Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Epiphany: God Requires What?


One of our readings this week is Micah 6:1-8 (in addition to Psalm 15, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, and Matthew 5:1-12). This passage is easily a top 5 favorite of Christians. It sums up beautifully and succinctly what God wants us to do: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."

Life gives us many requirements: we have to pay our taxes, we have to pay money in exchange for goods and services, we have to get a passport if we are travelling to a different country, we have to follow the rules if we are to participate in a game or sport...the list goes on and on...

What does the Lord require of you? Do justice. Love kindness. And walk humbly with your God.

So who was this prophet anyway? All we know about Micah is that he was from a small village, Moresheth, a prophet who spoke for the poor farm workers who were suffering at the hands of the powerful landlords. Micah was the voice of the worker and that of common everyday people. He saw the injustice that was going on in society, was quite willing to name them and felt called to address the ones in power and to speak against evils that were no longer tolerable.

Micah was not removed from the suffering of his people. Micah knew that justice would not come from the state or the power structure for most, if not all, of the leadership were preoccupied and caught up in matters of comfort, prosperity, and security. Justice, as history has shown, arises out of the people themselves, who having been alienated from what belongs to them, if not already taken away from them, either begin down a path of death, or somehow by God's grace, dare to envision change, new ways of doing things and different and dynamic alternatives to their current unjust conditions. What does the Lord require but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? To do justice is not a romantic ideal nor an abstract concept. Justice asks of us as a people to work together, to truthfully critique the present unjust system and to find new alternatives to change the system. It also involves the wealthiest nation in the world to give back what never belonged to her. Justice is able to disrupt, dismantle, break down, disarm, and transform systems and people when we dare to see what is really happening here and around the world without growing cynical and closed off. Because we are able to come to an understanding that every human being matters, that God matters, which is why doing justice is so closely intertwined with loving kindness. We can see all kinds of injustices, tragedies, atrocities, but seeing it is not enough. For it is in seeing the injustice and being moved in doing something about it that we dare to change what is unjust.

The Good Samaritan who dares not pass by another human being, even when that other was considered an enemy (Luke 10:25-37). The father of the elder son in the prodigal son who did not choose one son over another but found his two arms wide enough to embrace both his sons (Luke 15: 11-32). Mary and the other women standing at the foot of the cross no matter how painful and frightening (John 19:25-30). Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah weeping together in their grief (Ruth 1:8-10) . The woman with her alabaster flask who broke it open and poured it out without holding back (Luke 7: 36-50), and Jesus who wept, prayed, broke bread, touched, and healed the people are real examples of loving kindness, loving tenderly, loving steadfastly.

And yet in our society, to love kindness does not come easily. Perhaps this is because loving tenderly involves one knowing confidently one is loved and is able to take the risk to be moved, to be vulnerable, and to be able to see another person's suffering as one's own.

For instance, to walk humbly is to neither to have your nose up in the air nor your shoulders slouched over your feet. To walk humbly is to not exalt yourself, to not worry or be bothered by other people's opinions of you. To walk humbly is not to be above someone or below someone, but rather with someone. It is not thinking you can do it all on your own, carrying the burdens upon your limited human shoulders. It is not forgetting you are human. It is not living without grace. It is not playing God. So maybe walking humbly with God is about paying attention, paying attention to who we are and what is around us, listening to the cries and the stories of other human beings as well as to our own stories waiting on God. It is as Micah said, "I will wait on God and God will hear me. Then when there are wars and bombings in Kosovo, Iraq, in the Middle East, human beings will gather around the world, talking with one another, having discussions, getting to know each other, praying together, and standing up to say, "No more! No More!"

Following God has these life-giving, bondage-breaking, justice-making requirements. We are called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

I am in debt to the words of Angela Ying on http://day1.org/722-god_requires_what


No comments:

Post a Comment