and ‘break their bones in pieces.’ They despise justice, distort the right, take bribes as a matter of course, and are ‘skilled in doing evil with both hands.’ . . . [the left and the right] Making it worse, the religious leaders sanctioned this, they legitimized the status quo, and said it was all God’s will.”[5] It terrifies me to say this, but this is us, every bit as much as it was ancient Israel.
And in the history of Israel, that’s when disaster struck. After Micah did all this warning, Babylon ravaged the southern kingdom of Judah. Once their kingdom fell, Micah had to turn from afflicting the comfortable to comforting the afflicted. Now we get to today’s scripture in the lectionary. There are actually three different people or entities speaking in these 8 verses, so I’ve asked Garvey and Judy to help me with the reading. Judy is reading the part of the prophet / narrator, and Garvey is the voice of the people. I will read the part of God. (I don’t usually take the role of God, but took it because it has annoying place names to pronounce.)
(Read scripture)
I didn’t give the readers any instructions on reading this scripture because I wanted to hear how they would present it without prompting. I was particularly interested in how Garvey would read the people’s lines. I honestly don’t know how to interpret them. Were the people being sarcastic, since they are clearly suggesting offerings beyond their ability to give? They couldn’t possibly give 10,000 rivers of oil, so were they saying, like, “What do you want from us, God, our firstborn child?” Or were the people earnestly pleading, genuinely asking about how much they had to give to please God? I also wasn’t sure how to say my own lines. Was God angry? Frustrated? Confused by their lack of trust? Was God speaking in lowercase letters or all caps?
But Judy got the best part, one of the favorite scriptures of many UCC members: What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. What does the Lord require. A scholar who has written a book about this verse has this to say about the word “darash,” translated as “require.” “‘Require’ misses the heart of it, I think, for we resort to notions of rules or grading, as in ‘the teacher requires you turn in a paper by Friday.’ The verb darash has undertones of affection, or the healthiest sort of dependency, as in ‘the child requires his mother’s love,’ or ‘the flower requires rain and sunshine.;
There is a mood of seeking in darash; lovers seek each other out, and a shepherd seeks his lost sheep—and in the Old Testament, both situations use darash. So when the Lord ‘requires’ justice, kindness and mercy, it isn’t that the Lord ‘insists on’ or ‘demands’ these things. God seeks them, yearns for them, and frankly needs them from us as intimate partners in God’s adventure down here.”[6] So God needs us to do justice or act justly. God needs us to love kindness or mercy. And we need it, too. Our spirits require that we do justice—that we act justly and that we work for justice in all its forms. Our spirits require that we love kindness and act mercifully. If we are to be at peace within ourselves, we must do these things, for we were created in the image of God, and we require what God requires. We need what God needs.
We are living in difficult times. Many of us, from both sides of the aisle, fear for the future of our democracy. We fear for the soul of our nation, for the way we are oppressing others will damage us to our core. It would be so easy to let that fear paralyze us. It would be so easy to say “the problem is too big.” If would be so easy to wash our hands of it and say “it’s the politicians’ problem.” No, it is our problem. If we let our government do atrocities in our name, our souls will pay the price. If we do not speak out when innocent blood is shed out of bigotry and hatred, we will lose our own moral center. If we do not “do justice and love kindness or mercy,” we will neglect what God requires, and what our own souls require for peace.
But do not confuse kindness or mercy with niceness. Only people completely out of touch with reality would suggest that “being nice” is the answer to the world’s problems. Do we need more niceness in the world? Sure. But too much is at stake for us to rely on geniality and proper manners. We also need accountability. We also need advocacy. We also need to stand up to abusers and bullies and exploiters. God requires—needs, long for—justice and mercy. Or to quote another theologian: we need to stop trusting that the arc of the moral universe will simply bend toward justice—and decide to be arc-benders.[7]
Which brings us to that last part: to walk humbly with our God. I don’t know for sure what the prophet Micah meant by that, but to me it means that we cannot assume we’re always right. We cannot assume that our way of viewing the world is the only way. So even as I worry about the future of our country, I can’t fall into the trap of believing my understanding is the only valid one. I have to make room for others who might have a more complete view. Walking humbly with God also means acknowledging that I need God’s help to be the person God requires, the person God needs. To those of you who came to worship this morning thinking, “I’ve been surrounded by bad news all week—I just want to hear something comforting” here’s the good news. Transformation is not only possible. Transformation is probable–if we are willing to work together to make the change, to be the change. The good news is that we are here. And God is here. We are not alone.
The people asked what kind of offering they should give to God. God’s ultimate message to the people was that “God does not want a specific type of offering. God wants a specific type of person.”[8] May we be the kind of people God requires.
[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1251-micah-prophetic-critique-and-pastoral-comfort
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://unitedmethodistreporter.com/2012/06/13/qa-unpacking-the-message-of-micah-68/
[7] John Pavlovitz
[8] https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3152