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Micah 6:1-8
1 Hear what the LORD says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 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.
3 “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 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.
5 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.”
6 “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?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 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?
Families are complicated. Relationships can be hard.
That’s particularly true if you want them to be good.
If you want them to be healthy. And how that can happen is what we see playing out in this passage from Micah.
God and God’s children hashing it out. Pushing and pulling and trying to find common ground when there is plenty of frustration to go around.
There are lots of things we don’t know about Micah, but the text does provide some powerful clues as to its context. While not a prophet who worked directly with the monarchy as some other prophets did, Micah of Moresheth brought his message during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekia. This isn’t exactly hidden, it’s in the first verse. But it’s a pretty broad range, one that scholars have narrowed down to the late eighth century BCE, mostly during Hezekiah. [1]
Why it’s hard to pinpoint is that Micah and his words became something of a template, a base to which scribes added and subtracted.
Micah’s prophecies, and God’s responses, became larger than one person or one situation. And so we find hints of exilic and postexilic periods because as new things came up, they used Micah for more than one moment.
Why is this important? Because it is a reminder that these texts aren’t single purpose, single use. They had multiple iterations and emphases- including today.
And today, with the passage from chapter 6, we find the relationship between God and His people in a difficult place. Not a great deal of common ground.
But here’s what you do find. Everyone is still at the table.
It reminds me of something that happens in the first season of Ted Lasso, the fourth episode[2] where the relationship between the two star footballers – Jamie and Roy - on Lasso’s team is at a breaking point.
And while this show might not be your cup of tea, here’s how Ted sets out to fix this divide. Ted puts Roy and Jamie at a table together and challenges them to stick it out. To find that common ground. To work together. And then he lets them figure it out. It isn’t neat and tidy, but they find a way. An honest, stumbling way.
And while some commentaries liken what is happening in this chapter of Micah to a courtroom, legal setting, I believe the language and postures resonate more with how Terence Fretheim sees it- as a moment when God and God’s people focus on their relationship and do some of that hard, honest work. Tough talk as they air their frustrations and disappointments-
God is mystified why his people are so distant. Why they won’t respond? Why they don’t seem to understand all that he has done? He has, after all, given them everything.
And the people were mystified, too- feeling as though God’s expectations in return are too much, too mysterious, too hard. It’s hard in its brokenness and honesty. But it’s also remarkable.
As Terence Fretheim says,[3] “The openness of God to engage in such a dialogue with the people is remarkable (cf. Abraham, Genesis 18:25-33; Moses, Exodus 3-7). God interacts with the people about their concerns; God does not dismiss their complaints as inappropriate or bring them to court because they have dared to question God! Quite the contrary, God develops reasons as to why they should be appreciative of God’s activity in their story even though life has been difficult.”
So the people cry out. What is it, then? What do you want?
And they give a laundry list that seems a little exaggerated, because, well, it is.
And God says, here’s what I require. Require. Darash.
A word that can, and should, be understood in many ways.
The other television show Ben and I have been watching lately is the new season of “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS. Growing up, I loved the books of James Herriot.
Herriot was, of course, a pseudonym, a pen name for the vet whose real name was Alf Wight. His son, Jim Wight, wrote a biography of his father that tells his father’s story with honesty and love.
It is a story that I have returned to time and time again- as a child and as a parent.
Jim Wight writes:
Since the day he qualified from Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939, Alfred Wight had carried the burden of the belief that he owed his parents a debt he would never be able to repay. From his very first poverty-stricken days as a young veterinary surgeon, he had not only regularly sent money to his parents but had written to them conscientiously every week as well as visiting them, without fail, several times every year. His devotion to his parents was admirable, but it had its price…. I well remember the day of my graduation from the University of Glasgow Veterinary School in 1966. My mother and father, who had come up for the occasion, were staying with us in my grandmother’s home in Anniesland Road. We were enjoying a celebratory drink when my grandmother said to me, “Jim, never forget that you owe your father a great deal. He has made sacrifices for you. You owe him everything!” I shall never forget the expression on my father’s face, nor his comments to me immediately afterward. He led me into another room, “you owe me nothing! Do you understand? Absolutely nothing!” Having known him so long as such a reserved and mild-mannered man, it was a new experience to hear him speak so directly to me. I did, indeed, consider that I owed him a great deal and said as much to him. He paused for a second, without taking his eyes from mine. “you owe me- and your mother- nothing!” He said no more.[4]
Was Alf happy to receive his son’s love and gratitude? Of course. But he did not want it to be a debt to be paid. An expectation to be met. He wanted it to be freely given, not coerced.
I thought of this with the language of require in Micah.
What does the Lord require of you?
Require here is not an expectation- it is a desire- it is a seeking- it is a wanting. It is not a legal debt or due, but a hope.
As United Methodist pastor James Howell as said, “There is a mood of seeking in darash; lovers seek each other out, and a shepherd seeks his lost sheep—and in the Old Testament, both situations use darash. So when the Lord “requires” justice, kindness and mercy, it isn’t that the Lord “insists on” or “demands” these things. God seeks them, yearns for them, and frankly needs them from us as intimate partners in God’s adventure down here.“ [5]
This is God’s relationship to us. Seeking. Wanting. Hoping. Meeting us where we are.
We are saved by grace through faith, and when we are, we cannot help but be changed, to seek what God seeks. Want what God wants.
And what God wants, as expressed here in Micah, directly connected to the words we say each week in the summary of the law, are to do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God. Words that are intended to be larger than their direct context. Words that God hopes will be written on our hearts as much as they are heard by our ears.
How do we show God our gratitude? But how we treat one another.
Seeking justice.
Caring for one another’s practical, real-life needs.
Feeding the hungry, but not stopping there, working to eliminate hunger.
Charity, but also activism, ingenuity, and persistence.
As Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler share,[6] “Charity alleviates suffering but does not get to the disease. Charity should and must be undertaken, but the purpose of justice work is to make charity obsolete. Justice is about building communities of caring, where all lives matter to one another as much as they do to God.”
Do justice.
Love kindness. The kindness that is described here is Hesed, which is so much more than any word can contain.[7] It is stick-to-it-iveness, stubborn, persistent, and joyful. Staying at the table and holding hands through the hard parts. It’s what this passage demonstrated from beginning to end. People who are committed and born of love.
The kind of love of a God who can be disappointed in a people, know that there will be consequences for their actions, and can still love them. Still send a savior.
There is a reason I know more than one person who has chosen to have “Hesed” tattooed on their body. It’s a permanent kind of love that God gives.
And walk humbly.
We live in a world where it seems to always be about more and what we can do next. I heard this week about a young man (Cille and Lloyd’s grandson) who scored 6th in a world skiing competition, and my first thoughts were could he get a college scholarship? Can he go pro? Can he win a gold medal in the Olympics? Wasn’t the competition enough?
We wonder if we have any impact if we don’t have a huge in the headlines impact.
If you’re asking someone to the prom it needs to be a promposal.
Why “go big or go home” is a part of our lexicon?
And here, listen that God says that’s not what matters. It’s not the hundred dollar bill we spend in one fell swoop, it’s the dimes and the nickels we share day after day.
Or consider someone who does something like playing the organ, in a church, for more than 46 years.
Who considers the small things most people never notice? Like different versions of “Jesus loves me” to welcome the children to their time up front.
Or finds a tune to an offhand mention of a hymn and incorporates it into worship the next Sunday.
Who delights in finding just the right notes to match the scripture or the season and who take it so very seriously they practice and practice and practice and yet not so seriously they can’t have fun and celebrate the Olympics and the monarchy in England or the pastor’s desire that everyone hears a bit of James Taylor from time to time.
And most of that goes unspoken, but what would our faith in this place be without the notes that have carried us and accompanied our laughter, and given us space to weep? Encouraged our voices so we can pray twice and be brought to that more profound alleluia.
For more than forty-six years. Thank you, Vance.
Y’all. There is a reason why these words from Micah are ones that churches use as their vision statement and their mission, and repeat week after week.
Because it says what we need to know.
What we are called to.
Because (as Maren used to tell us as she introduced the Summary of the Law) it is exactly that simple and exactly that hard.
So let us hear them. And write them on our hearts.
Do justice.
Love kindness.
Walk humbly.
It is enough. It is everything.
Alleluia. Amen.
[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-micah-61-8-5
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11044158/
[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-micah-61-8-3
[4]Jim Wight, The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of my Father. New York: Random House, 199. Page 216
[5] (The United Methodist Reporter, June 13, 2012)
[6] https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/epiphany4a/#Micah=
[7] https://biblehub.com/hebrew/chesed_2617.htm
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