Listening to Micah – Justice, Kindness and Humility

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

30 January 2005

Fourth Sunday of Epiphany

Micah 6.1-8

 

When I was in seminary our reading from the prophet Micah was one of the favorite scriptures for people to preach on in our weekly chapel services.  There were posters with the verses on it posted around the school.  It was even the scripture the graduation committee chose for our commencement service.  For four years, Micah chapter six verse eight was everywhere around me.

 

The prophet comes to the people of Israel angry.  They’ve been so busy building up the institution of their religion that they’ve forgotten God.  They’ve created hundreds of thousands of rules about sacrifices.  If you sinned in any way, you had to bring a sacrifice to the temple, offering it to God.  The offerings ranged from a dove, to a sheep, to the firstborn calf of your herd.

 

The rich had no trouble making their sacrifices, but the poor were horribly burdened by them.  You couldn’t use just any animal as a sacrifice.  You had to have a “pure” one, approved by the priests at the temple.  They charged inflated prices, sometimes more than two or three times the animal’s value away from the temple.  The sacrifices lined the pockets of the priests with coins from selling animals, and it filled their bellies since they were the ones who ate the meat after it had been ritually burned in the temple.

 

And people had become convinced that the sacrifices let them do whatever they wanted.  People acted as if God would forgive anything if you sacrificed enough.  If you were corrupt in your business dealings, all you had to do was sacrifice a bull.  If you didn’t help feed the hungry and clothe the naked, all you had to do was sacrifice a couple of sheep.  If you acted unjustly towards someone in need, all you had to do was sacrifice a couple of doves.  People used the sacrifice system as an excuse to live lives that were completely opposed to God’s commandments.

 

In the midst of this corruption, Micah comes preaching a different way of life, a way that calls the people to return to the things they know God wants them to do.  With God’s voice, Micah pleads with the people to remember the things that God has done for them.  They’re reminded of God bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, of seeing them through the wanderings of the desert, of all the times God delivered them from oppression, cruelty and crisis.  Then God laments the people’s addiction to sacrifice, how they focus on “thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil.”

 

Then Micah asks us the million dollar question, “what does God require of us, of the faithful?”  If it isn’t sacrifices and burnt offerings that God wants from us, what does God want us to do?  Micah says that we already know, that God’s already told us what we need to do in order to be faithful, in order to truly follow God.  We only have to do three little things.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly with our God.

 

It seems so simple.  All God asks of us is those three things, justice, kindness and humility.  Of course, in life, it isn’t that easy.  If it was simple then the kingdom of God would already be here in its fullness, we’d be living in the abundance of God’s realm.  You and I both know it isn’t true.  Today the people of Iraq are struggling to vote amid great violence and uncertainty.  Hundreds of thousands of people in southeast Asia are homeless and hungry and uncertain how they’re going to move forward after the tragedy of the tsunami.  Here at home there are the horrors of abuse, rape, murder, robbery, arson.  The kingdom isn’t here yet, not in its fullness.  That means we still have to be about doing the things Micah reminds us God wants from us.

 

We have to do justice.  I spent a while on the front lines of Christian social action.  I’ve been to lots of rallies and protests.  I’ve been arrested several times for civil disobedience.  I regularly write or call my state and federal senators and representatives, and I usually write the president once every six months.  That is, however, only one definition of doing justice and it’s not for everyone.  There is something that each of us can do, in our daily lives, to follow God’s command, to do justice.

 

We have to look locally, at what needs justice right here around us.  There are hungry people in our communities.  Bringing donations to church for the food pantry is doing justice.  Every time we go to the grocery store, we can buy things for those who have trouble feeding their families, bringing them to church every Sunday not just on the first Sunday of the month.

 

There are people in our communities who struggle with the violence of domestic abuse in their lives.  We can give our time to the shelter in Shawano, helping them provide services that support survivors and their families.  There are people in our communities who are lonely, who need someone to listen to them, or need help getting to the grocery, or the doctor.  We can call up the people we know who need a friend, we can offer a ride or simply a listening ear.

 

We also have to look beyond our communities, to the state, the nation, the world.  Where can we contribute our time, energy and resources to the work of justice in other places?  There are hundreds of thousands of good organizations that do justice, and would love to have your support.  They need help making phone calls and writing letters, advocating directly with those who help enact and carry out laws.  They need financial help, supporting the work of emergency relief, education and development around the world.  They need your prayers, strengthening them as they work on behalf of those whose voices are silenced by oppression, hatred and ignorance.  In order to follow God’s command and truly do justice we have to be at work, here at home, and around the world, working in small ways every day to see that God’s justice is done whenever and wherever we can.

 

Next Micah says that we have to love kindness.  Sometimes it seems that kindness is in short supply in our world.  More often than not the news we receive is full of cruelty, brutality, hatred.  We hear of people hurting others, ignoring the dignity and humanity of the people around them, discriminating against someone because of their skin color, their religion, who they love, or other prejudices.  Sometimes it’s in dramatic ways, but more often than not, unkindness sneaks into our world.

 

When I was in California last week I was riding from San Francisco back to the east side of the bay on a BART train, the subway that can basically get you around the entire area.  I got on at rush hour, tons of people going home from their day of work in the city, on the last stop before you go underneath the water of the bay.  One of the other passengers who got on at the same time I did was a woman who was about six or seven months pregnant.  We both found seats even though the train car was crowded.

 

When we got to the first stop on the other side of the bay, an elderly woman got on the train.  Now there were no empty seats available for her.  I stood up and offered her my seat.  The pregnant woman did the same thing.  The hundreds of other able bodied and not pregnant people on the train didn’t move.  The older woman took the pregnant woman’s seat for the one stop that she needed to travel and then the pregnant woman was able to sit back down, but no one else stirred to offer her a seat in between.

 

That’s the sort of unkindness of our world that scares me most.  No one did anything terrible to us.  No one inflicted any harm on us.  But no one did anything at all.  God asks us to live differently, to embrace kindness, to practice compassion, to enrich the lives of those around us by living with an open heart, with thoughtfulness and tenderness.  This is the easy one of the three that God asks us to do.

 

We have to look around at the people who are traveling through life with us and realize that they’re on a difficult journey too.  We have to do the little things that make life more comfortable.  We have to hold the door for the person after us or offer our seat to someone.  We have to return our shopping carts to the little stalls at the grocery store or help someone pick up the papers they spill.  We have to smile at the store clerk or let someone go in front of us in line.  Every day we have to cultivate in our hearts and minds the things that help us love kindness, and we have to do them, spreading kindness and compassion everywhere we go.

 

Finally, the prophet says that we have to “walk humbly with our God.”  I think this is the hardest of the three.  While I was in California last week I attended the annual lecture series at my seminary.  They were great lectures, but about half way through each of the three lectures I got a very strange feeling in my stomach.  It took me two days to figure out what was wrong.  As much as I agreed with most of what the lecturers were saying, they seemed too sure of themselves, too convinced they were right, too confident that they had found the one and only truth.

 

Humility is a rare commodity these days.  Politicians, particularly during election times, certainly lack humility.  Athletes, actors, officers in huge corporations, anybody who makes the news seems to genuinely be short of humility.  They’re all incredibly confident about their own talents and abilities.  When they give speeches, at awards shows, after winning the big game, or after completing the big corporate merger, they sometimes thank God, but it doesn’t often seem terribly sincere.

 

Humility isn’t about putting down our gifts.  We all need to be able to talk about what our talents are, knowing what we can contribute to God’s work in the world.  Instead, humility is recognizing that our gifts are all connected, that we need each other in order to be whole.  I might be the best preacher in the world, but it wouldn’t matter unless I had a congregation to preach to.

 

Someone could be the best teacher, or doctor, or accountant or farmer that ever was, but if they didn’t have someone to share those gifts with, and other people with complementary gifts, then the world would be incomplete.  None of us have all the gifts and talents the world needs.  We have to be aware of what we can contribute, and recognize that we accomplish nothing without God’s grace and blessing.  We have to thank God, not as an afterthought, but as instinctively as we breathe.  Humility puts God first in everything we do.

 

Micah was trying to bring his people back from the brink, restore them to right relationship with God, remind them that it isn’t the sacrifices of bulls and lambs that God desires, but true hearts.  His counsel is just as important for us today.  We have to do justice, seeking ways both locally and globally to ensure that those who are oppressed are freed, those who are hungry are fed, and those who are lonely have companionship.

 

We have to love kindness, being helpful and thoughtful, spreading compassion and friendship to everyone we meet.  And we have to walk humbly with God, never having too much confidence in our own abilities, never forgetting that all we are and all we do come from God.  I know us all to be people who already follow Micah’s advice, who work for justice, who love kindness, and who walk humbly with God.  We must keep at it, continuing to do these things everyday, strengthening our practices of justice and kindness and humility that, in the fullness of God’s time, all of creation will live in fullness and joy.  Amen.