"6":8 (Micah)

“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 transgression,

    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

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 6:6-8

On the sixth day of Christmas we look at one of the most well-known verses in the Hebrew bible - and for good reason! Micah chapter 6, verse 8. 

In the world of religion and church we hold highly the sacred hour of worship. We often go through the week with little reflection on the divine or what God calls us to do. But we show up on Sunday and sing with deep conviction. We take the eucharist with certainty. We give to an offering tray and think “Yes. I have done enough.” 

Over and over again we see in the minor prophets an outcry at the religious festivals, gaudy worship, and outward expressions of spirituality. Those are not bad things, but they are secondary, at most. God doesn’t ever seem concerned with receiving glory and worship. God doesn’t ever seem concerned about accumulating wealth and power. God always seems concerned about those on the underside of history. The poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the ones who are passed over and over and over. 

Micah 6 reminds the people of their history. Do you not remember how God has shown up for you when you were oppressed? Do you not realize you are supposed to do the same for others? And Micah, speaking on behalf of God, asks if we know what God wants. Does God want 100’s of burnt offerings? 1000’s of Rams? Rivers and rivers of oil? Does God want the blood of our first born child?? Not much has changed from ancient Israel. We seek favor and approval from God through action directed solely at God. We sing louder than we did last week. We host big worship events that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We give it all to God. And then we complain about those freeloading poor people who are lazy. The single mother on welfare “taking advantage of the system” and your hard earned tax payer dollars! Those horrible ______’s on the other side of the world. And so we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to bomb them. Cultivating God’s good christian earth right? 

What does God require of you? Micah tells us. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. We know it, but how often do we truly live it? The hebrew text is even more rich. God wants us to asah mishpat (עָשָׂ ה - asah (מִ שְׁ פָּט - mishpat ). The word “do” is the same at the start of the story of Genesis when God creates. We are not simply asked to “do” something, but to create it. Out of chaos, out of darkness, out of disorder, we create justice. Where in the world is justice being denied? Where is it absent? Where do we need to create spaces for Justice to grow and thrive like it is in the garden of Eden? Palestine. Latin America. Detroit. Ukraine. Labor factories in China. Liberation is work to be created, not just done. 

God wants you to ahav chesed ( אהב - ahav; דֶסֶח - chesed). You may be familiar with the word chesed. It’s God’s type of love given freely and unconditionally to the entirety of creation. Often translated as “Steadfast Love”. Ahav  is a friendly and romantic love. It’s used between kin and between partners. It is intimate. God wants you and me to be deeply intimate and familiar with the type of love that God pours out abundantly. We are told to love like God loves. To love with chesed.  

Finally, God asks us to yalak tsana (צָנַע - tsana - humble wisdom). The type of humility that we are invited to follow with God in wisdom. It is the type that adjusts to the world's needs. Walking with God is not walking behind to let God fix everything. Walking with God is not about passively following behind. It means walking alongside God, learning from divine activity, and collaborating with God’s transformative potential. God wants you to Create Justice, Love Love, and Follow as a student would, creating and participating in God’s liberating action in the world. 

God invites us to create spaces of justice in the same way God created the cosmos. God invites us to love with the kind of love that God loves with. And God invites us to follow alongside in a posture of action and contemplation, ready to learn from God’s own becoming.

Let us challenge the status quo of empire and seek to liberate all from the exiles we have made for ourselves and others.