How Should We Live?

Our first reading today is a well-known section from the Book of Micah. Who was Micah? He was a minor prophet in the 8th-century BC from Judea, known for defending the poor against corrupt leaders and warning of God’s judgment on Israel and Judah. He was a contemporary of Isaiah and Hosea, and with a pretty good track record as a prophet. He predicted the Babylonian exile, the destruction of Jerusalem, and notably foretold the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem.

He’s described as a “man of the soil” because he was from a rural town in southwest Judah, rather than a court prophet and that’s probably why he was so concerned with the oppressed and his rural kinsmen. His core message denounced the wealthy elite and corrupt officials who stole land and exploited the poor.

I heard someone recently say that there are two religious roles in scripture – the prophets and the priests. The priests are there to preserve the status quo and to keep the order of the institution.

But the prophets have another role entirely: Their role is to disrupt the order, especially when the order is hurting the people.

And so whenever I hear someone say that their pastor is being “too political,” I think that person must be forgetting about not only the prophets in the Hebrew Bible but also about Jesus’ constant criticism of the powers that be and the political powers of his time.

Today, I want to take a closer look at the book of Micah to help us gain an understanding of what the Lord requires of us. What kind of people are we to be? How should we live?

Micah begins his book with the terrible image of God coming down upon the earth as molten fire, laying waste to Samaria and the other cities of Judah. What was Samaria’s crime? They worshipped false gods and their sacrifices were an offense to God.

In his second chapter, we read:

^1-5 Doom to those who plot evil,   who go to bed dreaming up crimes!
As soon as it’s morning,   they’re off, full of energy, doing what they’ve planned.
They covet fields and grab them,   find homes and take them.
They bully the neighbor and his family,
  see people only for what they can get out of them. God has had enough.

In response to this the priests say, “Isn’t God on the side of good people? Doesn’t God help those who help themselves?” And God says, “What do you mean, ‘good people’!

You’re the enemy of my people! You rob unsuspecting people
out for an evening stroll. You take their coats off their backs
like soldiers who plunder the defenseless.
You drive the women of my people   out of their ample homes.
You make victims of the children   and leave them vulnerable to violence and vice.
Get out of here, the lot of you.”

It seems to me that this is exactly what I see in the news of this country and the world every day. And this is exactly what the leadership in Israel was doing then.

What God does in response is to call Israel back to right relationship.

God yearns to free the people from the yokes around their necks so that they will willingly follow Him. God wants Israel to keep their side of the promise God made with them. But instead, they’ve constantly broken those promises and followed evil leaders down dead-end roads.

God also has a strong message to the status-quo-protecting preachers who lie to God’s people. God says,

“For as long as they’re well paid and well fed, the prophets preach, ‘Isn’t life wonderful! Peace to all!’ But if you don’t pay up and jump on their bandwagon, their ‘God bless you’ turns into a curse.”

It’s clear that God doesn’t have much patience for the preachers who paint a rosy picture while ignoring what’s actually happening in the streets, when the people are suffering under the boots and guns of those in power.

Micah says that because of these false preachers who will not tell the truth, the entire nation will be turned into rubble. But he presents another possibility, writing, “Come, let’s climb God’s mountain. Let’s go to the Temple of Jacob’s God. God will teach us how to live. We’ll know how to live God’s way.”

So our text for today starts with God bringing up charges against Israel. But if we look at the heart of this text, the part we’ve all heard before, we can see the painful question it contains, the pleading to understand what God wants from us. It was in the singing of this text in an anthem by John Rutter that its power really hit me. I won’t sing it now, but I’ll read it in the way that I now hear it. (See video embedded below to hear the anthem “Offertory” by John Rutter.)

“With what shall I come before the Lord
  and bow myself before God on high?
 Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
  shall I come before him with yearling calves?
 ⁷ Will 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?”

And then the voice says,

⁸ He has told you, O mortal, He has told you 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?”

We fail to live God’s life when we treat people unjustly. We fail to live God’s life when we have no mercy, when we pull people from their homes in the middle of the night or shoot them in the streets without due process.

We fail to live God’s life when we seek status and power over others, acting as if we can do whatever we want, no matter who it hurts. That is not walking humbly with God.

In the gospel, Jesus tells us who is blessed: the poor in spirit; those who mourn; those who are hungry for righteousness and those who are persecuted for it; and the peacemakers, the PEACEmakers. Not those who look for every opportunity to bomb other countries that have not attacked us. Not those who make unjust war or support others’ unjust wars.

It is you – the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, the mourners, the humble, the ones on the very bottom of the rungs of power – it is you who can “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” You who stand up for righteousness, justice, mercy, and kindness may be persecuted like the prophets before you, but even so, you are blessed and you are held in the very heart of God.

And the heart of God is the only place where true life can be found. Amen.