Reminding Each Other of What We've Known All Along
Reminding Each Other of What We’ve Known All Along
Micah 6:6-8
People who don’t have freedom long to be free. They think of all the things that they would do if only they had the freedom to choose. They’d do this or that. They’d go here or there. They’d create this or write that. They’d make the world a better place. It all sounds so good until the moment when they suddenly find themselves free. They find themselves overwhelmed with choices and possibilities. They make decisions in “fits and starts,” doubting the choices they’ve made and doubting other choices even before they make them. Freedom turns out to be nauseating and paralyzing, the kind of feelings that can make a person ready to surrender their freedom or at least decide that rather than bear the burden of making their own choices, they’ll just let others decide for them. Boredom becomes the enemy. Our phones and our televisions anesthetize us for the fight.
Our most ancient ancestors, though they had neither phones nor televisions nor electricity, were intimately familiar with the challenges of being free. When you are a slave, your time is not your own. There’s not a moment when someone isn’t telling you what to do. When you’re free and wandering in the wilderness, the hunger pains are real, just as real as the doubts: “What’s the point of all this wandering? Who the heck is this Moses guy anyway?” “When are we ever going to just feel like we’re okay?” Their first bright idea? “We should build a golden calf and worship it. We’ve all seen others do that!”
It is such a human response—to think the answer to our insecurity is to be like everyone else. Rather than take responsibility for who we are and what we choose, we want someone else to make our choices for us. Early on, for our ancestors, the theory is that everything will be okay when we have our own land. They make it to the promised land but being in that place does not fill the empty space inside. They decide that they need wise people—judges—who will tell them what to do. Although there are a couple of wise judges, most of those judges grow intoxicated with the power of getting control others.
When the people grow tired of those powerful judges, what do they decide that they really need? They need a king! After all, all the other cool nations have kings. What we really need to do is give almost all the power to one person. What could possibly go wrong? And though the people were warned repeatedly about what a king would do with power, the people cried out for a king until God gave them one.
Finally, the all-powerful king and the people worked out one final deal: to build a big, beautiful temple. Rather than believing God was present wherever they went—in their homes, in their marketplaces, in their town squares—they would give God a really nice “home.” God would be there if you ever thought you needed God. And, the place would be full of priests and rabbis who would be ready to speak on God’s behalf.
In a development that should surprise no one with even a cursory knowledge of human beings, the king and his rule grew corrupt and the temple and all of its religious leaders matched the kings corruption, step for step. Kings have pretty much always believed that they could do whatever they wanted to do and do away with anyone who challenged them. And, religious leaders have always stood eagerly next to kings, ready to affirm that the king rules with God’s blessings. Of course, they are more than happy to enjoy the king’s protection in return.
In the end, the people got what they wanted. They were a corrupt nation with a corrupt king, just like all the other nations. Their corrupt church and its leaders had the king’s back. Should a commoner feel wronged by a neighbor, the king would dole out justice. Just don’t ever question the king! Should they or someone the ylove get sick or die, just offer the sacrifice at the temple that the priests recommend and…presto…you’ll be right with God.
Here is the not surprising result of all of this. The king’s needs kept growing: “I don’t want your obedience…I want your wife!” The cost of temple sacrifices kept growing, too, because, well, the fancier the temple and the fancier the priest’s robes, the more the cost of God’s good graces will rise. Interestingly, the people, themselves, weren’t any more satisfied than the king or the priests. No matter how carefully they did what the authorities told them to do, they still knew, deep down, that something was missing.
Most of us learn, at some point, sometimes despite our best efforts, that real satisfaction rests in taking responsibility for ourselves, in making the best choices that we can. It’s not that we won’t make mistakes. It’s that we will learn from those mistakes instead of hiding them. This is how we grow. Though we remain far from perfect we are nevertheless strangely at peace and satisfied. We did the best we could. Maybe we even gave more than we took.
In our text from Micah, we see the people right on the cusp of a breakthrough. They know the king is insatiable. After all, their first king was Saul who was, after a while (and this is a technical term) “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” crazy. Next up was David, who was probably as good as any king but even he got drunk enough on his own power to steal Uriah’s wife. So, the people have kind of given up on kings. They turn instead to the temple. If their answer doesn’t rest in “Making Israel Great Again” then maybe we can be great when we get right with God, again!
Micah lays out the problem here. The cost of getting right with God at the temple just keeps going up. It used to be that for the low, low cost of a chicken, you could be okay. Then, one day, the the price required was a cow, and when we rang things up at the register, we were expected to also pay for the temple’s “overhead” of feeding that cow for the past year. Fewer and fewer people could actually afford to get right with God, at all.
Micah asks, “So what’s it going to take next? The year old calf isn’t going to cut it anymore? How about thousands of rams? Would that be enough? How about a whole river of oil? Would God—or perhaps more importantly—our priests finally be satisfied? If that’s not enough, what about my first born son? If I strung him up and placed him on the altar myself and my tears mixed with his as I did so, would that be enough to get me off the hook?”
Unlimited power turns kings and priests into bullies. When it dawns on them that they can get whatever they want, what they always end up wanting is more. They leverage common people rather than care for them. They do whatever it takes to get more and when the people pay up in the hopes that the powerful will be satisfied, you can trust that the bullies will be back soon. And should anyone doubt the authority of the authorities, those authorities will point out that they have been appointed and anointed by God.
This is why Micah’s message in our text is such a transforming voice. What does God want from you? God doesn’t want you to prove yourself with fealty to the rich and powerful. God doesn’t want you to kowtow to the priests either. Stop looking to the king. Stop showing up at the temple. “God has already shown you what is good. God has shown you what is required of you. You should do justice. You should act with loving kindness. You should walk humbly through this life with your God.”
The sacrifice God wants from you doesn’t involve any temple ritual. God’s not going to check your attendance record or total things up in the end and declare that you are one charred dove short on your account. What God wants is for you to stop kneeling before any king or altar. The sacrifice God wants is for you to take responsibility for yourself, to make the choices that are yours to make, and to do your best to actually live a faithful life. That faithful life won’t involve any king’s or any priest’s approval. Try this instead…
In your every day life, as well as in the singularly important moments that occasionally come your way, do your best to do some justice, to do the right thing, regardless of what it might cost you to do it. So, you’re tired at the end of the day but your kid needs your help, or your spouse needs you to actually listen, or your neighbor needs a hand. Do you really have any question of what the right thing to do might be? Just do it! Or, in our own world, someone is essentially getting kidnapped by a group of people in masks and bulletproof vests, or someone is hungrier than you’ve ever been in your life, or someone is being singled out for loving the wrong person or for having the wrong skin color or for sharing an unpopular opinion. Do you really have any question about the right thing to do? Isn’t your only question, “How much is this going to cost me?” What if that is the sacrifice God wants? What if that is the cost of discipleship? What if it’s time to do a little justice?
At the same time, and we all kind of know this already, too, it always matters how we do the right thing. The word in Hebrew is “hesed,” and the gist of the word is to act with loving kindness. You can do the right thing and be a jerk about it and the lasting impression on those around you will be, “Wow! What a jerk!” Or, you can do the right thing without making a show of it, without a bunch of sanctimonious whining, without belittling the person you are confronting or belittling yourself by becoming what you despise in them. Instead, you can look a person in the eye, human being to human being, and simply, kindly stand your ground. And if you come even close to doing that, you will be amazed at the impression that how you did what you did will make. (Watch the tape of the marchers on the bridge at Selma, staring down police dogs and cops with axe handles, and tell me you don’t get this point.)
You should do justice and act with loving kindness and..as if that’s not tough enough…you should be humble while you’re doing it. The point here is not just “don’t be a jerk about it.” No, the point here is that if you do some justice and act with a little loving kindness, you will discover that God has been walking beside you the whole time, empowering you and sustaining you and working through you. All of which might even convince you that this life of yours isn’t actually “The You Show,” guest starring, you, after all.
We all know that there is a higher purpose to our lives than appeasing the authorities. We all know that the authorities are always just going to want more. We all know that what God’s waiting for is for us to claim our own power, to take responsibility for ourselves and make the choices that are ours to make, not to benefit ourselves but to help the overlooked and the ignored.
It’s time to do some justice. It’s time to act with loving kindness, no matter what else we do. It’s time to remind ourselves that this whole life is just one humble walk with God.