"Required"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE PROPHETS Micah 6:1-8 Click here to watch the Sermon " Required."

By now, I suspect we’ve all got the last verse of that reading down. Many of you may have been familiar with it before today. As bible verses go, it is definitely one of the greatest hits. I’ve got a calligraphy version of it by Ralph Douglass in a frame next to the door of my office. In some ways though it reminds me a little of Bruce Springsteen’s hit song from the 1984 album of the same name, Born in the USA. The chorus has a catchy repetition that people liked to sing back in the day, believing it to be some kind of patriotic anthem, when in reality it was anything but. The song and really the entire album was inspired by the memoir Born on the Fourth of July by Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, paralyzed from the chest down due to injuries he sustained in combat. The book was later made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. If anything, Born in the USA is an indictment of a country that likes to praise its veterans while neglecting the persistent challenges they face as a result of being put in harm’s way. 

Likewise, while the conclusion of this passage may look good embroidered on a pillow, it is part and parcel of an indictment leveled against God’s people by the prophet Micah’s oracle of judgement. God makes God’s case. The question uttered here in verse 3 is echoed by our liturgy for the solemn reproaches of the cross. “O my people,” God asks, “what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” God wants to know what possible reason they can give for the ways in which they have abandoned the relationship God made with them to be their God that they in turn would be God’s people. The previous chapters have chronicled the abuses of the powerful who would prey upon the poor in order to enrich themselves. They have called out religious leaders who parrot the party line, leading people astray. Who as Micah puts it, “cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.” The truth is that God’s people have fallen so far, allowed so much and failed to challenge abuses because those abuses don’t affect them directly. There are the wicked who carry out warrantless raids and drop tear gas canisters in the streets in front of peaceful protesters. There are the wicked who round up children, separate them from their parents and send them to modern-day privately run concentration camps that they conveniently call detention centers. And then there are the wicked who are removed from the immediate impact of what’s being done and remain silent in the face of such injustices because to speak up would be to attract the wrong kind of attention. We echo God’s question raised here by Micah in the church’s solemn reproaches of the cross because to turn away from the inconvenience of injustice done in our name and in our midst is not all that different than driving nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. It is not who we are called to be as God’s people, 

I think we know that. I think we feel it when we see the video of people being thrown to the ground, or pepper sprayed in the eyes. We know it’s wrong. We know it’s wrong to use children as bait and legal immigration hearings as a hunting ground. And so, we go looking for a scapegoat on which to hang our collective guilt. Someone, or something that lets us off the hook and absolves us in some way. That word, by the way, scapegoat, comes from the kind of religious practice named here by the prophet. Surely God can be appeased. Surely the people can offer some heroic sacrifice to satisfy God for their crime, for their unfaithfulness. And while that’s clearly the religious practice of these people and much of the ancient near east, interestingly enough it doesn’t seem to be what God cares about. In fact, Jesus quotes a different prophet, Hosea, in making this point; that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. 

It turns out that the answer to the charges against us, the sins we condone and the ones we allow, isn’t some grand act of obeisance to show God how sorry we are. It’s a return to the things that God cares about, the things that God requires of us as God’s people. And yes, this is what is required. I know that as Christians we like to talk about grace, and how that is what saves us and not our works. That’s all true. As those who have been saved from a world in which value and worth are always transactional by a love that is freely and generously poured out upon us, our salvation draws us into what drives such love in the first place. What God requires of us isn’t a to do list, it’s a to be list. This is what God’s saving grace and love call us to be as those who belong to God, as those who trust in what God is about. 

We are to be just. Contrary to popular belief, being just is not the same as following the law. Because there have been and continue to be unjust laws. Slavery was legal, helping slaves escape was against the law. Concentration camps in Germany were legal, hiding Jews was against the law. Segregation was legal, crossing that color line was against the law. Sometimes being just means challenging and even breaking unjust laws for the sake of what is right, for the sake of what God would have made right. To be just is more than social or moral, it is faithfulness to what God requires of us. 

But as we’ve seen, justice without loving kindness, justice without mercy can become a cudgel used to beat people down. To love kindness is to recognize that being right, and making things right must be done with compassion if change is to be lasting. A colleague in our Presbytery, Rev. Drew Henry, was raised in Selma, Alabama. If you ask him how things have changed since the dramatic civil rights march on the Edmund Pettis bridge, he’ll tell you that laws change faster than people do. Loving kindness is what God requires of us to navigate the delta between changed laws and hearts that may be slower to come around. 

And finally, because despite our best efforts, the justice we seek is not always tempered by loving kindness, and the kindness we are called to sometimes allows injustice to persist, we walk in humility. We walk in humility with God knowing that none of this is ours to fix entirely or on our own. Humility is what is required when our efforts fall short or fail, because it allows us to reframe the expectation that God is with us in this work by recognizing rather that we are with God in something far bigger than us. We are with God in speaking up for what is right, regardless of how it may or may not immediately impact our lives. We are with God in reaching out with kindness and compassion to the powerful and powerless alike, sometimes whether we like them or not. And we are with God in playing a long game that will surely extend well beyond our limited reach and lifetime. We are with God because God has claimed us as God’s own in justice, mercy, and humility.