“God Wants What?”                                                                                    

Micah 6: 1 – 8                                                                                           

Makemie Memorial Presbyterian Church                                                   

October 24, 2010

¹Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains & let the hills hear your voice. ²Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord & you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people & the Lord will contend with Israel. ³“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! ⁴For I brought you up from the land of Egypt & redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. ⁵O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him & 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 & bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before God with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷Will 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?” ⁸God has told you, O mortal, what is good;  what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  This  ends our reading.

Here is the saga of Bobbi Jo. The other night around 7 p.m. I was settling in to help with homework around the kitchen table, when a family showed up at the backdoor. The two parents, and three tiny children, an infant, a little more than an infant & a toddler. The back story proved to be umm, not true, but still, three little babies! The meat of the story was they needed a new battery for their car, some food & some gas. I explained that I had little to no access to funds at night & if they could wait until morning I would be in a better position to help. No, that wouldn’t work. So I said, “OK, give me a minute to think.” I called Pastor Mark & he was getting ready to go into a finance meeting. He said, “I can run you down $20 bucks if you meet me in the middle in front of the courthouse.” I could. I gave the couple $20 for diapers. Then I called Sherwood McGrath the other church at the corner. Sherwood was at choir practice but his wife Cookie said, “I have a few dollars for my lunch money tomorrow, I could give that.” I declined her kind offer. And she said, “Sherwood will call you as soon as he gets home.” In the meantime we go out to the car to go get gas & the car will not start. Bobbi Jo looks at me & says, “Do you have jumper cables?” I said, “No.” She said, “Go get your husband he can jump my car.” Her husband was standing right beside her when she said this. I said, “No, don’t think so.”

She said, “What will you do to start our car?”

I said, “I will call the town police & have them send an officer.”

“No” Bobbi Jo says, “I don’t like cops.”

“OK. What’s your idea?”

Officer Jenkins comes, jump starts their car but it won’t turn over because they are out of gas. I said to him, “What now?” Officer Jenkins says, “It’s pretty rare to get a vehicle with a dead batter & out of gas. “ Then it starts to rain. The babies are crying in their car seats. So I say, “I’ll go up to the gas station & see if they have gas cans.”

Everyone agrees. At the gas station a young woman is behind the counter. I ask, “Do you have gas cans?” She checks. No gas can. I explain the story. She suggests using an empty 2 liter bottle to transport gas. I tell her, “I’m way too rule bound to do that. But there were two young men outside when I drove up, do you know them?” She said, “yes.” I said they look pretty savvy to me. Do you think they could help?” She said, “oh yes.” So out I go to ask two guys loitering at the gas station in grung garb if they can help? They both immediately respond to my story. Saying, “We’ve got it covered.” And they do. They rinse a radiator can, fill it with gasoline. I ask if we will need a funnel. And Toby holds up the Mountain Dew bottle he had been drinking which is now cut to be a funnel. “Well done” I say, marveling at the ingeniousness of these two. We go back to the dead battery, gas empty car. Officer Jenkins is running the lights on the cruiser to entertain the babies. Toby & Stephen put in the gas. Officer Jenkins jumps the car. I follow them to the gas station & put in $50 worth of gas. Sherwood calls, “Our helping hands mission will have a gift card for this family tomorrow. They can pick it up after 9 a.m. but I have a graveside service at 10 a.m. so they need to come before 10.”

I tell Bobbi Jo & husband this good news. Off they go. It’s now almost 9 p.m. I go into the gas station to rave about Toby & Stephen to the young woman behind the counter & as I’m going on at how grateful I am & how wonderful these two guys are, she points & they are standing behind me. I shake their hands.

The next morning at 10, I get a call from Sherwood. “They haven’t shown up.” Oh, heck. I apologize.

Then as I’m getting ready to leave at 11 walking out to the car, they pull up. “That church office is closed.” They said. They’re mad! I remind them that they were to be there two hours ago. “Oh, I had another appointment” Bobbi Jo says. I send them back over to Sherwood’s office, saying, “We’re done.” She nods her assent. Sherwood calls me at 11:30 saying they got their gift card for $50 at Walmart & they told him, “It wasn’t enough.” Sherwood says he starts to apologize & then catches himself, thinking you know, between Debra, Mark & myself we came up with $120. Sherwood said they left but were angry that they hadn’t gotten a new battery for their car as well.

So I ask you where is Micah’s recommendation of the Lord requirement  to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God in this story?                     

In our scripture passage, the air is tense between God & the people of Israel who are in the middle of a lawsuit. They have come to court to see who is at fault in their fractured relationship. The mountains & the hills are to be the witnesses. A controversy with God? Probably not a good place to be, especially if you are the one who has broken the covenant.  As we heard Pat read a moment ago; God is asking: “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! ⁴For I brought you up from the land of Egypt & redeemed you from the house of slavery?  I sent before you Moses, Aaron & Miriam" (sort of like Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo, & Princess Leia) so that you might know the saving acts of God. But you have forgotten. Your memories have become hazy. You have grown forgetful in what had been given to you as a gift.

          Because the people Israel choose not to remember their own exodus & the struggles leading up to their freedom from slavery, they grow complacent & want the material riches of life more than God.

And we begin to see what the prophet Micah saw; a people willing to bargain, to bribe, & to buy off God. The people talk among themselves as they cleverly come up with a calculated scheme.

“With what shall I come before the Lord? Surely God will take my burnt offerings, my young calves. Certainly God will be pleased with a thousand rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, my firstborn for my transgressions!

To this thinking we hear Micah’s eloquent response, "What does the Lord require?"

Or maybe Micah is more angry than eloquent, using his outside prophetic voice, "WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE? HELLO, IS ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING?? HAVE YOU HEARD ONE WORD I HAVE SPOKEN? DO YOU SEE THE INJUSTICES ALL AROUND YOU? WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE?"

A gracious & poetic way of saying perhaps, GET A CLUE--WILL YOU?  For God has already told you what God requires.

I must confess that I have been troubled by how the church has all too often taken the poignant & radical words of Micah, which he gets from Amos, Hosea & Isaiah; makes the words come out sweet, breathy, as if at any moment we expect the swell of music from the violins. And even though I might be mistaken, when I read the book of Micah, he is not a happy camper.

So who was this 8th century 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 & of the common everyday people. Micah saw the injustice that was going on in society; & he was, as a Prophet of the Lord; compelled to name them by their right name. Micah felt called to address the ones in power & to speak against evils that were no longer tolerable.

Micah was not removed from the suffering & plight of his people. He was right there in the midst of it. Micah knew that justice wouldn’t come from the state or the power structure for most, if not all, of the leadership were preoccupied & caught up in matters of comfort, prosperity & security.

Justice, as history has shown, arises out of the people, who have 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 & different & dynamic alternatives to their current unjust conditions. There can be no peace without justice.

What does the Lord require but to do justice & to love kindness & to walk humbly with your God. To do justice isn’t a romantic ideal or an abstract concept. Justice is excruciatingly hard work. For it asks us as a people to work together, to truthfully critique the present unjust system & 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 & transform systems & people when we dare to see what is really happening here & around the world without growing cynical & 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; it is only the beginning. For it’s in seeing the injustice & being moved by it, that we begin doing something; 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. The father of the elder son in the prodigal son who doesn’t  choose one son over another but found his two arms wide enough to embrace both his sons. Mother Mary & the other women standing at the foot of the cross no matter how painful & frightening. Naomi, Ruth & Orpah weeping together in their grief. The woman with her alabaster flask who broke it open & poured it out without holding back & Jesus who wept, prayed, broke bread, touched & healed the people are real flesh & blood examples of loving-kindness, loving tenderly, loving steadfastly.

And yet in our society, to love kindness doesn’t come easily. Perhaps this is because loving tenderly involves one knowing confidently one is loved & so is able to take the risk to be moved, to be vulnerable & to be able to see another person's suffering as one's own. It’s called compassion.

At Maximo where I was back in the day a Christian Educator there was a boy named Charlie who understood this. Charlie was one of those kids who the Sunday school teachers just couldn’t get a hold on. When it came time for the Christmas pageant, the teachers thought themselves wise to give Charlie a simple part. Charlie would be the innkeeper. This would mean saying, "No room" three times. The night of the pageant two of the children dressed as Joseph & Mary came to the inn.

"No room," said Charlie.

The couple knocked on the door a second time. "NO ROOM!" Charlie repeated. Banging on the door even harder, desperately seeking space for themselves & their new baby, Joseph & Mary pleaded with the innkeeper, "Please, is there any room in the inn?"

Moved with compassion, Charlie forgot his line. "Oh," he said, "why don't you take my room tonight?"

The pageant came to a complete halt. Some parents were upset. They had spent big bucks on their children's outfits. But for many who had come in the spirit seeking the presence of God, Charlie's words of kindness had taught them something about loving tenderly. To do justice, to love kindness & to walk humbly with your God.

Truth to tell, I often think I know what to walk humbly with God is not--more so than I grasp what to walk humbly with God is.

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 isn’t to exalt ourselves, or to not worry or be bothered by other people's opinions of us. To walk humbly isn’t to be above someone or below someone, but rather with someone. It isn’t thinking we can do it all on our own, carrying the burdens upon our limited human shoulders. It isn’t forgetting we’re human. It isn’t living without grace. It isn’t playing God. So maybe walking humbly with God is about paying attention, paying attention to who we are & what is around us, listening to the cries & the stories of other human beings as well as to our own stories while we are waiting on God.

It’s as Micah said, "I will wait on God & God will hear me.”

I close with a story that Wendy Myers shared with me. It’s it very different than the story I opened with, yet it is another example of what we can do, to share loving-kindness. After all it’s what God requires of us.

There was a need for a vehicle for a teacher at Reagan & Riley’s school. Her old beater had given up the ghost. It seems after a few hundred thousand miles & over twenty years, I don’t know, cars stop running.

Well to get to work, get a paycheck, feed her family, she had to have a car. But no money for a car, or to get a loan for a car, or to by a car. She would have to quit. So an email went out, “Can you help?”

Here is Mrs. Howard’s response:

            “My husband & I wish to thank all of you for your generous gift of a vehicle to our family. I still can't wrap my head around the idea that it is our car. Our van had serious engine issues but we were coddling it along, hoping it would make it until the day that we had saved up enough to do something else about another vehicle. But in late September, after logging some 215,000 miles on it, she gave up the ghost at a most inconvenient time I might add, for work was very slack for my electrician husband. Thanks to my mother-in-law & others, we borrowed vehicles, crammed our kids into the front seat of our truck & have made it to work/school most of the time over the past few weeks. All the while we were praying & waiting on the Lord & praying & waiting on the Lord; I was literally giving up hope....and was getting so frustrated with our situation & cried out to the Lord on more than one occasion; "HELP!"

 And help came! It came in the form of you all providing us with a REALLY WONDERFUL, SMOOTH RUNNING, VEHICLE!!!! What an incredible gift! We are truly grateful.

            We are truly grateful. Amen.