Micah 6:1-8
“The Lord’s Requirement”
June 7, 2020
“You’re not the boss of me.” When my then 2-and-a-half-year-old nephew uttered those words after I first arrived, I was floored. Over the next 5 days of my visit these would be the words he used most and it wasn’t even when I asked him to do something.
I took it in stride because I was there visiting to help his mom and dad because his little sister had been born the week before. I also would never hold that attitude against a toddler because I know too many adults who, in not so many words, are quick to let us know that they don’t like anyone telling them what they need to do or should be doing.
Sometimes, though, especially after the anguish and protests and visible pain of the past 2 weeks since George Floyd’s death, I somehow yearn for someone to tell us what it would take to make it all better. What is being asked of us?
We cannot bring Mr. Floyd back. We cannot erase the image of his death, captured on a cell phone camera and added to the annals of injustice that include pictures of police dogs and firehoses used on black protesters in Alabama. Those pictures splashed across the front of the New York Times in 1963 brought the Civil Rights movement into the living rooms of the rest of the nation that until then had been able to rest secure that all that was far removed and they were safe from such abhorrent experiences. Suddenly, the world was given a glimpse of life in America that had been there all the time but went mostly unseen and unacknowledged.
Micah the prophet also finds himself in the midst of a time of injustice and violence. Here in this courtroom scene, he is pointing out that God has a problem with the people but instead of anger, God seems puzzled. He recounts the Exodus story and the blessing that the people received before they entered the promised land.
It seems that God has remembered them and the covenant with them as has been the case throughout history but the people have forgotten their part of that covenant. God is once again faced with a people who have failed to live into the vision God had for them, free from political and economic strangleholds, free to love each other. The sacrifices they were accustomed to offering God, often wrapped in religious ritual were not what God was asking of them.
The first seven verses Alyson read, as well as the previous chapters of the poet Micah were a set up for this pinnacle that people have seen from a distance and strived for all this time but maybe with too small a lens, focusing only on themselves and their immediate family. These three instructions are at the core of what Jesus came to teach by parable and live by example.
To act justly or do justice – we are to be a voice with our words, our votes, the sharing of our gifts – for those whose voices have gone unheard or ignored for too long. Seeing every other person as a beloved child of God, worthy of standing up for.
To love mercy or kindness. The first African-American Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Michael Curry asked this week what love looks like. And he, like Micah, answered his own question. He said, “Love looks like all of us- people of every race and religion and national origin and political affiliation – standing up and saying “Enough! We can do better than this. We can be better than this.” (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/31)
To walk humbly with God is to seek out God wherever God might be. It could be in the voices that have gone unheard so listening carefully and mindfully might open us to a recognition that God does not belong to any one person or tradition. It is also always the knowledge that God is God and we are not. We can leave room for a change of heart with a mind open to the new thing happening in our midst. Pray on this, perhaps starting this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. in front of St. James’, during the silent vigil, standing together apart with our neighbors.
Let us move together into the feast of remembrance, the Sacrament of Holy Communion to which all are invited to the table with this prayer from South African writer Alan Paton as found in our United Methodist Hymnal. It is titled “For Courage to Do Justice:”
O Lord,
open my eyes that I may see the needs of others;
open my ears that I may hear their cries;
open my heart so that they need not be without succor;
Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of
the strong, nor afraid to defend the poor because of the anger
of the rich.
Show me where love and hope and faith are needed,
and use me to bring them to those places.
and so open my eyes and my ears
that I may this coming day be able to do some work of peace
for thee. Amen.