4 Epiphany (Year A) - February 2, 2020

Epiphany 4
Year A
February 2, 2020
Micah 6:1-8

It is sometime around 720 BCE. Israel had been split into two kingdoms, after the death of King Solomon. Israel, the northern kingdom, has just fallen to Assyria; large empires surround the Southern Kingdom of Judah, hovering at their gates. It is a tense time period with enemies all around, a period of national turmoil. And there’s another problem: Social and economic evil has penetrated their society. God envisions a world without war – a world where swords are beaten into plowshares, where instruments of destruction are turned into instruments that sustain life. God envisioned a community that was living by a structure of justice where the vulnerable are cared for and no one takes advantage of other people. However, the world finds itself in the turmoil of war. The vulnerable find themselves without what they need. The rulers, priests, and prophets extort money from people. There’s this high religiosity – where people made a special point to show how religious they were. Yet despite the ways the people pay lip-service to God, bending-over-backwards to tell the world that they are religious, God’s vision for the world is not being lived into.

It is in this context in which Micah speaks God’s word of justice. Micah, a humble country-boy, is called by God to be a prophet to God’s people. A prophet is not a fortune teller or one called to predict the future. But rather a prophet is one called to dwell deeply in the world as it is, to speak forth God’s word into that world as it is, as part of God’s desire to transform the world as it is into the world that God intended it to be. Prophets are given the spirit of God and are called to be God’s spokesperson in moments of crisis.

It is 2020 CE. If I’m honest with you, I’m not so sure that our world is all that different from the world that Micah experienced. I see, in our country, in general a push to show religiosity. Putting the 10 Commandments in courthouses. Posts on social media. Just yesterday, I saw a post on FB that read “Who all on my timeline are not afraid to admit how good God has been to them?” I’ve seen memes featuring Jesus saying something like, “97% of people won’t share this. Share if you love Jesus. He already saw you read it.” Putting crosses and Jesus fish on our cars. Or that bumper sticker that says “Jesus I trust in You.” I don’t want to sound like I’m too harshly critiquing these things. We all do things that outwardly show our faith; it isn’t inherently bad. I have shirts that say things like “This pastor loves you.” And I sometimes intentionally wear my collar in certain spaces and certain places to say something about who I am and my faith. But for good or for ill, there’s this push to show our faith.

But in this country – a country that has an abundance of resources – the vulnerable around us find themselves without what they need. The poor go hungry. One in eight children in Virginia struggle with hunger. The sick go without medical care. Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. And too many have to choose between medical care and basic needs. Those facing oppression are pushed to the margins. People are demonized because of the color of their skin, because of who they love, how they understand and express their gender, for their faith. Brokenness is still all around us.

This week, I was at the light, coming off on 199, turning onto Rt. 60. The car in front of me had the “Jesus I trust in you” bumper sticker. Yet right next to that car was a sign that read: “Do not encourage panhandling by giving money from your vehicle.” (We’ve all seen those signs, right)? Now, I have no idea the personal views of the person driving that car. But it was striking. In a town where I see A LOT of similar bumper stickers, we have signs that function to push our vulnerable homeless population away and underground – away from our sight. Homelessness is a large problem here, but unlike in places like Chicago, we don’t see it, because we’re not forced to see it. Because we’ve encouraged homeless people to stay away. We’ve If we’re honest with ourselves, despite the religiosity of our town and our country, God’s vision for the world is still not being lived into. And that’s just one example.


So today, we hear the words of Micah. Since that was our first reading, let’s take a moment to hear them again: “1Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 2Hear, 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! 4For 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. 5O 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? 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?’ 8He 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?”

The problem is not that the people aren’t religious enough. The problem starts with forgetting or losing touch with the saving acts of the Lord. God has brought salvation to God’s people – through liberation, leading the Hebrew people out of their slavery in Egypt, through raising up leaders, through protection, foiling the plans of their enemies. God did it not because the people earned it. God did it because God is God. And God is a God of love, of liberation, of protection, of salvation, of grace. The people didn’t earn it by being religious enough. These are the acts of a gracious God.

As Christians, we see God acting again on behalf of God’s people, becoming enfleshed in a human body, in living human life, in dying, and in rising again, releasing us from the power of sin and death, leading us to new and abundant life. In Jesus, we are promised that we are brought into right relationship with our God, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. In Jesus, God reaches out to God’s people again, not because the people earned it, but because our God is a God of love, of liberation, of protection, of salvation, of grace. We don’t earn it through our car stickers, facebook posts, etc. We don’t earn it through our acts of worship. God acted in Jesus because that is who God is; because God is God. This is purely the act of a gracious God.

Dwelling there, we get to the question: with what shall I bring before the Lord? In other words, what is our response to the acts of a gracious God? “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?” Micah is not saying that we shouldn’t worship God or outwardly show our faith through whatever medium we choose; the point is all of those things are just empty noise without doing justice – God’s justice, not ours –, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.  Here, today, we gather to worship, to dwell in God’s grace around Word, around Water, around Bread and Wine, encountering God’s gifts of grace again and again.

Dwelling in the gracious acts of God, we are called to turn out from this place to live out the love, the salvation, the liberation, the love of God in our relationship with other people and with the world. In other words, we reflect the grace that we have already received. God doesn’t need our facebook posts, but our neighbor needs God’s justice enacted in the world. God doesn’t need the 10 Commandments posted, but our neighbor needs our kindness. In other words, God doesn’t need us to show our faith, God calls us us to live out our faith, live out the love that we first received from a gracious God for the sake of our neighbor and for the sake of the world, mending the brokenness that surrounds us.

We are called to work for a world where the hungry aren’t just fed, but a for a world in which they don’t become hungry in the first place. We are called to work for a world that not only knows peace, but for a world that doesn’t know war. We are called to work  for a world in which weapons that take away life are not only destroyed but are refashioned into instruments that sustain life. We are called to work for a world in which people can not only survive, but thrive – dismantling the systems of oppression, dismantling racism and hatred, eradicating the systems that keep people in poverty – so that God’s vision for the world becomes reality. We’re called to this, not to earn God’s love – we already have that – but to live out that love for the neighbor that so needs to experience God’s love.

In Christ, we have hope and promise for the Kingdom of God that is breaking into this world. We have the promise that the brokenness of our lives and our world won’t have the last word. But God doesn’t just stay in the hope. God still wants the world to change right now. To quote Rachel Wrenn, “just because there’s hope and promise for a beautiful future does not mean that God gives up on changing things right now.” (First Reading Podcast). In other words, the promises of God aren’t just for some future afterlife, they’re intended to be enacted in this world now. Those promises are intended to become tangible now. God’s grace, God’s love, God’s liberation, God’s salvation are for right now. We encounter God’s acts here so that we can live it out in the world right now. Because of the hope, because of the promise, because of God’s saving acts for us, we get to live lives that reflect God’s saving acts in the world.

So… How is God calling us to reflect God’s love in the world? What does God want to be changed right now so that we get one step closer to God’s vision becoming reality? What brokenness do you see that God grieves? Where can we be one step closer to having the world that God envisions for us and for our neighbor?   Amen.