In the marathon subculture, T-shirts are everything. As a runner, you become a billboard for 26 miles, or 13, or 6, or in my case 3 miles. When I participated in my first 5K, I had to wear the shirt provided by my gym (since they paid the registration fee), but most of the time, each runner chooses. At the Sedona Turkey Trot, a wore a T-shirt which pictured a woman wearing a robe and stole with the caption, “Girls can’t what?!” One of the men in the race was wearing a shirt that was blank on the front, but on the back it said, “I am 50 years old, have type 2 diabetes, am 75 pounds overweight, and am ahead of you!” Oh, how I wanted a shirt like that! In one 5K, I wore a shirt with words from our First Lesson, “Act Justly, Love Kindness, and Walk Humbly.” Even in Sedona, where Christianity is not the majority, I received a lot of compliments, because, whether or not you believe in God, or whether you know that it is a quotation from an Old Testament prophet, it’s a great slogan.
The time when our lesson from Micah was written was a tense time. Yet another covenant had been broken, and the nation of Israel was on trial. At the beginning of the reading, we are told that the mountains and the hills are the witnesses of what the people had done (again).
God had been there for them, but they had forgotten. When things were going well, they were no longer praising God and telling God’s story. In choosing not to remember their own struggles leading up to liberation, the people grew complacent, apathetic. They had become a people willing to bargain, to bribe, even trying to buy off God. They talk among themselves as they cleverly come up with a calculated scheme. “With what shall I come before the Lord?’ (In other words, with what shall I buy off God.) “Surely God will take my burnt offerings, my young calves. Certainly God will be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil, my firstborn for my transgressions.”
To that, Micah eloquently responds, "What does the Lord require?" Or maybe it is more in his prophetic voice, "HELLO?! Can you hear me now? Are you paying attention at all? God has already told you what is required. Get a clue.” His desperation doesn’t translate well from Hebrew to English, but it’s there.
We miss this when we just read verse 8. That’s the verse that gets printed on those t-shirts and coffee mugs and Facebook posts. When we take that verse out of context, we make it sound like a sweet half-time commercial voiced by a twenty-something famous actor with a full orchestra accompanying him. They are beautiful stirring words, and there’s nothing wrong with following them, but Micah was a radical prophet. He took the messages from Amos and Hosea and Isaiah and made them timeless, but he’s screaming at the top of his lungs to people who have forgotten God and their promises to God, and they’re not paying very close attention.
It was the 8th Century BC, and Micah was a small town boy who spoke for the poor farm workers who were suffering at the hands of the land owners. When he saw injustice, he courageously named it, risking everything because he was not in a place of power but rather right in the midst of the situation. Most leaders of the time were focused on their own comfort and power. Because of that, Micah knew that justice would not come from the state or the structure in power. Real justice must arise out of the people themselves as they face the choice of either heading down the path toward the end or daring to envision change and then gathering the strength and courage to make it happen. Much as it is a T-shirt slogan, “doing justice” isn’t a romantic ideal or an abstract concept. It is also almost never an individual pursuit. Mother Teresa was the exception, not the rule. Justice requires that we work together.
And coming together is excruciatingly hard work. It is, in the words of last week’s sermon, about unity without the need for uniformity. It is about not only seeing and naming a problem but also about finding alternatives to make things better. Justice is able to disrupt, dismantle, and disarm broken and failing systems when cynicism or apathy or complacency don’t get in its way.
Through doing justice, we are able to come to an understanding that everyone matters. And from there, kindness and mercy follow as closely as they do in Micah’s words. We can see all kinds of injustices, tragedies, atrocities, but seeing it is not enough.
The Good Samaritan dares not pass by another human being, even when that other was considered an enemy. The prodigal father found his two arms to be wide enough to embrace both of his sons. Mary and the other women were able, together, to stand at the foot of the cross and go to the tomb. Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah wept together in their grief. The woman with her alabaster flask of expensive perfume broke it open and poured it out without holding back. And Jesus wept at the death of his friend, prayed for his disciples and for us, broke bread and directed us to do the same, touched, and healed the people. These are all about loving kindness and showing mercy. In our lives today, loving kindness does not come easily. Part of that is because it involves being vulnerable.
Young Charlie understood this. Charlie was one of those kids who the Sunday School teachers just could not reel in. He probably would be diagnosed ADHD these days. When it came time for the Christmas pageant, the teachers thought it wise to give Charlie a simple part. His classmates had solos and got to be Mary and Joseph, but Charlie would be the innkeeper. This would mean saying, "No room" three times. They rehearsed on Sunday mornings. Charlie did just fine. On the day of the pageant, two of the children dressed as Joseph and Mary came to the inn. "No room," said Charlie. The couple knocked on the door a second time. "NO ROOM!" Charlie shouted. Banging on the door even harder, desperately seeking space, Joseph and 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?" With this, the pageant came to a complete halt. Some parents were upset. 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, and to walk humbly with your God.
Walking humbly with God may be the most challenging part of this text. We are much better at defining what it isn’t than what it 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 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 simply about paying attention to who we are and what is around us. It is as Micah said, "I will wait on God and God will hear me. Then when there are crises in this country and around the world, human beings can come together and listen to one another and come up with solutions and say together, "No more! There’s a better way. Let me tell you about it."
What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
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The story of the Sunday School Christmas program (in various forms) is in the text illustrations on this site as well as at least 20 other websites.
