Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 29, 2023
Scripture: Micah 6:1-8
(If you are a regular reader of my reflections, you may notice that the bible link this week takes you to a different website than usual. I learned this week that BibleGateway is owned by Zondervan, an imprint of Harper Collins Publisher, who have been on strike since November. I apologize for crossing the digital picket line in the past several months, and I will not be using BibleGateway until the strike is resolved.)
Micah was a prophet, and there are two things that are important to know about prophets. The first is that prophets in every generation point people back to God and towards God’s way. If you read the prophets we find in the Old Testament, many of them are concerned that the people are no longer following the commandments that God had given them. They are concerned that resources aren’t being shared fairly, that widows and orphans and immigrants aren’t being cared for. They are concerned that people are more concerned with material things than they are with God. And so prophets are positioned so that they can both see what is going on and also see what God’s vision or plan for the world is, and then they have the courage to point out the discrepancy to people with power to make the change.
The same holds true for modern day prophets. A couple of weeks ago, our neighbours in the US celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I think that he was a prophet. He saw the racism and white supremacy in the world; he saw that racism and white supremacy aren’t in keeping with how God wants us to live in the world, and he spoke truth to power, even when that cost him his life.
So, if the first thing that we need to remember about prophets is that they point people back to God and back to God’s ways, the other thing that we need to know about prophets is that they were fond of a bit of drama to get their point across. Many of them didn’t just use words, didn’t just put their message plainly, but they used actions or theatre to make their point. Joshua commanded the sun to stay still in the sky; Elisha used a bow and arrow to make his point; Moses turned the Nile River to blood. Possibly the most dramatic act – one that would get a modern-day prophet arrested for indecency – was Isaiah who walked around and preached naked for three years, trying to convey the urgency of his message that if people didn’t turn back to God, they would be carried into exile with nothing, not even the clothes on their back.
Micah wasn’t naked, but he did like his drama, and the reading that we heard this morning is structured as a courtroom drama. God is bringing a lawsuit against the people, accusing them of not keeping the covenant that their ancestors had made with God.
The drama opens with the prophet serving as narrator, introducing the scene. God is invited to present their case, with the mountains and hills as witnesses.
Then God presents their case – God has kept their side of the covenant since it was made with Abraham, bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt, giving them leaders in the form of Moses and Aaron and Miriam to keep them safe, working through a foreigner, Balaam, son of Boer, to protect them from King Balak of Moab as they wandered in the wilderness, and then seeing them safely across the Jordan River, crossing from Shittim to Gilgal. Yet despite all God’s faithfulness, the people have stopped keeping their side of the covenant.
Then the Israelite people have a chance to respond, but instead of trying to argue with God, they plead guilty to all charges. “Yes; you’re right; we have not kept our covenant promises! What do we need to do to make things right? What sacrifices to we need to make to restore our relationship with God?” This is followed by an escalating list of possible offerings to repair the relationship. “Does God want burnt offerings of calves a year old? Does God want a thousand rams to be sacrificed? Does God want ten thousand rivers of the finest olive oil? What about our firstborn children? If we offer our firstborn children to God, will that restore our relationship?”
The drama ends with the voice of the prophet, sounding a bit like the voice of the judge. “No, none of these things will restore your relationship. I don’t need to tell you what God wants; you already know what God wants. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. That’s it – all the rest is just window dressing. Without these actions that come from the heart, all of the sacrifices in the world would just be going through the motions.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. That’s it. This sounds remarkably like Jesus’s summary of all of the law and the prophets together – love God with your whole being, and love your neighbour as you love yourself.
This also sounds remarkably like who God is like. God does justice because God is justice. God loves kindness and mercy because God is kindness and mercy. And God is the one who desires to be in relationship with us; the one who is always calling us into relationship; the one who walks alongside us. And so when we do what the prophet calls us to do, then we are becoming God-like; we are becoming the Body of Christ; we are continuing the work that Jesus began.
Which is beginning to sound a little bit like last week’s message – that we are called to allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into who God created us to be.
I have to confess that I struggled to come up with a conclusion to this sermon. All of this is well and good if you are looking for a good story – there is a beginning, a middle, and an end, with a moral all wrapped up nicely with a bow in the form of a soundbite.
But this is a sermon rather than a story, and as my preaching professors used to hammer home to us, a sermon should be something more than a story, more than a lecture. There has to be a “so what” to a sermon.
The “so what” in Micah’s time had to do with the Ancient Israelites straying away from the covenant that they had made with God – they had strayed away from their relationship with God, and as a result they weren’t treating each other well or treating God well. And God wanted to give them a wake-up call that if they carried down that road, things weren’t going to go well for them. Justice, kindness, and humble relationship can be matters of life-and-death if they are missing.
And I can’t help but wonder if they might be a matter of life-and-death in our world today too. You don’t have to look too far beyond the headlines to see places where justice, kindness, and humble relationship would make a difference in the world.
I think that a world with justice would be a world where no one was killed because of the colour of their skin. It would be a world where the original inhabitants of a land have a say in how the land is used. It would be a world where everyone, no matter where they live, would have access to health care for their physical, mental, and spiritual health. It would be a world where there was a guaranteed livable income for everyone, where everyone had a safe shelter over their head at night, where everyone had clean water to drink, where everyone had access to the same rights and opportunities.
I think that a world governed by kindness would be a world where there was no such thing as homophobia or transphobia. A world where no one was lonely. A world where no one would go to bed hungry. A world where no one of any age is bullied. A world where no one has to go through any of the hard moments in life alone.
And how about the walking humbly with God? I picture a world where everyone works together, reaching beyond the boundaries of religion and political affiliation to make the world a better place for everybody. I picture a world where relationship is more important than who is right and who is wrong. I picture a world where I want the best for all of my neighbours, and they want the best for me. I picture a world where every single person is valued for who they are, and not for what they contribute.
And I do think that these things are life-and-death matters, with just as much urgency for us as they had for Micah’s original listeners. What can we, as the church, do, to live with more justice, to love kindness more deeply, and to walk even more humbly with God?
For God has told us what they want from us. And what does the Lord require from us, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. May we all have ears to listen and hearts that are open to change. Amen.
Image: “Damaged”
by elycefeliz on flickr
What might repair the world?
Justice. Kindness. Walk humbly with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment