Introduction
The reading we will be hearing this afternoon is from the Book of the Prophet Micah and is both a harsh and a famous one. Micah is busy condemning the people with some gusto and so it sounds rather strange for a reading in church where we are used to hearing some rather more comforting things in our services. But the reading today has some important truths for us, truths as important for us as they were for the people who heard it in the 8th Century before Jesus.
Micah - the Man and the Message
We know very little about Micah - there is no biographical information in his book. Other prophets included accounts of their call to prophesy - to speak God's message to the people - but Micah includes no such details. Micah was probably a small landowner who was speaking out against the policies of the central government in Jerusalem seeing such policies as unjust and against God. Micah's message, directed at first against the leaders of the people, are also timeless as they are concerned with justice, integrity and in seeing what the Lord requires of us. These themes are universal and can speak to us as much as they spoke to Micah's original hearers.
God's Requirement (1-6)
In the first part of the passage we heard today, it is as if God is taking the people to court to accuse them of ingratitude. It was traditional, if somewhat flamboyant, for an advocate in an Israelite court to begin by appealing to the hills and mountains, to earth and heaven, and to God himself as well as to the assembled crowds to bear witness to the truth of what was being said.
The prophet then speaks as if he is speaking God's own words. God has kept the covenant with Israel. He has done everything for them; he has delivered them from Egypt, ransomed them from the land of slavery. He gave them leaders, Moses and Miriam, and enabled them to overcome the enemies they encountered on the way to the Promised Land, such as Balak, king of Moab. Shittim was the last staging post in the wilderness and Gilgal was the first encampment in the Promised Land. Between these two places the people of Israel fell into idol worship and were punished by a plague. God, therefore, reminds them of His saving acts over the course of their history when they have been saved from disaster.
It was easy for the Jewish people then to forget all that God had done for them. They had been out of Egypt for many generations, they had settled the Promised Land and they had taken their place amongst the nations of the world. The spectacular events of their past were now history, myths of their religion.
We should not feel too smug about this. We too fall into the same traps of ingratitude. We forget what God has done for us. We become complacent, forgetting that we have been redeemed, or purchased, by the death of Jesus. We forget the enormity of the sins we have committed and the cost of forgiveness. We forget the meaningless of our lives before finding Jesus and the purpose we now have. We too can become very forgetful and full of ingratitude.
All this condemnation got too much for Micah's hearers and they decide to respond.
The Response (6-7)
These next verses are as if the defence has piped up! It as if the defendant has offered a range of religious solutions to appease God. God has been annoyed and angry with the ingratitude of the people, so now the people offer burnt offerings and offerings of oil. The defendant even wonders if the first-born children should be offered to God. It is as if the defendant is using religion to try and bribe God.
Of course we wouldn't try and do this would we? We wouldn't think we are righteous because we come to church. We wouldn't expect God to thank for us for deigning to pop in to worship - or would we?
The response to Micah's condemnation was to offer lots of religious devotion. Sometimes we do the same, thinking we are very good, and that God will be grateful, if we come to church and pop a bit more in the collection! We forget that we worship because we need to. God is in no need or our worship, but we need to worship in order to be whole people and to fulfil our God-given purpose to love, serve and obey God in this world and to be happy with God in the next.
We need to give. God does not need our money, but we need to give our money away as giving is the antidote to the toxin of materialism which poisons our souls. If we keep all of our money then our souls will be poisoned, God says in the Bible that we can keep 90% of what we make - that final 10% we need to give away or we will be damaged, become harder and more selfish. We don't give to please God, we give because we know what is good for us.
God does not respond well to being bribed as the last part of the reading shows.
What the Lord Requires (v8)
God turns down the excessive ideas of sacrifice and very simply says what is required of humanity. We are to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.
Of course offering lots of sacrifices would be easier than this. Doing externally religious things, like going to church, putting some money in the collection, lighting a candle, crossing oneself or even raising a hand or two in worship are much easier things to do than this - and they might even make us feel more holy, more religious.
These things, of course, are not wrong and I hope I do all of them myself on a regular basis, but they are not at the heart of what God requires of us.
To Act Justly
Of course this last part of the reading is one we are more familiar with in MCC. We are back on the safe theme of justice. No problem here, we are very good at calling for justice, at pointing out when things are unjust and in making sure we join every demonstration we can, signing every petition and generally being seen as a justice-seeking people. And of course this is good. But God asks us to do more than join demonstrations, to protest and point out when others are not acting justly; we are asked to do even more than sign petitions. God asks us to act justly.
Acting justly, of course, is much more difficult than telling others to act justly. Telling others to act in a just way is, of course, more fun, but is not quite what we are asked to do!
To act justly means we change the way we shop - so that, where possible, we pay a fair price for our goods. It might mean, we buy fairly traded goods, it might mean we use farm shops so that farmers get a fair price for their food and the stranglehold of the supermarkets is broken. It might mean we change our pension funds so we don't invest our money in armaments.
To act justly means we behave well when we argue with our opponents - political or religious. It means we don't mis-represent them, we don't lie about them or generally be nasty about them. This of course is hard if, like me, you have a caustic sense of humour and wit.
To act justly means we are honest in our own affairs. It is hypocritical to sign an Amnesty letter protesting about torture if you have invested your pension in a fund which holds stock in companies that make the instruments of torture. It is hypocritical to codemn churches which don't allow lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people full rights of participation if we are busy keeping heterosexual people out of our church.
Acting justly requires a lot more than we, a first, realise. Acting justly makes demands on us, demands we can only fulfil if we are living as committed disciples of Jesus.
To Love Mercy
The second requirement is echoed by Jesus in the Gospels when, in old fashioned English, he says that we shall be judged in the same way that we judge others "measure for measure". How we deal with others is the measure for how God will deal with us. This gives me pause for thought - God may be merciful but it is not one of the hallmarks I easily associate with myself!
We come from places of past hurt, of broken relationships and bitterness. Very few of us have always managed to end a relationship well. All of us have lost friends, have become estranged from family members or become involved in forms of conflict which leave us bitter and resentful. Part of this is about being human. However, often we use these places of past hurt, resentment and bitterness as excuses not to move on, as excuses for our inexcusable behaviour and as justification for a bitterness and nastiness which can eat up our souls.
Now I am not one to nurse a grudge usually, but I have been in situations of profound conflict and the only way I had the strength to get through some of them was to imagine particularly nasty forms of revenge - especially on a few previous lovers! Anger was a useful tool for getting through the worst of these conflicts, but like many tools, it has to be let go of when the job is done.
I have had some terrible relationships in my life - both in my family and in my love life. I have a choice, I can hold on to the bitterness and anger from these or I can let them go and think more mercifully. And when I think of how I have treated other people, I hope that I will be judged more mercifully than I have judged others. Micah asks us to love mercy - we cannot expect mercy for ourselves if we have not offered it to others.
To Walk Humbly with Our God
Micah's last requirement from God is to "walk humbly" with your God. This could also be translated as to "walk prudently". For me this is about not taking God for granted - which is an easy thing for a minister to do. I spend my life planning services, writing sermons, praying with people, and meeting other clergy that, it can become easy, to take God for granted. I can be so busy leading worship, that I realise I am not worshipping. I can get so into praying for another, that I don't leave time to pray myself. I can plan wonderful services, and forget the one to whom the worship is directed. I can get so hung up on how the choir sound, that I forget they are joining with the angels in praise of God.
So what keeps me walking humbly, or at least trying to walk humbly with God? I find that three things, in particular, are good for me and like all things that are good for me, I struggle with each of them!
Examination of Conscience
As a good Catholic boy I was brought up to go regularly to confession. The terrifying part of confession was not the actual speaking to the priest, but something called the "examination of conscience" before hand. One was encouraged to prayerfully reflect on one's own life, attitudes and behaviour in the light of the gospels and to ask God to show you the blind spots of sin and failure. This was much more daunting than then actually going and telling the priest about your failings. The priest was, of course, much more loving and understanding that I was with myself. Whilst I don't really go to confession anymore, I find that I still need to reflect on my own behaviours and attitudes, to ask God to show me the blind spots in my dealings with others and still to realise that God is more merciful than I am. I still need to take my times of sin, of failure, of pride and of arrogance to God and to feel again the grace of forgiveness. This helps to keep me walking humbly with God - of course if I did it more it might be even more effective.
Giving
You may have heard of the old MCC prayer for a new pastor. "Lord, you keep her humble, we'll keep her poor". MCC is very good at living out this prayer.
I know that money is bad for me. Of course I want a nice standard of living now, and a sign of my advancing, at some speed, towards the age of 40 is a new concern with a pension. There is nothing wrong with this, but I also realise that money can cause me to flounder. It is so tempting to want the latest gizmo for my computer, to want a better car, to want better holidays, to want certain clothes, to dream of winning the lottery. Now in one sense there is nothing wrong with these, but they can become a distraction, they can start to pull us down, to forget what we are truly about. The solution for me is to make sure I give something of what I get away. If I think of money as a chemical solution I can cope with it at 90% strength, I must dilute the strength and so give away 10% if I am to try and walk humbly with my God. The same is true for you.
Learn More About God
The third thing I do to try and keep walking humbly with God is to spend time to learn more about God. One of the odd things about my life as a minister is that I have very little time to study, to pray or to read the Scriptures. It seems that other things continually conspire to get in the way. As part of my new year promises to myself I have decided to get away on Retreat every 6 weeks or so to have time to read, to pray and to write my sermons. This gives me chance to look at different scripture passages in depth and to see how they can be applied to my life. We can't all do this - I am lucky in my job I can. We are all able, however, to take time each day to pray, to read something of the Bible, maybe with a set of notes to help us understand it better and to build the truths of what we read into our daily lives.
Conclusion
Micah tells us that we have to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. These things are not easy to do - it would be easier if he told us to be in church every week, to raise our hands during the right songs, to cross ourselves after communion and to be generous, occasionally, in the collection. These things, important though they are, only scratch the surface. In order to really do these things we have to go deeper, to renew our discipleship of Jesus and to find, once again, that we have so much to learn.
Prayer/Study/New Appreciation of the Bible
(for MCCNL "From the Mountains" with the line about injustice bowing to Jesus and, if possible "Jesus Christ I think upon your sacrifice")
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.