With Your God

Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says:
    Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
    and let the hills hear your voice.

Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,

    and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
    and he will contend with Israel.

“O my people, what have I done to you?
    In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
    and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
    Aaron, and Miriam.

O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
    what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
    that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

This final verse of our passage today is one that many Christians are familiar with.  

This piece of Scripture seems to stand out as an especially important one, and I think part of the reason it stands out, is because it describes clearly how God wants us to live.

I saw a funny mock line graph about the book of Micah,
It showed the books and verses of Micah across the bottom axis,
and the amount of times people preach on/talk about that passage on the vertical axis.

Micah has 7 books, and throughout the first 5 books, the line on the chart measuring the amount of talk about that passage hovers around zero,
until it gets to Micah chapter 6, and not just chapter 6, but verse 8 in chapter 6.

Here, the line jumps to the very top of the graph – the highest point possible
for the span of one verse, then it drops back down to zero for the rest of the chart.

Micah 6 verse 8 seems to be the only part of the book of Micah
that we want to talk about or that we’re actually very interested in.

But if we narrow in our conversation, and just talk about the 6^th chapter,
we can see a lot more about the meaning of verse 8.

Like this...kind of.

Verses 1 and 2 introduce the hypothetical situation for this passage, and what we find is Micah opening up what appears to be a courtroom hearing.
Micah invites the Lord to plead a case,
   because the Lord has a controversy with the people – that’s us.

These first verses set up the need for God to confront the people.

The Lord begins the testifying,
            After asking a desperate, “What have I done to you?”
            we are reminded of all the good things the Lord did for the people:
                        brought them out of Egypt,
                        sent them Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
                        this instance we’re pretty familiar with.

God asks us to remember King Balak and Balaam.
            King Balak was a Cannonite king who ruled near the promised land
            when the wandering Israelites came near.
            King Balak wanted one of his seers to come and curse the Israelites
                        so that they could be defeated in battle.
            So he called on Balaam to come curse them,
                        but Balaam would not curse them and only gave them blessings,
            because the God of the Israelites told him to.
            So the Israelites were not cursed, but blessed,
                        and King Balak was thwarted.

God asks us to remember Shittim and Gilgal,
            when the Lord led Joshua and the Israelites
                        over the Jordan into the promised land.

And God finishes testifying by calling these the saving acts of the Lord. 

God is plaintiff – the one bringing an issue; the people are the defendants,
            the ones being accused.
            What are the people being accused of?
            They are being accused of breaking their covenant with God.
The people have been greedy, they have been selfish,
            they have not cared for the lost and the least.
            they have not remained true to God’s call.

In this trial, the people now have an opportunity to defend themselves.
            and Micah quotes an individual – a stand in for the people of God.

She immediately asks what is it the Lord wants the people to do.
            She starts off by naming burnt offerings – which seems logical,
                  But then she quickly gets frustrated.

"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?"
"How about ten thousand rivers of oil?"
"For goodness sake, does God want me to give up my firstborn child!"

You can sense the desperation in the speaker’s voice.
            I picture the person bowed over,
            in tears, begging to know what the Lord wants,
                        saying, "I have given so much already... I just don’t understand."

Then Micah responds to the pleas of the human,
            and I imagine this still, soft – maybe exasperated – voice
            from Micah, who places his hand on the person’s shoulder.
            He says, "You poor, misunderstanding human.
The Lord has already told you what to do.
The Lord has told you what is required from you in this covenant.

God doesn’t need just a bunch of worship practices,
            God doesn’t need you to do the right ceremony,
            God doesn’t need you to sacrifice your firstborn child,
God wants you to do justice.
God wants you to be loyal in your love,
God wants you walk with the Lord."

Micah says to the pitiful human, "It’s really that easy.
            there’s no sentence, court is adjourned."

The first thing that we as the people of God are called to do,
            as participants in the covenant of God,
            is justice, or mitzpah.

In Micah’s time, the injustices were exploitative land practices,
                        a lack of caring for widows and outcasts,
                        a desire for Jews to focus solely on furthering themselves
                                    and their own interests.

The call for justice is just as powerful for us today.
            We exist in a culture that is all about furthering ourselves as individuals, that seems to value relationships for what we are able to gain from them.
                     

To have God’s justices, God’s mitzpah,
            we have to reconsider the way we live our lives,
            the way we spend our money and our time,
            and the way we treat others.

God wants us to do justice.
I love the simple verb in this part of the call.
God is not calling us to just cry out against injustice,
            God is not calling us to just point out injustice,
            God is not calling us to just seek justice
God is calling us to do justice.

To say that God wants us to love kindness
            doesn’t quite encompass the meaning behind these words.
The thing that God wants us to love - hesed
            could be better translated as a devoted love,
            or an unconditional compassion,
                        much like the commitment that God has
                                    in relationship with us.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse with, “be compassionate and loyal in your love,”

Not only does God want us to do the work of justice,
                        God wants us to be in as close a relationship with our neighbor
            as we are in with the Lord.
            To have that much unconditional devotion or hesed to those around us.

Having this level of compassion for those around us can be tough.
            Sometimes loving the stranger can be easier than loving the person
                        who sits in the pew next to us.
            But God’s call is to be loyal to that person,
                        to see that person’s life as an intrinsically valuable thing.

In Judaism, the word for ethics is halacha which means to walk.
            The task of ethics is to describe how one ought to walk in one’s daily life.
            how we live in our daily walking-around-and-doing-things lives.

So when Micah talks about walking with God, he’s talking about walking constantly with God.
            Making God a daily partner in our walk of life.

This is the only way we can hope to live out these ideals
            the only way we can hope to do the work of mitzpah,
            the only way we can live out our covenantal relationship with God
                        and with each other as hesed.
            is to make our every-day walking around – our halacah – a partnership with God.

I’ve become really attached to this program that comes on NPR sometimes
            called Snap Judgment.
            it’s a story-telling show, and I love story telling.

The host of the show is Glen Washington, and he tells a story
            about when he moved to rural Michigan as a young boy.
The first day that he was to go to school he got on his school bus
            and turned to go down the aisle,
                        and noticed something strange:
                        he was the only African American student on the bus,
                                    in fact, he was one of the only African American students
                                    in the school.
            So Glen went to sit next to one of the boys in the first seat
                        only to witness the boy spitting onto the spot where Glen
                                    was preparing to sit.
            So Glen moved on to the next seat, to discover the same thing happening.
            Seat after seat this happened: he would find an open spot
                        only for the student sitting in the row to spit in that spot.

Finally, Glen came near the back of the bus
            and found a little girl sitting in one of the final rows
            with her backpack next to her.
            As the bus driver yelled at Glen to find a spot and sit down,
                        the girl quietly moved her bag out of the way
                        to offer Glen a saliva-free seat on the bus.

Every day, Glen returned to the girl with the backpack
            and sat next to her in the row, never having conversation
                        but always accepting this small sign of hospitality.

When we walk with God, our actions don’t have to be world –changing,
            they don’t have to change the fabric of our culture,
            they just have to demonstrate
                        a desire to treat another person
                        as God might treat that person.
            They have to be actions
                        that we might do, if God was literally standing right next to us.
            They have to be acts that do justice
            acts that show love.

The greatest gift of this Golden Nugget of the Old Testament
            is that in order for us to learn from the trial in Micah
            and to live in covenant with God,
we must be mindful about our relationships with each other.

In order for us to be in right relationship with God,
            we have to be in right relationship with those around us.
            Doing justice
            loving compassionately,
            and walking with God
            requires that we step away from what society tells us about relationships
                        and we model our relationships after God’s.

Not because our salvation depends upon it, not because we’re threatened into doing it,
            but because that is what we do as children of God,
            as response to God’s love
as participants in God’s covenant. Amen.