The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Year A

Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly

Readings: Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 51; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

During the Sundays after Epiphany we have been exploring our call as Christians.  How does God call us? Whom does God call?  How do we answer God's call?  Once again that theme permeates the readings, this time reaching beyond our call as Christians to our deepest call as humans.  It is a call to social responsibility, to personal behaviour and interior spirituality.   It is a call to live our lives differently. 

The prophet Micah puts the call into words in what is one of the most succinctly beautiful messages in Scripture.   He was speaking to the people of Israel.  Their relationship with God had gone sour.  Micah recalled the generosity and grace of God in the experience of the people.  He recounted God's blessings.  It enabled the people to recover faith, energy and motivation.  Then he challenged them.  "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

"It is not," he is telling them, "about sacrificing material things.  God will use them.  But the most important giving is the giving of ones self."  God does not require the religious rituals of blood sacrifices and burnt offerings.  God does not require human sacrifice.  What God requires is a sacrifice of the heart and spirit.  Instead of the competitive, arrogant spirit that leads to bigger and more extravagant sacrifices and corrupt dealings with other people, Micah is calling them to treat one another differently.  He is calling on them to examine their relationship with God and live spiritual lives that are in tune with God.  Micah's message beautifully sums up our Christian call; our other readings expand on the theme. 

There is the Sermon on the Mount.  In that mountain top experience Jesus proclaims a great new character of faith.  It is a frustrating, impossible message.  It is contrary to everything that is human in our world.  It is not anything that we will ever attain or accomplish.  Instead we will spend our whole lives reaching for it.  It is the goal of Christian living, a radical way of living the committed life.  Yet if we did strive to live by the Beatitudes, I wonder how the world would view us.  Society generally takes a dim view of that which disturbs the status quo, for that which is radically opposed to society’s point of view.  We see what happens in the lives of people like Martin Luther King who are willing to put their lives on the line in order to make a difference. 

A beatitude is a blessing.  It means roughly, “You are to be congratulated!”  You are to be congratulated if you are poor.  You are to be congratulated if you mourn.  You are to be congratulated if you are persecuted.  Surely then we must ask ourselves, “Who receives the blessing of God?  Do we?” 

Are we the poor?  To be poor challenges our value system.  We misuse the saying.  We who are far from poor take it to mean that poverty is unavoidable and that somehow the poor will be happy in spite of their poverty.  We don’t think about it as challenging us to change the lot of the poor. 

Are we the meek?  Once again, it hardly pays in our society to be meek.  The meek get walked on.  They are born losers.  These are the ones who are to inherit the earth?  Surely it is the powerful, the ruthless, the risk takers who get ahead in life. 

Are we those who hunger and thirst for righteousness?  We certainly hunger.  We see hunger all around us.  People yearn for security, to make more money, to be more comfortable.  But to thirst after God?  That sounds like fanaticism.  We had better avoid that kind of hunger.  There is no telling where it might lead.  We might actually do something totally unanglican and share our faith.  It might lead to mission! 

Are we peacemakers?  We don’t like to think about war.  We find it depressing.  To really get involved in peace making?  Don’t you have to be a radical or a subversive for that?  Didn’t we leave all those values behind us in the Sixties?  

I recently saw a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Christianity creates crackpots.”  I took it as being negative, as saying that Christians can be narrow minded and bigoted.  But I can see a sense in which it is quite true.    The Beatitudes certainly seem to call us to be “crackpots”.  They challenge us to be totally committed, to take the beatitudes to their limits.  To do that means to reverse the rules, the values of society, to do things backwards.  Give rather than get.  Forgive.  Believe that God became human.  Accept as Paul says, “the folly of the cross”. 

Paul challenges the people of Corinth to recognize that the way the Spirit works is often at odds with society.  He uses the paradox of the cross to get across the deep paradox at the heart of the Christian faith.  The message of the cross is foolishness.  The very idea of a crucified prisoner being the central source of revelation about the meaning of life is totally foolish.  Yet as Christians we continue to search for the paradox at the heart of life.  The marginal become central.  The weak course of action becomes courageous.  “Blessed are the meek.”   While God may use the gifted, the powerful, the influential, the bright, God has more often used the rejected, the despised, the imprisoned, the martyred. 

Micah reminds us that we come before God, not with material wealth.  That is not ours to give.  It already belongs to God.  We are called to give beyond the material.  We are called to take action.  God requires us to do justice, to take social responsibility for the world in which we live, to do what is right.  God requires us to love kindness, to fulfill our obligations, to be merciful.  God requires us to walk humbly with our God, to have a sense of intimacy with God. 

The Sermon on the Mount takes that one step further.  The Beatitudes present us with a life style, a guide for our daily activities, a life style that empowers us to grow as members of the Christian family.  We are called to communicate the love of God to the sick, the lonely, the oppressed, the unhappy in our world and in our community.  We are called to do so with a sense of joy.  We are called to rejoice and be glad, to see ourselves serving God through the sufferings and sacrifice of love, and above all to build God’s kingdom of shalom.  May we have the grace and strength to live out God’s call.  May we serve as disciples in our homes, in our work, and wherever we are.  May we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.