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2-20-2002

Five part series on Micah 6:8
Part 1  -  Part 2  -  Part 3  -  Part 4  - Part 5

"...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8

These next five Wednesday evenings I am going to take a few minutes each evening and share with you some thoughts from the Old Testament prophets. I can't possibly even hardly begin to cover the incredible amount of material that's included in the witness of the Old Testament prophets. That we could only do in a class or a course. But what I will do is touch on a few main themes, using the Old Testament prophet Micah as my base line, my place from which to launch. Each one of these evenings I will merely take a quick glimpse one of one theme, one motif that was common to a number of the prophets. Really this is one sermon that has five parts. If you miss a week, I'll put each one on my web-site so you can keep up.

So who were these Old Testament characters with the rather strange sounding names we call the prophets: Micah, Hosea, Habakkuk, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all the rest - actually about 16 in all.

Contrary to the popular notion they were not soothsayers, fortune-tellers or predictors of the future. They didn't have crystal balls into which they could gaze to predict what the stock market was going do next month, next year, or the next decade. That was not their purpose, and that was not the business they were about.

They were individuals from various walks of life who we might call the conscience of God's people in the Old Testament. They were God's spokespersons, wired in to what God expected of his people; to what God wanted his people to be and do. They were individuals who perceived they were called by God to speak God's word to God's people in specific situations. Most of the time they were a thorn in the side and the pain in the neck of the upper classes of wealthy and comfortable society in Israel, and most certainly a thorn in the side of the kings and the rulers. And, at the same time, they were the advocates for the poor, the oppressed, the victims, and the marginalized.

Micah lived in the late 8^th Century B.C. He was a contemporary of other prophets of Israel: Amos, Isaiah and Hosea. (to whom I will occasionally refer) Micah seems to have been a country boy, hailing from the rural regions southwest of Jerusalem, in contrast to Isaiah who seemed to be steeped in the politics and intrigue of the big city. Even though Micah and Isaiah hailed from different backgrounds, these two prophets commonly shared grievous outrages against, as well as glorious hopes for God's people.

With detail and intense passion Micah described and deplored the sins and shortcomings of God's people and their leaders and rulers.

Listen to just a couple of Micah's seething tirades:

"Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds!"

(In other words those lay awake at night devising evil schemes and plots)

"When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power."

(When they awaken they take the necessary steps to do the things they plotted in the night because they have the financial resources and the political connections to do so)

"They covet fields, and seize them; houses they take them away; they oppress householder and house; people and their inheritance."

(In other words, during Micah's time due to unfair inheritance laws and corruption, land ownership among those who worked the land and were living on the land had become almost impossible. The Promised Land that God gave the people was being ripped out of the hands of the people who worked it, and the wealth of the nation was becoming concentrated in the pockets of a ever-narrowing band of the super-rich.)

It sounds almost a little contemporary doesn't it?

Here's another tirade:

"Here this you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests serve for a price, its false prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, 'Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.' Therefore because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height."

Injustices of this sort, coupled with the endless political corruption of the deceitful rulers of Judea led this outspoken mouthpiece of God, Micah, to pronounce God's anger and God's judgment against this corrupt ruling class of people; concluding and declaring that their destruction was imminent - a destruction that was the judgment of God.

Micah reaches a kind of crescendo in the sixth chapter of his seven chapter book. Pay attention to how he changes roles. I'll try to do this in way that makes it more apparent. First, he is speaking on the Lord's behalf, as if the Lord himself were speaking; and what we hear through Micah is God himself grieving and lamenting that his very own people, his very own children have turned away from him and forgotten him; forgotten all the mighty deeds and incredible miracles that God had performed on their behalf because of his love for them. You can literally hear the pathos in his words:

"O my people, what have I done to you that you've turned on me? How have I wearied you so? Answer me! I brought you up from the land of Egypt. I redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent you Moses, Aaron and Miriam... I have loved you and nurtured you... and you have turned on me. O my people, my children, why?"

Then as quickly as he stepped into it, Micah steps out of his God-voice role, and steps into the people-voice role and he becomes the voice of the people speculating on behalf of the people on how they might answer God's pathos and God's laments and God's questions. (Well, Micah) "With what then shall I come before the Lord?" The question is what is it that God expects his people to bring and place before him as a part of an acceptable offering of repentance? (Hmmm. Let's see) "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thousand rivers of the finest oil? Or shall I give my first-born for my transgression?"

Then in the blink of an eye, Micah steps out of the people-voice role and Micah speaks for God again, only this time with his own voice:

(My dear friends and neighbors) "God has told you what He requires... (you know, it's not material and token sacrifice that he desires...) but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" (That is what you are to do. That is the acceptable offering to God!)

"Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk humbly with your God"

And those awesome words of Micah echo the words of another prophet , a contemporary of named Amos when he spoke on behalf of God saying to the people,

"I hate and despise your festivals and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them... take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the melodies of your harps. But let justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Amos 5:21-24

We in this room tonight are New Testament people. But these prophetic witnesses of the Old Testament are a part of our heritage; they are a part of our faith story; they are a part of our faith foundation. And they are not merely voices of the past dealing with long dead issues. My singular point for tonight is this: like then, in the present God will continue to raise up contemporary prophetic voices; voices who will challenge us, push us, press us, pull us, hound us, haunt us, irritate us, anger us, exasperate us, frighten us to look and move beyond our zones of comfortability; beyond our boundaries of prejudices; beyond our islands of security and complacency, and precisely because we are new Testament people, to move us beyond them for Christ's sake.

In our Lutheran denomination and its predecessor bodies for far too long women were not allowed to become ordained pastors. We hid behind bad theology and contrived biblical interpretation as our justification, when all along we knew it was something else. We just wouldn't admit to the attitudes preventing it. But in the 1960's God raised up prophetic voices in our midst, voices who declared the issue to the consternation and agitation of many, and in 1970 the first woman was ordained as a Lutheran pastor. And because of it, since that day the church has been richly blessed.

As I think on my life and the times in which I have lived, I have to ask myself who have been the prophets? Who have been the prophets of my time and yours?  Names come to mind like, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and a few others - tragically too few! I say tragically because these voices are those who spoke God's hard and challenging word much to the consternation, agitation and outright hatred of so many. But yet, even so these are the voices that called forth something from deep within me; the voices that stirred something deep inside of me I didn't know was there; something that God put there in the first place; something within that the voice of the prophet awakened; and when that something within me awakened it made me more alive and more human than ever before! Thank God for the voice of the prophet!

But you don't have to be famous, renowned, or lead a movement to be a prophet. The prophets were ordinary people that God called on to speak the truth of the Kingdom of God. I believe that life will present each of us with those fleeting, yet intense moments and pregnant opportunities to speak with a prophetic voice; to speak God's word of challenge to correct a wrong or confront an injustice, for the sake of Christ; to be an advocate for someone who has been overlooked, ignored, abused, oppressed or victimized in some way. The occasion to speak with a prophetic voice may present itself at any moment and any place: at work, in the hallway at school, in your neighborhood, who knows where - even in church!  I pray that when that moment arrives for you, you will first of all recognize it, and second, ask God for the courage to speak God's truth.  And if you speak that word of truth, yes, some will be agitated, filled with consternation and maybe even hate you; but in others you will touch a deep place that will awaken something in their souls that will make them more alive and more human than ever before. Amen.

Next week I'll take a closer look at the first of Micah's three imperatives, "Do Justice..."

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