We began with
Jonah, who showed us “the God of the second chance”. Then came Amos, who went
from his home south of Jerusalem to the Northern Kingdom to tell them that
their religious idolatry, sexual promiscuity, and economic oppression falsified
their offerings to God. God wants God’s people to thrive. Last week we heard
about Hosea, whose radical love for his unfaithful wife gives us a picture of
God’s love for God’s unfaithful people.
These three
prophets ministered in the Northern Kingdom during a time of political and
economic prosperity. Jeroboam 2 had a long and prosperous reign. They made it
clear, however, that outward prosperity can conceal inward greed and rebellion
against God. It may be that the watching people don’t see the inner corruption,
but God does see it, and God sends the prophets to speak against it.
Today we move
from the North (Samaria) to the South (Jerusalem). Micah ministers in the
period just after Amos and Hosea, beginning in days of prosperity under
Jeroboam 2, but continuing through his successors. The first verse of the book
states: “The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth during the reigns
of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” This dating carries his ministry
through Jeroboam’s successors: Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah,
and Hoshea.
Micah saw the
prosperity of Jeroboam. Micah saw prosperity in Judah as well, if not as much
as in Samaria, but he also saw something else. Amos had said during the height
of Samaria’s prosperity that the Assyrians would destroy their nation, and it
happened. Micah saw the end of the Northern Kingdom, and he saw his own country
tremble before the Assyrian army. He experienced the terror of the Assyrian
army camped around Jerusalem, before God destroyed it (2 Kings 18 and 19). Lord
Byron pictured the scene in a poem written 200 years ago:
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the
sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
This then is
the background to the passages we heard read this morning. We consider them now
briefly, and then ask what they tell us about the heart of God.
Micah 1: 3 to 7
In chapter 1, Micah tells the people that God’s judgment is on Samaria
(the northern kingdom) and Jerusalem (the southern kingdom) because of their
reliance on the high places – worship of false gods mingled with their worship
of Yahweh. Given that he is speaking primarily to Judah, he uses the fact that they
have seen the judgment on Samaria to warn them about the danger they face. He
references primarily religious idolatry, but economic corruption is also a
basic theme in his warnings to Judah.
Micah 4: 1 to
5
The passage in chapter 4 is one of our best-loved.
Clearly it was one that the people of Micah’s day also liked, since Micah and
Isaiah both use it. Probably they are both quoting a saying or hymn that people
knew well.
The passage tells the people that God’s desire for
God’s people is that they will be people of such goodness and peace that the
whole world streams to them to learn how to know such peace and joy. People
around the world look for such goodness within their own ‘gods”, but God’s
people follow Yahweh alone, in Whom is peace and joy.
[Excursus: Missiologists call this
“centripetal mission” of attraction, as compared to the “centrifugal” mission”
of sending in the NT. Of course, God’s People are also sent in the OT (e.g.,
Abraham and Sarah sent to Canaan, and Jacob’s family sent into Egypt, and God’s
New People in the NT are also to be a “city set on a hill”.]
Zion (or Jerusalem) is a foretaste of the New
Jerusalem, so that this perfect peace, in which weapons are turned into
agricultural implements, finds its fulfillment in the return of Christ at the
end of all things. It stands as a beacon to inspire us to live the way that God
wants us to live now, to be people of peace now. Ten Thousand Villages carries
a line of jewelry made out of bomb casings, a sign of our hope in this life and
the next.
Micah 6: 1 to
8
In chapter 6, in another of our favourite passages, God
speaks like a lover. He says to us, “Remember the relationship we have had, the
life we have lived together!” The prophet then speaks for God’s people,
recognizing that our sin has polluted our worship and made it completely
unacceptable. True worship is found in walking with God. Justice and mercy come
from walking with God (which means, living with God). True religion flows from
right relationship: Our faith is not a religion; it is a relationship.
[Footnote: I am borrowing this line from Bruxy Cavey
and his book, The End of Religion. Of
course, it is an overstatement. I teach World Religions, and that includes the
religion called “Christianity”. But Cavey is right. The heart of the Christian
religion is relationship with God, not the system of rituals we call
“Christianity”.]
[Excursus: I was at a Theological Day with Joel Thiessen this past Friday (May 4, 2017), held at The Meeting House in Oakville,Ontario, where Bruxy is the preaching pastor. Thiessen’s presentation on those who
enter “no religious affiliation on surveys (the “nones”) tied well into my thinking
in this sermon.]
Synthesis
The point of
all this is that God desires a relationship with us. The Law in the OT was
always based on covenant. A covenant is something that seals and protects a
relationship. True religion in the OT was never a matter of simply doing the
right things so that God would have to bless the people. The transactional
approach, trying to make God serve the people (what some call using God like a vending
machine), is precisely what the prophets spoke against. Amos says, “I hate your
tithes and offerings because you have broken our covenant!” Micah repeats it
here: What does God want? God wants you to love justice and show kindness –
and, most importantly, to walk with God. God wants us as lovers! That is the
repeated thought in the startling imagery that we found in Hosea!
True worship
relates with God; it is a relationship, not just ritual. True worship obeys and
is better than sacrifice. True worship changes your life and mine. True worship
changes the world around us through the power of love, acting in justice and
mercy towards everyone around us.
Working It Out
Jesus told us
precisely this, and we have heard it often enough. Jesus summarized the Law:
“Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbour as yourself.”
Jesus had told
the disciples that his new commandment was to love each other with the love
they saw in him. This active love, this dynamic relationship, was what would
show the world that they were Christians (John 13). But what do most people
think of in Canada when they think about Christians? Joel Thiessen wrote an
article in 2010 about the churches’ struggle to attract new people. Here is how
he describes the way many people see the church:
Non-Christians perceive Christians, particularly
evangelicals, to be hypocritical, anti-homosexual, sheltered within a Christian
subculture, too political, judgmental, and motivated to make friends with
non-Christians only because they wish to convert them. Christians are known not
for what they stand for, but for what they stand against. They are perceived as
closed-minded, arrogant, and highly exclusive relative to the surrounding
culture.
Quote from Joel Thiessen, “Churches Are Not
Necessarily the Problem: Lessons Learned from Christmas and Easter Affiliates”,
p. 6. (Church and Faith Trends, Dec
2010, Vol. 3, No. 3). This paper was part of the reading for the Theological Day
I attended.
This is
awkward. What do the prophets do, if it is not to condemn sin in the world?
What are prophets known for, if it is not for what they stand against? I have
stressed the sins that Amos and Hosea and Micah condemned: sexual promiscuity,
religious idolatry, and economic oppression. Only the last of these would gain
any purchase in Canada today. We might agree that economic oppression is bad,
but we would tell the prophet to mind his own business if he started rebuking
us for what we think or believe or do “behind closed doors”.
But to hear
the prophets this way is to miss what they were for. Their point was never only
to denounce sin, but always to call people back into relationship with God.
Amos wanted people to worship God rightly. Hosea wanted people to discover
God’s love. Micah called people to renew their covenant with God and walk with
the God who made them. This was their heartbeat, which reflected God’s
consistent desire for God’s creation: “Love God. Love God’s People. Love God’s
World.”
How?
The task of
figuring out how we do this is your homework. We need to work this out
together, talking over coffee, working alongside each other, discovering the
needs of our community and our world and meeting them in love.Micah’s words were: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Start with the last of that series. We recognize that we are not very good at showing people God’s love, so we turn back to God in humility and with a deep desire for God to fill us. Read your Bible often, listening for God’s voice. Pray often, listening for God’s Spirit. Use the Lord’s Prayer or something like it over and over.
Two weeks ago,
I mentioned Alan Kreider’s book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. He notes that worship and prayer were
basic to the early church’s patient consistent walk with God. People spent time
together praying and seeking God’s face. They prayed looking up, as if towards
God, with hands outstretched. God was real to them, and God’s presence
transformed their lives.
Justice and
mercy (or as some translate it, kindness) flowed out of them because they knew
themselves to be in God’s presence, wherever they were. These qualities were
like their clothes, which they put on when they got up in the morning. One way
that they reminded themselves who they were was by using the kiss of peace.
Rich people would kiss poor people in the church, and poor would kiss rich.
When martyrs were about to die in the arena, they would kiss each other as a
visible sign of God’s love working within them. We don’t need to do what they
did with these outward forms, but we do need their relationship with each other
and with God. We love God, and so we love God’s people and we love God’s world.
What would it
take for us to change the way that people around us see Christians? When it
comes to witnessing, many of us probably adopt a policy of be as nice as you
can, and maybe sometime someone will ask you why you’re so nice. Then you can
say, “Because of Jesus!” J The trouble is that niceness is
our national Canadian virtue. You know how we apologize when we trip over someone
else. It’s their fault, and we say, “Sorry!” Someone asked, “If a Canadian
trips when nobody is around, will he/she still apologize?” We are all participants
in a national “I’m nicer than you contest”. So how nice would we have to be for
people to notice?
You notice
that Micah doesn’t say, “Be nice.” He says, “Be kind.” Put yourself out for
people who are hurting. “Love justice.” Put yourself out for people who are
marginalized. “Walk humbly with God.” Spend your life so close to God that you reflexively
radiate God’s peace and love in every situation you find yourself.
Conclusion
As I said
before, the actual shape of our lives is for all of us to work out together.
Perhaps you can talk together a family or friends over lunch, working out what
it means to radiate God’s love. Let me leave you with a prayer you have heard
before, sometimes called the prayer of Saint Francis, which expresses in other
words what I have been trying to say:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to
love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are
pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Note: I gather that this well-known prayer was probably
not by St. Francis, and that it appears in various versions. The prayer is still
worth praying.
Steinbach Mennonite Church
6 May 2018Scriptures
Micah 1: 3 to 7
Judgment against Samaria and Jerusalem
3 Look! The Lord is coming from his dwelling-place;
he comes down and treads on the heights of the earth. 4 The
mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the
fire, like water rushing down a slope. 5 All this is
because of Jacob’s transgression, because of the sins of the people of Israel.
What is Jacob’s
transgression? Is it not Samaria? What is Judah’s high place? Is it not
Jerusalem?
6 ‘Therefore I will
make Samaria a heap of rubble, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour her
stones into the valley and lay bare her foundations. 7 All
her idols will be broken to pieces; all her temple gifts will be burned with
fire; I will destroy all her images. Since she gathered her gifts from the
wages of prostitutes, as the wages of prostitutes they will again be used.’
Micah 4: 1 to 5
The Mountain of the Lord
4 In the last days the
mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the
highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and peoples will
stream to it. 2 Many nations will come and say, ‘Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the
God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’
The law will go out from Zion, the word of
the Lord from Jerusalem. 3 He
will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far
and wide. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they
train for war any more. 4 Everyone will sit under their
own vine and under their own fig-tree, and no one will make them afraid, for
the Lord Almighty has spoken.
5 All the nations may walk
in the name of their gods, but we will walk in the name of the Lord
our God for ever and ever.
our God for ever and ever.
Micah 6: 1 to
8
The Lord’s case against Israel
6 Listen to what the Lord says: ‘Stand up, plead my case before the mountains; let the
hills hear what you have to say. 2 Hear, you mountains,
the Lord’s accusation; listen, you everlasting
foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against his
people; he is lodging a charge against Israel.
3 ‘My people, what have I
done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me. 4 I
brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent
Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. 5 My people,
remember what Balak king of Moab plotted and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous
acts of the Lord.’
6 With what shall I come
before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? 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 offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
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