Sermon: "Offering Our Lives"

Today, our text is a pretty big departure from Romans, where we've been spending most of our time this summer, but I wanted to preach from a text that I hold dear and that influences my personal theology and how I understand my faith on an almost daily basis. Since the Spirit moves in funny and mysterious ways, I also find it especially fitting for where we find ourselves in this collective moment in our country and in our world. I still find myself, like many of us I am sure, reeling and wondering and sad and angry in the aftermath of Charlottesville last weekend and in the ongoing presence of “alt-right”, Neo-Nazi rallies across our nation. It is once again an extremely appropriate time to take seriously the biblical words, “Love kindness, do justice, and walk humbly.”

So, I want to begin by diving into the text a little bit and offering some context and understanding of what’s going on here. I would invite you to pull out your pew bibles and follow along as you are able. Now, the setting of Micah 6 is a courtroom: we see in the first two verses of Micah 6 that God has a “controversy” with Israel and intends to “contend” with Israel. “Plead your case before the mountains!” God says. God is both the plaintiff and the judge, making a case against Israel. We see this interesting motif or theme of God’s judgment throughout the Prophetic books of the Bible. The cycle tends to go something like this: God expresses anger toward Israel for failing to be the people whom God has created them to be. Like in this chapter of Micah, God will then demonstrate God’s acts of God’s mercy throughout history, like we see in verse 4: “I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery… a sent Moses and Miriam… etc.” And then Israel will often respond with something like, “what are we to do, God?”

I think if we’re being honest, we don’t often like to sit in this idea of God’s judgment, because it makes us uncomfortable-- especially we Methodists, who identify ourselves so closely with God’s grace. It can be hard to embrace the idea that God is also a judge. I think it can also contribute to the idea that the Old Testament represents a kind of fiery, wrathful, vengeful God, and the New is somehow better because Jesus is kind and faith is a lot nicer than the “law” of the Old Testament. But if we look more closely at the person of Jesus and recognize that his wisdom, his teachings and the people he hung around with are directly related to the earlier Jewish teachings, including the teachings of the prophets such as Micah.

Part of why I think this text is so rich is because Micah, along with the other Minor Prophets (which are the really short, tiny books that follow the larger, longer prophetic books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so on)-- these prophets do emphasize God’s judgment for Israel’s wrongdoing--but they judge based on actions, not on creeds or doctrine. Verses 6 through in 8 in particular drive home the entire core nugget or message of the prophets: What does God require? Ten thousands of rivers of oil, or thousands of rams (which would have been extremely pricey a sacrifice for even an average family during the time this was written)? No. The regular practices of religious faith, Micah tells us, must be rooted in an understanding of ethical obedience. The love of neighbor, as Jesus would later say. Jesus’ disciples often ask him, “what does it take to be a part of the kingdom of God?” to which he responded, “Love God, love yourself, and love neighbor.”

I think we can be a lot like the people of Israel in this text. We forget all that God has done for us, and turn away over and over again in our relationships with God and one another. We fail to understand or imagine what we can do differently. “What more do you want, God? I put my money in the offering plate. I show up to church every week. I pray and read my bible every day. I even volunteer and serve dinner at the homeless shelter. I go on mission trips. Do you want to me to give more than that? A thousand rams? the Israelites say.

I don’t think Micah, who speaks as a messenger for God, would criticize these practices--of course our presence at church, activities at our partner organizations and communities, and activities in our private faith lives are important. But I do think God is calling people into something more here. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. In our consumer culture, it is all too easy to slap these words on a church bulletin or a T-shirt or a church mission statement without actually thinking about the hard, sustained work it requires to actually do these things, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. It is easy for us to learn about the pain of the world--especially about the pain of folks who lie in a different social position than we do.

    Friends, we live in a beautiful but tumultuous world. As Pastor Wes mentioned a few weeks ago, the whole cosmos and all of creation groans, awaiting its redemption. Micah’s wisdom to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly is a wonderful companion to Paul’s words in Romans 8. We do not sit back and passively wait for the day when God will complete the task of redeeming the world for us--we get busy because we recognize that much of this work has already been done through Jesus the Christ, who invited all of creation into a life of abundance and a resurrection that defeated death. But we fragile, distractible and yet lovable humans forget-- we forget how to live in such a way that chooses life, that proclaims the message that things do not have to be and indeed cannot remain as they are. There are actions and choices we can make every day that embody what it means to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly. So I want to invite you to think and to dream and to plan what those things look like. Survey what choices, what resources, what practices you might cultivate with your friends, families, and this faith community to respond to what might often feel like insurmountable issues and pain in our neighborhoods, nation, and world?

    Before I close, I want to return to Charlottesville, and wonder with you about what these ancient but practical and pithy words from Micah might offer us in this time when racially motivated hatred seems to run rampant. My words might make you a bit uncomfortable, and you might be sick of reading and hearing about it and hearing folks’ responses to it, but frankly, what Charlottesville is all about is not going away. We must continue to talk about it and how our own lives are connected to it.

I think our Bishop’s and Wes’ words to us last Sunday about condemning white nationalism and the presence of Neo-Nazis on our soil are examples of what it means to do justice. I also think it’s important that we also come to terms with the reality that condemning those who don Swastikas on their forearms and wave Confederate flags makes it easier for us to say, “we’re not like them--we’re the good ones.”

    But my friends, white supremacy is not just a racial slur yelled at a white nationalist rally, it is in the very waters of the institutions we live and work and yes- even the churches we find ourselves in. For many of us in this room, it is something we benefit from every single day when our privilege grants us more access and resources to good schools, land, health care, friendliness, and true police protection than our brothers and sisters of color.

And I can hear God’s voice, like in this Micah passage, saying-- “what have you to say for yourself?” We have failed as a nation to collectively remember and learn from the pain our ancestors inflicted upon Black, Brown, and indigenous brothers and sisters. We have the hard conversations at our dinner tables because we would rather save face than embody the Gospel truth that God loves all. We fail to remember the words we commit to at our baptism, to resist evil and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. And sometimes in our efforts to help and to make change, we forget to ask the very people whose lives are at stake to be present at the table, and we fail to acknowledge the work that communities of color have been doing and fighting for for decades. What better time to remember the importance of humility, kindness, and a justice that requires self-examination and daily work. I want to invite us to create spaces in this place, whether it is with our youth, our Sunday school classes, or on Wednesday nights, when we can continue to talk about this stuff, and to take action together as people of faith.

*pause* Take a deep breath with me.

But… there is hope, and while the Gospel we cling to is a prophetic one, it is also one of hope in the midst of sin and violence and complacency. We are called to hear God’s instruction in the book of Micah, and we are called to follow Jesus, who began a movement for justice and peace like none other. And as Traci Blackmon, a UCC minister wrote a few days ago, Jesus invited his disciples to follow behind the lead of folks whose pain was at the center of the movement. And I see this happening today, as people learn what it means to take to the streets and follow the lead of those whose lives are most at stake in a racist society.

My friends, this work is hard. If you’re like me, you know how uncomfortable it is to be called out for ways that I have failed to be the best person I can be, especially when I have blind spots. But the time is now, to pray and discern how to balance what we can do-- no matter how small-- with the urgency and gravity of the collective work. We don’t do this work without a lot of prayer, self-love and grace, and community.

I want to close with one of my favorite quotes, which comes from the Talmud, a Jewish collection of commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justice, now. Love kindness, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

We walk humbly, with a God who may judge us for our actions, but who will never stop loving us, providing for us, and covering us with God’s grace.