Epiphany + 4A 29-1-17 Micah 6 1-8 , Ps 15, 1C 1 18-31 Mt 5 1-12
Our readings today are powerful calls to good relationship – with God, and with our fellow citizens on Earth. Micah laments that God, who rescued the Hebrew people from slavery, who protected them from foreign armies and brought them safely across the Jordan – the God whom they owe everything – has somehow come to be seen by the people as a burden, thanks to some of their religious leaders’ fixation on the importance of ritual. Micah sweeps that aside and speaks words of timeless, challenging wisdom: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Forget the impossible; just love your neighbour and love God. It’s the whole of the Law; it’s the Gospel.
The Psalmist asks the same question – who is worthy to approach God? – and the answer in the Psalm echoes Micah’s; live decently, modestly and kindly – not as a selfish individual, but as one who builds up and protects a humane community.
Paul writes to Corinth, a city of new wealth, glamour and pomp, and he says that these are no way to prove our worth to God or anyone else; nor are they a way to connect with God. God’s way is radically different from all that. We don’t meet God or come to know God through our efforts or our worth. Instead, God reaches out to us – comes to save us through the foolishness and weakness of the Cross.
We know the Gospel well – the Beatitudes which begin Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are beautiful, confronting and counter-cultural. They are a call to cherish people our wider culture does not value; to see simple people the way God does; to see the heart, not the wealth or accomplishments. It’s the same message Paul was trying to get through to the Corinthian Christians. Just be real; don’t be sucked in by the trappings. Love! It’s what the Church needs to keep modelling in our time. God has a great heart for the little ones – and we are to keep offering ourselves as the means by which God’s little ones might experience that special love. As I said, so beautiful, yet so confronting and always counter-cultural.
How should we relate to God? How should we relate to this world we’ve been born into? Those are the questions today’s readings put before us. And the answer each one of them gives us is consistent; be humble, be real. Lots of people would have us think a humble person is a bit of a doormat; a push-over; a nobody. So it might surprise them to discover that someone who discovers their own humility before God is wonderfully blessed.
Whoever realises their humility before God will be surprised by God’s deep love for them. These deeply blessed people are set free from self-consciousness; free simply to thank God for all they have and for who they are. These people realise they don’t have to offer God presents to make sure they’re noticed or loved or forgiven or acceptable. They know God loves them without all that, and so they’re free to respond to God’s love – to thank God with deeds and thoughts and words of kindness, justice and mercy. Because that’s what these people have experienced from God; they’re like children who’ve known a secure upbringing.
For anyone who comes to know God through Jesus, that sense of a secure childhood can begin at any time – even in late adulthood. Look at the people we saw Jesus call last week – adults. And nurtured by his love, his example and his guidance, those humble, ordinary fisher-folk and all the multitudes who discovered his transforming love grew into leaders of a movement which would transform countless lives through simple loving kindness and practical care.
Can you think of anyone you know who’s been brought out of their shell like this? Who’s moved from a place of injury and mistrust – from pain and shame – to become an entirely new person? I’m sure you can think of such people. And what do you think has transformed these people? My guess is that it will have been unquestioning acceptance – love; trust. Being recognised as a worthwhile human being; being taken seriously; and as a consequence, having ourselves, our gifts and ideas received seriously and carefully. And then growth can begin.
In the Jesus community, being taken seriously doesn’t mean that everything we say or think will go unchallenged. We don’t avoid change; we don’t avoid challenge. But those challenges – those calls to change – will be respectful and thoughtful. They’ll lead to growth, to transformation for the better; to a change of course; the start of a new life; to become all we can be. And it’s amazing how much more you can become when you know your challenger believes in you.
Even so a prophetic challenge in this community of God’s people won’t be easy to face. Micah begins his challenge to God’s people today by declaring a court hearing. He says that God calls the people to “Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.” The Land was God’s gift to the people, and so the Land – the mountains and the hills – would be the jury who would decide whether the people have been living as people of the Land should live – as a light on the hill which truly guides other nations into God’s ways of justice, peace, loyalty and compassion. (The Land is our judge. Very contemporary isn’t it.)
It’s an open and shut case. The religious leaders haven’t been challenging people’s violence, dishonesty or greed. Instead, they’ve been encouraging people to offer bigger sacrifices; to buy God off; to get God to turn a blind eye to the decadence that’s wrecking their community and dishonouring their heritage. And the sacrifices themselves are going off limits too: Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgressions! a ghastly travesty of the community God founded.
And yet God meets all of this with mercy; with hope. We never get to hear the end of Micah in our Sunday services, but we will today. Micah says of God, 7.18 You don’t stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you’ll tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. You will be true to Jacob and show unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you pledged an oath to our ancestors in days long ago. God is faithful, no matter what. So what other response can we offer but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God? Amen