What Does The Lord Require

Preached by Charles J. Tomlin, April 11th, 2021,

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

New Series: Stories of Justice and Mercy 1/20

Micah 6: 1-8

"Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.

 2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel.

 3 "O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

 4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

 5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD."

 6 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

 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?"

 8 He has told you, O mortal, 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? (Mic. 6:1-8 NRS)

          

A classical music concert was once held in Philadelphia.   One of the pieces played by the orchestra featured a flute solo. This solo was to be played offstage so that it would sound as if coming from a great distance. The conductor had instructed the flutist to count the measures precisely in order to come in at the exact time.  With the flutist offstage, there could be no visual contact between the two of them.

On the night of the performance, when the time came for the flute solo, the flutist counted perfectly and came in precisely at the right time. The light, lilting notes floated out beautifully across the theater. Suddenly, however, there was a terrible shrieking noise and then the soloist went silent. The conductor was outraged. At the end of the piece he rushed off stage to find the flutist. The flutist was ready for him.

“Maestro,” he said, “Before you say anything let me tell you exactly what happened. You’re not going to believe it. As you are aware I came in precisely on time and everything was going beautifully. Then suddenly--this enormous stage hand ran up and grabbed away my flute. Then he pushed me back and snapped at me. “Shut up, you idiot!” he said, “Don’t you know there’s a concert going on out there?” (K. Duncan)

About a year and one month ago, life was going on as it should, and suddenly we we all interrupted and pushed back by the Corona Virus.  This once-in-a-lifetime interruption has made us all reflect about what really does matter, what are we supposed to be doing,  and what is expected of us in this very short, fragile, and precious time we call life?

I think this is one of the reasons the death of George Floyd ignited the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement last year.  People were under so much pressure that when something so outrageously unjust suddenly surfaced, feelings erupted.  Since no one was able to change the pandemic, people who felt a violation of life, love and justice, like the stagehand, felt the need to speak out against this trespass in the only way they thought they could.  

A year has come and gone, and now, we too need to start processing and thinking about what this might mean for us as Christians, and as churches too.  What are supposed to be doing now?   Now, I’m not referring to getting back to life as usual, but I’m asking us to think about what it might look like if we we didn’t let life go back to a normal.  What if we actually began to consider what God could be trying to teach us through all that has happened, so we could receive God’s hope and promise in the future.

I think that’s part of what the prophet Micah was looking for when he left his small town of Moresheth and went to Jerusalem to deliver the prophetic message we call the book of Micah.   His message took several angles, but there is no more memorable part than the words we have here, where, in an unforgettable heavenly courtroom scene, God the prosecutor reminds his people what they should already know:  “He has told you, O mortal, 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?”  Micah hopes, through everything the people have gone through, that they can understand what matters most to God, and what should matter most to them.

Here, we need to understand first, that the heroes in the history of God’s people, weren’t  kings or generals, but visionaries and dreamers, whom the Bible calls prophets.  Those prophets were the seers and seekers of God’s justice and compassion.   They were very ordinary people but they often had extraordinary courage and insight.  They were unexpected heroes, but at the time, were unwanted speakers for God’s just cause.  They were always, without exception, advocating for the ‘least, the last, and the lost’ in the world (B. Schwartz).   As one great Jewish expert said about Israel’ prophets, ‘They were the kind of people you might  invite to your house for dinner, but you’d never invite them back’ (A. Herschel).   The prophet would not put you at ease about how things are or who you are.

All the prophets, in one form or other, speak about God’s requirement of working toward a more fair, just, and righteous world.   This was the agenda of every prophet.  Amos speaks of it.  Isaiah spoke of it.  The minor prophets spoke of it,, and so did the great prophet Jeremiah who continued the call for justice until it turned into God’s judgement falling upon God’s own people who were forced into exile for their failure to live according to God’s social and ethical demands.  As Jewish scholar Barry Schwartz acknowledges, God is the true hero of the biblical story, not the people, nor the prophets, but God who never stops pursuing the divine agenda of love and justice.

           Jesus, the greatest prophet of all, who is revealed to us as God in human flesh, was crucified because he told the truth to power, stood with compassion for sinners, advocated God’s love toward outcasts, and brought God’s ministering agenda to the least’ and sought after to include the lost in his redeeming and restoring love.  One of the final public words of Jesus was his lament of regret over Jerusalem, the city that killed the prophets, because its leaders and the people refused to gather under the hope of God’s compassionate purpose (Matthew 23:37–39).  In the final, tragic line, Jesus spoke of what could have been, but wasn’t because the leaders were not ‘willing’ to do the bare minimum of what righteous required.  So, as a result the unthinkable happens because they would not come together under God’s ‘wings’. 

           In Micah, better than any other Jewish prophet, we see a time of great social unrest among the nation.  In fact, the only time Jesus alluded directly to Micah was when he spoke about such great social and religious disruption that a person’s enemies would be in their own home (Matt. 10:36, Cp. Micah 7:6).  Interestingly, the only way out of this social, religious and political confusion was invite God’s blessing by ‘welcoming’ the prophet (Mt. 10:40), which implied getting back to the basics of justice, kindness, and humble faith that could begin in as simple away as offering a cold cup of water to a ‘little’ vulnerable’, thirsty one in Jesus’ name ( Mt. 10:42) .   And this most basic way of being righteous, that is the way of doing justly, being kind or merciful, and having humble and servant-oriented faith, is exactly the way the prophets prescribed as the solution to spiritual and social darkness that filled the people and the land (Micah 7:8).

           In the next weeks, we are going to see how God’s most basic requirements of doing justly, loving kindly, and walking humbly was exemplified among God’s prophets and people in the Hebrew Bible, and was also on display through the greatest prophet, eJesus Christ.  All our Bible characters will put on display Micah’s prophetic words.  Let’s briefly review these words that guided them, and should still guide us, if we hope for recovering any social, ethical, or spiritual sanity.

 

DO JUSTICE.     My very first seminary class was a study of the book of Micah under the late Elmo Scoggins.  Interestingly, he was a Baptist professor married to a Jewish woman and when he taught this book, it was straight from the Hebrew.   Dr. Scoggins was one of the truly great Baptist Old Testament Scholars who came out of the Rutherford County hills of N.C.   He, never promoted himself, nor cared for self-recognition.  He didn’t even want a funeral or obituary written up after he died,, but he died as he lived, completing trusting in God’s promise.

The one thing I recall learning about Dr. Scoggins was how he had little patience for indifference.   “The prophets’ great contribution was the discovery of the evil of indifference (Herschel).’  Elmo Scoggins had little patience for any kind of indifference when it came to caring about people in need.  He often pressed and preached to people in power to actively care for the little guy.  Many times, I was told, like a prophet himself, Dr. Scoggins would hop on a plane and fly to Washington to confront some self-promoting political indifference that did not care about the ‘least of these’.  

Dr. Scoggins’ disregard for ‘nobility’ came directly from his understanding and appreciation of the prophets.   In 1933, seeing what was happening in Germany first hand, Old Testament scholar Abraham Herschel said: “People can be both “decent and sinister, pious and sinful at the same time.  In a free society,” he said, “ few are guilty; but all are responsible. No one is exempt from doing justice.  If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

My experience of visiting the Buchanwald concentration camp illustrated this for me.   We entered a room that seemed like a normal examination room in a doctor’s office.  This is how the Nazi’s brought prisoners into the room.  Then, they were led to stand up against a wall, as if they were to have their height measured.  Behind that wall someone stood with a gun and shot them in the head or back.  But what was most disturbing was how it was carried out.  One person brought them into the room.  Another carried out the examination.  One behind the wall pulled the trigger.  Someone else removed the body.  Then, finally, another cleaned up the room.   It was carried out this way so that no one felt responsible.  No one had to feel guilty.  No one had to bear the pain of doing this to another human being.

What does it mean to bear the kind of responsibility that we should bear to continue to live together in this world with dignity and hope?    The prophets expressed this with one word and one primary, most basic, responsible human act, justice.   The word in the original language is mishpat, which is not only a legal word, it’s a characteristic of God who treats everyone with dignity and fairness.  Doing justly, then is emulating God’s goodness by respecting and practicing what God would do, or as the popular Christian slogan says, WWJD, doing what Jesus would do. 

 

LOVE MERCY.     The best way to understand what it means to do justly is to see it through the next requirement, loving mercy.  Doing justice means having a merciful love toward others.   This is a very different justice agenda than many understand which looks more like vengeance.  Think about the phrase that ‘justice is blind’?   That is a lofty goal in one sense; so every one is treated fairly.  But justice that is blind can’t and doesn’t ‘see’ the real needs of real people and it can be end up being cold, cruel and overly calculating.  Justice that is divinely inspired isn’t blind, but it’s fair, equitable, and determined to do what is right, in a way that is fair and filled with dignity, respect, having a desire to show and display mercy.   True justice sees the individual plight and need of each human person.

           A great picture of God’s love for mercy is seen in the first Manor miracle in Jesus’ ministry, according to Mark’s gospel when Jesus healed the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof by his four friends.  Before Jesus made the lame man walk, he offered him forgiveness.  Jesus saw, not only the man’s physical needs, but he offered him the forgiveness he needed to release him from the negative stigma that often came with illness and disability.  As the old gospel song by Dottie Rambo says so movingly, ‘He looked beyond my fault and saw my need’.  Jesus’ form of justice isn’t blind, but it goes beyond, goes deeper and touches us where our need is most personal. 

In his own story of suffering and pain,  I once heard the late English professor at Duke University, Reynolds Price, tell of what happened to him when he was under going surgery and treatment for cancer located in his back.  It left him in a wheel chair for the rest of his life.  He said it was shortly after dawn on July 3, 1984, in the midst of treatment for his tumor, that he awoke in his bed and had a life-changing mystic experience and vision in which he came in contact with Jesus Christ at the Sea of Galilee. Price gave a full account of this occurrence in his book, A Whole New Life:

It was the big lake of Kinnereth, the Sea of Galilee, in the north of Israel ... the scene of Jesus' first teaching and healing. I'd paid the lake a second visit the previous October. ... Still sleeping around me on the misty ground were a number of men in the tunics and cloaks of first-century Palestine. I soon understood with no sense of surprise that the men were Jesus' twelve disciples and that he was nearby asleep among them. ... Then one of the sleeping men woke and stood. I saw it was Jesus, bound toward me. ... Again I felt no shock or fear. All this was normal human event; it was utterly clear to my normal eyes and was happening as surely as any event of my previous life. ... Jesus bent and silently beckoned me to follow. ... Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and back til water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke once—"Your sins are forgiven"—and turned to shore again, done with me. I came on behind him, thinking in standard greedy fashion, It's not my sins I'm worried about. So to Jesus' receding back, I had the gall to say "Am I also cured?" He turned to face me, no sign of a smile, and finally said two words—"That too."

After that vision, Price wasn’t ‘cured’ in a physical sense, but he says that he became a more patient and prolific writer, taking better care of himself and becoming more watchful and alert to life, he said.  He grew in this way, even though, he bore "colossal, incessant pain," until the end of his life in 2011.

When God shows his mercy and love, it doesn’t remove the pain and hurt, but he does reach out to us through our own personal hurts and struggles.  He sees us, as we are, and he loves us, and is merciful to us, even in the darkest, most difficult days and nights in our lives.  What I observed first hand, most vividly in Reynolds Price is how patient he was with us in that room, in ways he would have never been before, especially around a group of pastors and preachers.  In the way God had shown mercy to him, he was now showing a love for mercy toward us, and toward others too.

The Hebrew word Micah uses for  mercy’, Hesed, is very complex with several meanings such as kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and lovingkindness, as well as, mercy.  This word, concludes David’s powerful pastoral image in the 23^rd, Psalm, when David wrote that with the Lord as his Shepherd, surely goodness and Hesed will ‘follow him all the days of his life’ (Psalm, 23:6).    How can we image that kind of mercy in our lives and in world too, especially in a world where justice isn’t always conceived as merciful or forgiving?

Several years a popular pastors and writer, Rob Bell, imagine heaven as a place where love would eventually redeem everyone who has ever lived, so that God’s love has the final word, not sin, not evil, and not Satan and Hell.  All is finally swallowed up into God’s unconquerable compassion and mercy.  When Bell released his book, Love Wins, it was so controversial among evangelical Christians, that Bell had to resign his church as pastor, and was shunned by the evangelical community.   The whole episode reminds us just how difficult it can be to imagine God’s mercy over against other passages of the Bible which speak of God’s righteous judgement on sin and sinners.  We need only imagine a Hiltler, a Stalin, or some evil minded serial killer being shown mercy, kindness, or forgiveness, rather than being held accountable for their crimes.   How could that ever be a way of righteousness or justice? 

In his great memoir of faith and life, the powerful French lawyer and religious thinker, Jacques Elull, thought about this apparent contradiction several years before Rob Bell did, and following other great religious thinkers, he admits that’s God’s mercy is compassionate and all encompassing, but he stops short of putting ‘words in God’s mouth’, reminding us that although we can hope that God’s love is merciful, God always respect human free will, even the human choice to reject God’s love and mercy.     

WALK HUMBLY

Maybe the best way to understand how we can appreciate God’s requirement of doing justice, and loving mercy, and how to keep them in balance, is through the final requirement of ‘walking humbly’ and letting God be God, and never trying or assuming to be ‘God’ or having all the ‘answers’ ourselves.  

           This powerful imagery of ‘walking’ with God is one of the most ancient ways of imaging the reality of a genuine spiritual life; a life that draws upon resources for life and living beyond and outside ourselves.  The idea is that when you ‘go for a walk’, you are moving outside your own restricted community and are allowing God to take you into a new place of understanding or living.  This is the whole idea of walking humbly.  Its not you taking God for a walk with you, but it’s you inviting God to guide you and take you places in your heart that you may have never imagined or been before.

           This is exactly the place you need to go to open yourself up to what it might mean to do justice and love mercy and kindness in the world where we live today.   Such humility and openness isn’t easy, is it?  It’s more natural for us to want to take God with us where we want to go, rather than to have the kind of humility it takes to let God take our hand and lead us.   Isn’t this true of our own reaction to the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.  Because our families aren’t black, or haven’t been slaves, or haven’t been recently oppressed, its harder for us to see what all the ‘fuss’ and protesting was about, unless we allow God to take us for a walk outside of our own surroundings and life experiences.  It’s so easy to make this whole cry for justice something that puts ‘them’ against us, rather than calls us to find the humility and compassion to see how we are all in this together.  And this works, both ways, doesn’t it?   You can’t achieve a way of justice and mercy for one person or people without seeing how we must all walk in justice, kindness, and in humility with God and before each other.

           Having humility that puts one true God above and beyond us all is where Micah’s vision finally finds both its justification and its fulfillment.  The only way a people or a world can walk together in toward justice and in kindness, is when our differing ways of understanding life and God come together in a common humility as we stand before the one true God.  We know that God’s oneness and truth has been revealed to us and is being experienced by us, because God’s greatness draws us toward the same justice and mercy for others, as we desire God to be fair and merciful with us.  

But walking in this kind of humility that means as much for others as it might mean for ourselves requires not just humility but it also requires faith and trust.   This is why when Jewish scholars and Rabbis today translate ‘walking humbly’ with God they interpret it as the greatest Bible requirement of all, faith.  You can’t do justice, love mercy and walk humbly without have utter trust and faith in God.

This was illustrated so well by the late pastor John Claypool who told of a missionary who went out years ago to teach in a school in China.   (Talk about humbly walking to a new place!).   She had begun the whole venture with a deep sense of God's calling. However, in the long voyage over the Pacific by boat, all kinds of fears began to crop up. Just like Peter, who had begun in confidence but then took his eyes off Christ and let the winds drive him to terror, she too was beset by anxieties: "How will I provide for myself? Will I be able to learn the language? What will be the response of the people?"

One night she went to sleep deeply troubled by all these uncertainties, and she had a vivid dream. It was as if she were standing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean all by herself with nothing but a two-by-four supporting her at the surface of the water. In that condition, a voice said to her, "Start walking to China." She answered back, "But I can't. I'm not able to walk on water. If I leave this secure standing place, I will surely drown." But the voice insisted, "I said walk. Start walking toward China."

With fear and trembling, but in obedience, she lifted her foot and put it forward, and just at the moment that it was touching the surface of the water, another two-by-four, like the one on which she had been standing, appeared out of the depth. Every step she took was met by support emerging from the deep. She woke with a new sense of confidence and trust in God.

When we dare to live by Gods requirements of doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly,  we are purposely moving over deeper water too.  This will require greater faith and trust from us. 

 

At times in our lives all of us will be in deep water. At such times where will we put our trust? Will we put it in our keen intellect? Will we put it in our robust health? Will we put it in our stocks and bonds or the equity in our home? There may come a time when all of these will fail us. If we put our trust in ourselves ” our accomplishments, our possessions, our investments ” there will come a time, regardless of how much we have accumulated, when we will stare into the darkness and feel the waters of defeat and death rise around us. But if we put our faith in God, if we confess that our strength and our ability are inadequate but that God's strength and God's ability will never fail, then we will discover why the humble and the meek of this world are blessed.

But if we put our faith in God, if we confess that our strength and our ability are inadequate but that God's strength and God's ability will never fail, then we will discover why the humble and the meek of this world are blessed.

 

 

This is what continues to invite me to walk in humility,  both with God and with others, what about you?.  Amen.