A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey January 30, 2005

Text: Micah 6:1-8

I have to begin with telling you that I successfully managed to avoid temptation this past week…at least in one area of my life. In an e-mail exchange with my best friend…another UM Pastor…my frugal brother shared with me that he fully intended to re-use the bulletins he had already prepared for last Sunday’s service on this Sunday, and he would preach the sermon he already had prepared: “I’m not going to waste a perfectly good sermon!” he declared. And for a moment…

After all, I had last week’s sermon 99% ready to go by Saturday afternoon, when we can-celed services. And the bulletins were all printed and in the ushers’ closet. However, by the time he e-mailed me, our service for this week was pretty much in order, Ed Stern had agreed to ac-company “What Does the Lord Require of You” on the guitar, and I was well into thinking about this week’s passage from Micah. And as for that almost-perfected sermon on “light” for last week? Well, it’s stored in a future sermon file on my computer, and if you come back on January 27, 2008, you’ll get to hear it when those wonderful lessons next appear in the Lectionary cycle.

As for “bragging” about avoiding this particular temptation this past week, I know of a pastor who has also wrestled with this issue of humility. He was asked by his Staff-Parish Rela-tions Committee to evaluate his ministry in comparison to the ministry of Jesus. (Now there’s a concept to give you pause!) His response included: “Jesus walks on water; I slip on ice. Jesus changes water into wine; I change water into coffee. Jesus welcomes the children; I have the children’s sermon. Jesus raises the dead; I wake teenagers. And Jesus cleanses lepers; I change dirty diapers.”

Micah’s prophetic words give both me and that struggling pastor some well-timed advice about humility:

[God] 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 6:8, NRSV)

Comedians have long poked fun at how mothers can sometimes nag and how they can make effective use of our guilt to make us act. Over the years there have been several television “sit-coms” based on nagging mothers and mothers-in-law who use guilt to get their way. One of Tina’s favorites…and maybe yours, too…is Everybody Loves Raymond.

In poking fun at mothers, comedians are tapping into a basic characteristic of parents and parenting. We want the best for our children. And we want to be appreciated for the work we’ve done.

But some of us are better at expressing those feelings than others. And I don’t know of many parents who haven’t wanted to say things that the comedians put into the mouths of their characters. We also know how inappropriate it is to say some of those things on occasion.

But because we know those are real thoughts and because we also know they are not to be spoken aloud, we either laugh or cringe when we hear them in the mouths of others. The sur-prise of recognizing our own thoughts spoken aloud is what makes it good humor.

Our text for today could easily be said by one of those comic characters, a mother who is ranting about her non-appreciative grown son:

“What have I done wrong? Wasn’t it enough that I gave birth to you and worked two jobs to keep food on the table? Would you rather go naked than wear the clothes I bought you? And why do you act as if your college education was a gift from some long lost uncle?

“You can ask the neighbors how often I woke up in the middle of the night to feed you when you were a baby and how many trips I made to the doctor with your sore throats, ear aches, and broken arms. Just ask the people at the school how often I volunteered to bring cookies to your class when you were growing up.
“After all I’ve done for you, is it too much to ask for you to call me on my birthday? Can’t you find some small way to show you appreciate all I’ve done for you?”

Only in our text, God is the one who is speaking. And God begins by calling the moun-tains and hills to listen as God recounts the many times and places where the people of Israel had been blessed but failed to acknowledge the One who had blessed them.

Can you imagine the guilty silence that must have followed Micah’s proclamation of that judgment of God? Like the adult children of the nagging mother, there is no excuse that can be made for their behavior.

And like the children of Israel, we know we are implicated in the accusation as well. We, too, have known God’s love and grace. We, too, have experienced the miracle of God’s accep-tance. And like the children of Israel, we have not always expressed our gratitude. We have taken God for granted.

We can all recognize our own complicity, but what can we do?

What is the appropriate response when confronted with our own self-focus in the midst of such a tremendous outpouring of love?

Recently I heard a comedian say that the best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it—once. Those of you who have romantic spouses know there is no amount of flowers that can make up for that forgotten birthday or anniversary. Bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, rooms full of balloons will not change the past. We cannot make up for our mistakes with things.
Like the repentant child or a comedian’s mother, Israel asks what God wants in return to make up for the past:

“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? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my trans-gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6:6, 7, NRSV).

Or to put it in the context of church today, we could ask if we are supposed to sign up for flowers or refreshments every week, or turn over our entire retirement savings account. We might ask if God wants us to abandon our jobs and our families and our children and live the rest of our lives at the church.

We all know the truth. None of that will suffice. Nothing we will ever do can compare with what God has already done. We cannot pay God back for what God has done, just as we cannot make up for what we have not done.

God isn’t asking for the fatted calf. God doesn’t need the cattle on a thousand hills. All God wants is a living and vital relationship with each of us and all of us:

[God] 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 6:8, NRSV).

Three things: Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. Those first two are vitally important, for sure. Especially on this day when millions of Iraqi citizens are trying to get to polling places to safely cast their votes; at the end of a week of unprecedented violence and death; and in the face of rising concerns about our ultimate “exit strategy.” Justice and Kindness are at the heart of our concern for many of the tsunami-orphaned children of South Asia who face harm at the hands of predators. I suspect many of us have been vividly reminded of the im-perative for kindness and justice as we watched the 60th anniversary observances of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz this past week. And as Pastor Bauknight reminded us so eloquently in her message two weeks ago, we still have a long distance to go when ad-dressing justice issues in our race relationships. Our daily newspapers and TV news provide us with abundant and important kindness and justice concerns. But I really want you to hear the third part of verse 8 this morning: Walk humbly with your God. In fact, I really just want you to hear the last three words of that phrase: With your God.
Biblical commentaries remind us that that walking humbly with your God means to live dependently—not alone; to live in communion, in friendship with God. There is a relationship implied here. God is not a distant being, unknowable, unreachable. God is close, by our side. With us. The biblical commentators, together with a good dictionary, have been able to help me understand what it might mean to walk “with” our God.

There is a word-part, “com-”, that comes from the Latin meaning “with” or “together”. It is related to another word part, “commun-” which means shared. It is related then, to words like community, communicate, communion.

Com- is found in companion, a familiar word which comes from two roots (com=together, and panis=bread). Companions are literally those with whom we eat bread to-gether. They are those with whom we share the most vital parts of ourselves. Micah is saying that God wants us to be companions, to be together with God.

Com- is also found in compassion (com=with and pati=suffer). Compassion literally means “suffering with.” It means sharing the pain of another. God is described as compassionate. In fact the word that is translated for us as “Love kindness”, can also be translated as steadfast love, mercy, and compassion.

Micah tells us to follow God’s lead, doing justice, showing compassion, and most im-portantly walking humbly with our God.

When you love someone, don’t you just want to be with them. A parent, a child, a lover, a spouse, a dear friend? It doesn’t matter what you are doing—the being together is what is im-portant, isn’t it? You can be busy working and not even have time to speak, but just a glance at that one you love warms your heart. We don’t have to have elaborate plans together in order to appreciate the time we spend with each other.

We know this instinctively. We hold on to memories of time spent with those we love. Sometimes we’ve been doing things that are very important, but we could just as easily have been riding in a car together, just enjoying the scenery. It is being together that we need.

Micah tells us that this is what God wants with us. Our purpose is found in the larger purposes of God. “What does the Lord require of you?” What really matters? What is God’s pur-pose for us? In the end, we find that what really matters is relationship—relationship with God and with each other, relationships not quantified by dollars or organization charts, by ritual prac-tices or an abundance of good deeds.

At the end of the day, we will not so much be judged on what we have accomplished in a career or even in our religious expressions, but on how much we loved. Have we simply loved people enough to act justly, to be kind, and to give ourselves over to walking humbly with God and following God’s lead in our lives?
Our lives matter because we matter to God. Not because of what we can or cannot do, but because God simply loves us. If we love God in the same way, we can’t help but find real meaning and a new way of looking at life through the powerful lens of relationship.

Remember that question we all got asked when we were about 5 years old—“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a great question, but very soon we begin to turn be into do and get stuck cranking out life instead of creatively living into it. We become human doings rather than human beings.

Micah’s words remind us that life can be simple if we’ll only be willing to make some careful choices—if we’ll choose to love God and others and let the rest take care of itself.

…and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

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PRAYER
Gracious and loving God, you have told us what is good. Now help us to go forth into this troubled world committed to move in the ways of your justice, to fall in love with your abundant kindness, and to tread lightly as we go—humbly in your presence. Amen.
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1 From The Joyful Newsletter, quoted as “On humility” in AHA!, January 30, 2005, p. 23.
2 From Walking Humbly, a sermon based on Micah 6:1-8 by Randy L Quinn, accessed on January 29, 2005, @ http://desperatepreacher.com/sermonbuilder/feb02/1/homily.htm.
3 Ibid.
4 From With Your God, a sermon based on Micah 6:1-8 by “Pam in San Bernadino” and accessed on January 29, 2005, @ http://desperatepreacher.com/sermonbuilder/a_pool/with_your_god.htm.
5 Ibid.
6 From “My Life,” a homiletical reflection on Micah 6:1-8 in Homiletics, January-February 2005, p. 38.
7 Adapted from a “Charge” in Homiletics, p. 41.