Micah

            This lent we are going to be doing a sermon series focusing on the prophets. 

To give a broad overview: In terms of the books in the Bible, there are three books named after major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and twelve named after minor or “lesser” prophets.  I am saying it this way because we know there were many other prophets mentioned in the Bible as well, but ones that did not necessarily have books written after them.  The difference between those who received books and those who didn’t, those who are called “major” and those considered “minor” prophets is not in their importance so much as it is in the length of their books, or the length of what was written about them.  Some of the prophets are speaking to the whole of Israel, but many are speaking to either Israel (Northern Kingdom) or Judah (the Southern kingdom where Jerusalem was located) during the time when they were split into two kingdoms.  Some wrote before the Babylonian exile, some during and some after.  In the case of the book of Isaiah, there are indications that parts of it were written during each of those periods. 

All of the prophets deliver similar messages of God’s call to the people to act with love towards God and towards others, and they focus especially on loving those who are underprivileged and oppressed.  These prophets condemn those who use others to their own advantage, and the prophets particularly condemn the people in power, and the systems that oppress certain populations of people.  These include the poor, the widowed, those who have less than we do or were outcast  or marginalized in some way.  It can be hard to hear the words of the prophets because they begin, universally, with condemnation and the promise of punishment as a result of God’s anger towards the people because they have done otherwise.  For many of us we find self-condemnation in these words.  For others, we hear it as a promise that the ungodly will be punished.  But for all of us, the call as we listen to the prophets is to focus, especially during this Lenten season when we are called to look deep at ourselves and what blocks our relationships with God, we are called to listen to the prophets’ call to change in our own lives.  This focuses in two areas: what idols do we put before God that we need to confront?  We don’t have statues here, but in our culture we have other idols: power, fame, money, our toys, our schedules, our addictions, our images for who we are rather than the realities of who we are.  And the second again, is the call to be more loving towards people, and especially towards those who are less privileged than we are.

            Obviously, with five weeks we will not focus on all of the prophets, but I want to give you an overview and so we will focus on a few of the prophets over the weeks of lent, all of whom are “lesser” prophets simply because we don’t hear from or about them as often.  Today we will begin this series by listening to passages from the book of Micah.  

----------------------------(scripture)

Micah was speaking to the kingdom of Judah (Southern kingdom) during the time when the kingdoms were divided, before the Babylonian exile.  Micah’s primary focus is on the injustice of God’s people towards those with less.  Unlike some of the other prophets, Micah really does not focus so much on idolatry, but his focus is solely on the injustice of God’s people towards one another.  Micah felt great compassion for the poor and dispossessed and he held the leaders of Judah as responsible for their suffering.  He sums up what God is calling us to do with the famous passage that we hear so often from the book of Micah:

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

So today I want to look very briefly at these three activities:

Doing Justice:  Micah is confronting the rulers of the time in Judah, who were specifically driving the independent (small) farmers off of their land, something Micah said was completely against God.  These fields were then being foreclosed on, forcing these farmers into extreme poverty.  Micah, as with all the prophets is highly political and is condemning a society in which such a thing can happen.  How does this relate to us?

In a nutshell, the justice that Micah is talking about here starts with remembering that we are all deeply connected.  Before you act towards any other person, whatever their situation, you need to think how you would feel as the recipient of that action, how it would affect you, how it would affect your family.  Justice is then living out that deep connection to one another by seeing the pain of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and even our enemies and being willing to first, own our part in causing it, and secondly, to change our behavior that damages or hurts others.  Justice is acting with love and compassion towards whomever it is that we encounter, whomever it is that is standing in front of us in each moment.  But of course it is also much more than that.  Justice is standing up against the status quo even for those we will never meet.  Remember, Micah’s God punished the entire community, everyone, for not only perpetuating these injustices, but for allowing them to take place within their community.  Justice then is knowing that while I do these actions out of love for you, in serving you, I serve myself because without your justice, there is no justice for me; without your peace, there is no peace for me; without your love, I am nothing. 

This is hugely central to Micah’s message, and, frankly, to all of the prophets.  While the violence they attribute to God may be something we struggle to understand or see in the God of love we have come to know, the message, that central message of justice, is a big part of Jesus’ message as well.  It is not something we can ignore or leave out of our understanding of who God is.

Loving Kindness: This is pretty simple and direct, though maybe one of the hardest to work out day to day.  It means that we are called to avoid being snippy, angry, attacking or rude and instead find ways to be compassionate, present with people, honest, yes, but with love and the other’s best interest in mind.  Loving kindness means striving to remember that if someone is acting badly, that says a lot about them and nothing about us, so we can be compassionate for the bad day they may be having, or the bad week, or even the bad life.  If someone is mean to us or rejects us, that is about their failure to be kind, and we do not have to let ourselves be influenced or controlled by that bad behavior into behaving badly ourselves.  Loving kindness is searching out the good, seeing the good, affirming the good, and choosing the good in our own behaviors.

And finally, we are to Walk Humbly with our God:

Walking into the empty sanctuary of his synagogue, a rabbi was suddenly possessed by a wave of mystical rapture, and threw himself onto the ground before the Ark proclaiming, "Lord, I'm Nothing!"

Seeing the rabbi in such a state, the cantor felt profoundly moved by similar emotions. He too, threw himself down in front of the Ark, proclaiming, "Lord, I'm Nothing!"

Then, way in the back of the synagogue, the janitor threw himself to the ground, and he too shouted, "Lord, I'm Nothing."

Whereupon, the rabbi turned to the cantor and whispered, "Look who thinks he's Nothing!"

For us being humble means several things.  First, I think we are called to recognize that we can’t really take most of the credit for anything we would normally brag about.  I think there is a strong inclination to think, for example, that if we were born to parents who had resources and if were given a good education and if we were fed well, that it is somehow because we deserve it over all those people who were not born into families with resources, with education and good food.  We did nothing to deserve that and we forget this, very quickly, very easily.  Also, our talents and our gifts are gifts from God.  They honor God and should not honor ourselves.  Second, we need to remember that what we think of as “accomplishments,” the things our society recognizes as accomplishments are not the things that God prizes.  Does God think those who die with the most money win?  How about the most power?   The most fame?  How about the most friends?  The most children?  No, instead, God prizes the very things Micah mentions: justice, kindness, humility.

We walk humbly with God by doing the things that God places in front of us to do while recognizing that God is not calling us to a particular task because we are somehow “better” or “superior.”   We see this when we look at other parts of the Bible as well.  Why did God choose Mary to birth Jesus?  We are told nothing in our scriptures to indicate that Mary is superior.  Instead it seems she was quite ordinary except for one thing - and that is that she said, “yes” to God’s call for her.  The same could be said of any of the prophets or holy people in the Bible.  Though many resisted their call (Jonah, Jeremiah, even Moses), in the end, all said yes.  If you say “yes,” to God’s call, you have succeeded.  If you do that without bragging about it or somehow feeling superior, then you have truly learned to “walk humbly with God.”

C.S. Lewis’ main character in the second of his space trilogy, Peralandra, says, “Don’t imagine I’ve been selected for (this task) because I’m anyone in particular.  One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why anyone was selected for any job.  And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity.  Certainly, it is never for what the (person) him (or her) self would have regarded as their chief qualifications.”

Being humble means giving thanks for the gifts we have, not in relation to others, but just giving thanks for the gifts we have.  It means taking the risk of doing the loving, doing the justice, being kind and saying “yes” to the tasks that come before us.  It means recognizing that all are called, and that we are called out of God’s love for us, not because we are more special than the next person, but because God loves us that much.

The book of Micah, while being a book that strongly condemns the mistreatment of others, ends on a note of hope.  Within the anger and destructive response of God to injustice still always lies the seeds for renewal, repentance, and hope for God’s restoration, God’s resurrection, God’s recreation of us as a people.  God does get angry, but God is also compassionate and full of mercy and grace.  That is the good news.  We are given opportunity in every day to try again.  To repent.  To renew.  To be recreated.  And to accept the grace of God. 

Our challenge this lent remains to follow God’s words as spoken by the prophet Micah; to do  justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.  Amen.