4th Epiphany
Micah 6:1-8
I've been called up for jury duty only once--about ten years ago. I'll admit I was rather blasé about it. The timing was not convenient; --is it ever? But we all have to do our civic duty so I trudged my body up to Waukegan in the middle of the winter. I brought a book--if you're ever called for duty BRING A BOOK. I was surprised there were so many of us called--maybe 100 people all checking in at the same time. And then the wait. All through the morning--time out for lunch and then back to sitting. 1:00 some people get called out, rumors that we can go home 2:00, 2:15....2:30 they call some names Mine among them. They lead us into a courtroom. Now I am sure for the many of you who are lawyers in the congregation this is old hat. I'm sure you feel so at home in these environs that you would laugh at me. But I was nervous. My stomach had butterflies, I hung on every word of instruction and information I heard and then wondered what I had missed--and was uncomfortable that I couldn't ask the prospective juror next to me because there was to be no talking. Then the judge came in. Now I'm sure if I met this guy at a school function or a party we'd get along fine, but in this environment, with the robe and the flags on both sides and polished wooden bench--I was in awe. I wasn't even the one on trial but I was imbued with the weightiness of the matter and the responsibility. I suppose that is the emotion we're going for in our courts--and in at least my case it succeeds. Needless to say I wasn't called. The half groan half chuckle from the defense attorney when he heard I was a Lutheran minister, that my husband was a Lutheran minister and that my father was a Lutheran minister belied the fact that he thought I was too much of a goody two shoes to understand the plight of his young client. So it goes.
Our Old Testament lesson from Micah this morning is just such a court room. The lesson might well conjure up in our feelings and in our minds eye just such weightiness and responsibility You might imagine God on the bench, but no, God is not the judge in this case, no much worse God is the prosecutor. "The Lord has a controversy with his people." The Lord is bringing them up on charges. And over there in the juror's box, well there sits the mountains and the hills and the enduring foundations of the earth." How much weightier can you get?
Opening arguments. "O my people what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!"
Evidence: "For I brought you up from the Land of Egypt, saved you from slavery, gave you leaders like Moses and Aaron and Miriam. And how when you went to take over the land of Moab from King Balak and he called in Balaam to offer sacrifices but still Balaam brought my word that the land should be yours."
Do you remember? Do you remember? Then why have you turned against me, why have you ignored me and forgotten me?
I guess the argument is a winning one for Micah indicates a transformation. Indeed there are no excuses, no counter arguments. There is no defense.
Like a penitent child suddenly impressed with the hurt they've caused a parent, Micah indicates the people are ready to make it up to God. What can we do for you? "With what shall we come before the Lord?" Like us, so often caught in our errors we are much more into appeasement than amendment. Let me make it up to you. Let me buy you something to take your mind off what I've done---a diamond bracelet, flowers, burnt offerings, a thousand rams, rivers of oil . And in effect the people say: "OK, God. What's it going to take to make you happy and get us off the hook? Do you want us to pray some extra long prayers? Do you want us to memorize some chapters out of the Bible? Do you want us to go to church every week for a year? Just tell us. What is it that you want us to do?"
You see, that's the way we often think. We look on our relationship with God as a bunch of rules that God wants us to follow. Because for the most part, we like it when clear-cut rules are given to us
It's like the story about a little fish that got washed up onto shore and was left flopping around in the sand. And so some people figured that they would help fish. One person ran and got the fish a nice chair to sit on. Another person brought a beach umbrella to provide some shade. Someone else brought the fish some nice, cool lemonade to drink. But to their surprise, even after they had done all those things for the fish, the fish was still miserable. The fish was miserable, of course, because the people had done all kinds of good things for him, but they hadn't done the most important thing. That is, they hadn't put him back in the water.
Is it that we don't know what God wants or that we just don't do it? Cleophus Thomas, Jr., an African American attorney in Alabama, says: "We have a saying in our fundamentalist church; some people would rather see a sermon than hear one."
A year or so ago a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania did an experiment. The basic idea was to study the way that people rationalize committing various sins, especially when people figure that no one will be hurt. So the professor recruited a group of college students. And the students were led to believe that they were participating in a consumer test for some various products. At the end of the day, when it came time to pay the students, each of them was intentionally overpaid $2.
The first group of students was told that a big foreign company was sponsoring the test and they were handed their money by an impersonal cashier. In that group, 80% of the people kept the extra money. The next group was told that the test was being run by a graduate student and was being paid for out of his own pocket. Of that group, half kept the extra $2.
For the third group, the cashier counted out the money on her desk, and then asked each person "Is that right?" In that way, the students had to lie in order to get the undeserved $2. 40% of that group told the lie and took the money. In the final group, the students were told that a graduate student was paying them out of his own pocket, and the cashier asked them to confirm if the payment was right. Just 20% of those students took the extra $2.
One of the things that study revealed was that when the students felt that they were only harming some big, impersonal far-away corporation, it was fairly easy to justify their wrongdoing. But as their victim was given more and more of a face, as their victim was made to be more personal to them, it was more likely for them to do what was right.
This lesson is about the relationship we have to God. Is it impersonal, unresponsive, unfeeling and uncaring or is it about a God who has been merciful to us and who awaits our response in love. What does the Lord require of you? What does the Lord require of you?
It's really very simple: Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
Today in Sunday School our children were introduced to the country of Haiti and how we of the ELCA are attempting to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.
Do justice: We are working with the coffee farmers of Haiti to help them form cooperatives so that they might get a fair stable price for coffee they grow. We are working with groups of women, giving them pigs to raise and to sell. Not a hand out but a leveling of the playing field. Do justice.
Love kindness: In 2000 over 43% of Haiti's population was under the age of 15. They had nothing to do with the politics of the land into which they were born. 54% of the population has no access to safe drinking water. 63% are undernourished. Less than half of the children go to school. How do we love kindness?
Walk humbly with your God: In May of 2004 floods and landslides left 3,000 people dead. On Sept. 16 and 17 Haiti was struck by tropical storm Jeanne. Two days of lashing rains caused massive flooding. Over 1,300 people last their lives. Over 4,000 houses were destroyed. 300,000 people were affected. It is easy to be smug
Here in Micah, God lays out in very basic terms what God wants from us: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. It's pretty clear that sometimes we can do what the law requires. Sometimes God seems very close and we see Christ in the face of our neighbor and we respond, but sometimes God seems very distant, and our Sunday world gets very detached from our Monday world. We know we're guilty. But this walk with God is not for only a few steps or a small way it is a journey for a lifetime. The challenge is for us not to be overwhelmed by where we are at the moment, but to remember where it is that God is taking us and to follow.
Amen