Micah 6:6-8
October 3, 2010
Joanna Harader
We live in a world of requirements. If you live in Kansas and want to get into KU, you have to have a C average in high school. If you were born in another country and want to be a US citizen, you are required to do a lot of things: live in the US, be of “good moral character,” know US history, swear an oath of allegiance, and speak English. To join this church you have to take the membership class.
All of these requirements are established in writing. If you want to know how to get into KU, you can go to the web site and find out. If you want to know how to become a US citizen, you can clear off about 12 hours in your schedule and read through that web site. If you want to know how to join the church, you can read the constitution. Or ask me. Please.
But maybe you’ve noticed that not all requirements are easy to discover. Some things you can’t look up on the internet. What style of clothes do you have to wear to hang out with the popular crowd? How many obscure literary references are you required to make at the English Department party?
At a poverty workshop I attended a few months ago, we talked about the unwritten requirements for participating in the middle class. You can’t find these rules written down in any official document, but they exist nonetheless. For example, you don’t wear mesh shirts to a court date. If someone has a bowl of candy on their desk, you take one piece–as opposed to emptying the bowl into your purse.
This past Friday I was excited to go to my first mystery book club discussion. The lady at the Raven said they met at noon at the Eldridge restaurant. I intentionally got there right at noon–so as not to seem too anxious by arriving early–only to find the entire group was assembled and had already ordered. They kindly allowed me to pull up a chair and informed me that they always get there early. The woman next to me had been the last to arrive–before me–at 11:35.
If you’ve ever been new to an established group–maybe a church, or work colleagues, or a partner’s family, or even a region of the country–you’ve probably broken requirements you didn’t even know existed. You show up at the wrong time. Say the wrong words. Wear the wrong clothes.
It’s a frustrating, even a helpless feeling to be aware that requirements exist and yet have no idea what they are. You can sense this frustration in the people’s questions to God:
With what shall I come before the LORD / and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before God with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, / with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, / the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
At first the people suggest a reasonable, expected requirement: burnt offerings, young calves. Then they move on to a requirement of royal proportions: thousands of rams. Then to an impossible offering: ten thousand rivers of oil. And finally the people suggest what they surely know is abhorrent to Yahweh: human sacrifice.
This escalation highlights the frustration of the people. They thought they were meeting God’s requirements. They were offering sacrifices at the proper time and in the proper place. They were playing the religion game well.
But Yahweh, according to Micah and other prophets, was not happy. God had some requirements that the people were missing.
My best guess is that the people’s questions came out of both frustration and wishful thinking. They hoped that God would say, “Yes, that first one. That burnt offering thing. That’s what I require.” They may have even been able to pull together a thousand rams if push came to shove.
The people, I bet, were hoping to learn of specific requirements that they could easily meet. Or, if not easily, at least clearly. Go to church every Sunday. Pray every day. Memorize John 3:16. Serve at LINK when Gwen asks you to. Check. Check. Check.
I think this longing for clear requirements explains much of the appeal of more fundamentalist forms of Christianity–or of any religion. If you want to know how to get right with God, there are plenty of fundamentalist pastors who will tell you. The requirements they give will likely involve accepting certain doctrinal statements, not having sex with someone of the same gender as you, and giving large sums of money to their church. (Do I sound skeptical?) It’s not that all of the requirements will be easy, but they will be clear.
The people of Israel longed for clear requirements from God. People today still long for them. It’s why people will turn over their life savings to televangelists. It’s why young men–and women–will allow a powerful and charismatic pastor to coerce them into sex. It’s why parents will disown children for being gay. It’s why folks from Heritage Baptist, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Mormon church will come knocking on your door. It’s nice when then Holy One tells us to do something we can actually do.
But the prophets tell us that God does not require burnt offerings. God does not require a perfect worship form or strict adherence to a legalistic moral code.
And so you have the anti-fundamentalist Christians who vehemently deny that God requires those things that the fundamentalists claim God requires. The problem is that in the process of denying that God has such legalistic requirements, more liberal-minded Christians are in danger of conveying that God has no requirements at all.
God does not really expect any of our worship or any of our money. God doesn’t care how much we drink or who we sleep with. God’s just not into “rules and regulations.”
But of course God has rules; God has requirements. And God lays out those requirements more eloquently here in the sixth chapter of Micah than probably anywhere else in the Hebrew scriptures.
If you want to be considered the people of God, these are God’s requirements: act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
These requirements are clear, but they aren’t. In one sense they are very simple and easy, and in another sense they are complicated and difficult.
What does the Lord require?
God requires mishpat. Justice. Not justice simply or strictly in the legal sense, but a lived society where all people have their needs met. A society where all people are valued and none are oppressed.
So, if mishpat, justice, is God’s requirement, how are we doing? We’re having a bit of sharing time in the middle of the sermon this week. What have you seen or heard about that may be an indicator of how God’s people are meeting–or failing to meet–God’s requirement of justice?
(wealth gap)
. . . . . . .
What does the Lord require?
God requires hesed. Your Bible probably reads, “love kindness” or “love mercy.” The Hebrew term has a depth of meaning that is difficult to convey with any single English term. It has to do with compassion, faithfulness, lovingkindness, steadfast love. Hesed is often used to describe how God faithfully, lovingly, sustained the Israelites throughout history. It is also used to describe the faithfulness that the people owe to God.
Hesed is a type of love. Not a warm fuzzy love, but a lived everyday kind of love. Biblical scholar David Bratcher writes that “To love hesed [is] to be committed to a quality of life that [is] governed by the principles of mutual respect, helpfulness, and loving concern.”
So if hesed is God’s requirement, how are we doing? What stories have you heard this week that demonstrate the extent to which God’s people are meeting this requirement for mutual respect, helpfulness, loving concern?
(teen suicides)
. . . . . . . .
What does the Lord require? To act justly. To love kindness.
If God required burnt offerings, things would be much easier. It would be easier to meet God’s requirements. It would be easier to know if we were meeting the requirements.
But the requirements God actually gives us are not requirements we can do and be done with. These are not things we can check off of a list. Justice and hesed are requirements we must strive to live out each day, in all of our relationships, with every choice we make. We must be people of justice. People of kindness.
It is a tough requirement and a good requirement. And the good news is, we are not doing it alone. We act justly, we enact hesed, by walking humbly with God. This comes at the end of the list of requirements, but I think it may be the beginning. Or maybe there is no beginning, no end. When we walk with God, we are just and kind. When we are just and kind, we walk with God.
May you walk humbly with God this week by following the path of Christ–through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks be to God.
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