this week, we shifted from reflecting on our calling in general terms to particular aspects of our call. this preaching series follows the lectionary passages, so I did not randomly reflect on how the command to "do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God" fits with our sense of call. But, it seemed highly appropriate.
One interesting point in Micah that I didn't include is the ending of Micah, which speaks about how God is faithful and will forgive. At one point in the sermon preparation, I had that as my last point of the sermon, but by the time I preached the sermon, it seemed extraneous.
“A Call to Do Justice” Micah 6: 1-8; SAPC, Denton; January 29, 2023; Calling All Disciples series Richard B. Culp
Micah 6: 1-8: Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 2Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 4For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”
6“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? 7Will 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?” 8He 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?
Introduction: We continue our preaching series “Calling All Disciples” and the invitation to reflect on our own sense of what God is calling us to do.
In the last two weeks, we have reflected on the calling of the first disciples and our own call in broad parameters.
In the next few weeks, we will be looking at different aspects of our calls. As we do so, I hope you will listen and reflect and lay claim to how the sermon’s theme may speak to your own particular call.
This week my wife Leslie asked me to read the chapter in the book Laughing your way to Grace, which is the book the women’s class is studying on Super Wednesday. She thought it fit with the sermon series on call.
So I read it. the chapter was about the author working on answering the question, “Who are you?” which fits nicely with the idea of who God is calling us to be. in this particular chapter, the author was describing how she discovered laughter was an important part of her sense of call.
We all have different aspects of the particular call God has for us.
So as we hear the prophet Micah speak to us about an aspect of our calling, which is not laughter by the way, I hope you will use his words as a springboard to discovering different aspects of your call.
More 1: We begin our reflections on call this morning with the prophecy Micah.
a. highly appropriate to turn to a prophet when reflecting on call.
1. prophets had their own sense of call - called to prophesy, to share God’s word.
2. Micah’s sense of call grew out of his context of growing up in a village in the foothills of Judah southwest of Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE.
3. he hears to call to proclaim God’s Word during a time when Israel went from a divided monarchy - southern and northern kingdoms - through the time when the northern kingdom was conquered and the southern kingdom was being threatened.
b. His call included helping God’s people analyze and refine God’s call for them as people of God collectively and individually.
1. Micah looks out over the two kingdoms, sees what is happening to God’s people, and calls them back to what it means to be God’s people.
2. He describes their calling in one of Scripture's most well-known passages:
and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
more 2: As we hear Micah’s prophesy, we are reminded that all of us are challenged to hear the call to do justice.
a. By the time Micah arrives at the passage we read today, he has already “lodged complaints” against all sorts of people.
1. He has a complaint against Israel.
2. In particular, the capital cities of Samaria in the northern Kingdom and Jerusalem in the southern kingdom.
3. he has called the religious leaders false prophets.
4. Micah takes the civic and cultural elite to task.
Micah paints a horrifying picture of political oppression and economic exploitation by the strong and powerful against the weak and dispossessed. “The powerful dictate what they desire — they all conspire together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge” (7:3–4). The rich are people of violence (6:12). (Don Clendenin, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1251-micah-prophetic-critique-and-pastoral-comfort)
b. My point is this - Micah’s reach was far and wide.
1. if we hear Micah’s words and think they are only about those “other people,” we have probably neglected to recognize our own complicity.
2. Micah’s challenge “to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” is for all of us.
3. As you reflect on your own calling, consider how Micah’s prophecy lays claim on us.
4. within our own particular circumstances, how are you doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God?
5. in particular, if where God calls you puts you in positions of leadership, or positions of power, or access to resources, how are you living into Micah’s call?
Move 2: We might also note that the call to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God is a reflection of who God is and a response to what God has done.
a. Notice that in the middle verses of the passage we read this morning the reminder of who God is and what God has done.
1. Those “saving acts of God” (verse 5) on Israel’s behalf include: the exodus from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 1-15);
2. the leadership of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (a striking female reference, Exodus 15:20-21);
3. the deliverance from the Moabite King Balak through the agency of Balaam as the people made their way through the wilderness (Numbers 22-24);
4. and the climactic move into the promised land itself, a place full of milk and honey. using familiar shorthand: from Shittim, east of the Jordan, to Gilgal on the west (see Joshua 2:1; 3:1; 4:19; 5:19). (https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-micah-61-8-3; Terence E. Fretheim)
5. In remembering what God has done, we remember that God is a God of salvation;
God brings us to a new way of life.
God is the one who walks with us in all circumstances.
6. Who is God? the God of saving grace and new life.
b. Now that Micah has reminded us of who God is, he calls us to respond.
1. Apparently, the people in Micah’s time thought that the response God desired was more burnt offerings, more rams, more oils, and even your firstborn.
2. in other words, in response to God’s saving grace, God’s people decide to share their riches.
3. But, that is not what God asks of them.
4. Micah declares that God does not care about their worship sacrifices;
God cares about how they live their lives and treat people.
5. What does the Lord require? that God’s people live in a way that reflects the God of salvation.
do justice
love kindness
walk humbly with God.
6. Our call should reflect two important aspects - concern for those who are in need of justice and aligning ourselves to walk with God.
7. That is not necessarily a distinct calling, but a part of all of our callings.
Move 3: Nothing easy about living into our calling.
a. Next to the window in my study, where I can’t but see it every day, there’s a framed cartoon from an old edition of the National Lampoon. It’s a spoof of a Medici rose window from the cathedral in Florence, and depicts a laughing camel leaping with ease through the eye of a needle. The superscription reads: “a recurring motif in works commissioned by the wealthier patrons of Renaissance religious art,” while the Latin inscription on the window itself is “Dives Vincet,”or “Wealth Wins!” John Rollefson, "Eye of the Needle," Christian Century, September 21, 2004, 20. Referenced in Robert Dunham's sermon at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, 6/14/15.
1. Hard to pull back from the pressures of the world and demands and expectations in our lives to conform to a world where power and riches and concern for only ourselves runs rampant.
2. But, the prophet Micah calls us to the challenge.
3. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann notes:
We have been sent dangerously by God’s address—
called by name, entrusted with risky words,
and empowered with authority.
We are to tell the truth openly, work for justice,
and stand in solidarity with our neighbors.
The cost is high, but the purposes are those of the Holy God.
Walter Brueggemann, “Can We Risk It?”from Prayers of a Privileged People
4. not an easy call, but a call that reflects the nature of God’s saving grace.
b. Paul asks the corinthians to consider their call.
1. “Consider your own call brothers and sisters,” he writes to the Corinthians.
2. they are trying to figure out what it means to be called by a God of resurrection
3. Paul describes it as the foolishness of the gospel - that through Christ’s submitting to the powers of the world in his death on the cross, God’s saving grace might come to all.
4. foolishness
like turning away from the powers of the world and choosing
“do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Conclusion: After all, it is part of your calling
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