Sermon 1/30/05
Requirements and Electives - Micah 6:1-8
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Requirements and electives. When I was in high-school, I knew I had really arrived, I was really becoming grown-up when I got to the time in school where I could start choosing some of my classes. By the time I was a junior, I no longer took math and science (sorry parents, for revealing that with your children in the room) – I had taken the required courses for graduation already. And instead, during my senior year, I was taking a full load of five periods of music courses, ranging from choir and orchestra to theory and history. Then, in college, my choices were even more wide-ranging. You got to choose an entire course of study. I got to choose a major and a minor. There were some core requirements of course – Ohio Wesleyan sadly required three sciences, much to my dismay. But I got to choose classes like Ancient Greek, Stage Make-up and Costuming, Shakespeare, and Adolescent Psychology. And finally, I went to seminary. Instead of getting more choices, I had less than in college, it seemed – I had seminary requirements and requirements that were specific to the United Methodist denomination. I had requirements that our North Central New York conference set all its own. And during my last year, the school was already moving to add one or two more classes to the list. I can’t say I didn’t have some choice in my courses, but it seems a seminary can’t let you go off to become a pastor without having classes in Old and New Testament, or courses on Preaching, or courses on United Methodist history, doctrine and polity. The requirements are the requirements. And if you want to get out of high-school, you’ve got to take English. And if you want to get out of seminary, you have complete the requirements necessary for ministry. We might wish it worked differently, but ultimately, we know we must pay our dues if we want to get credit and move on.
Sometimes, I think we treat things similarly in our faith lives. We’re interested in knowing what our requirements are, and what part of faith is elective. We’re interested in knowing how much we need to believe and how much of our faith we need to practice to do what is necessary for us to reap the benefits. For example, how many times a month do you need to attend worship? Your answer and my answer to this question might be a little different! But we wonder – do we have to attend every week? Once a month? Three weeks on one week off? Or we wonder, how much do we need to give? What can we get by with? If we go to church, do we have to go to Sunday School too, or vise versa? What’s required for us to be good Christians? We wonder what we must believe too: did Jesus really mean we had to drop everything and follow him, or is that just an elective part of faith, only for the really devout? When Jesus taught us to love our enemies, did he mean all of them, or just some? When we read about our neighbors and how we are to treat them, are we required to love every last one, make amends in every relationship, or does Jesus just expect us to give it a good try and then say, “Enough is enough!” We want to know. Of course, I’m teasing a little bit – but I’m serious too – we really want to know what’s required of us. We love God – I’m guessing that’s why most of you are here. We want to serve God. We want to live rightly. We want to be disciples. But we know our limitations too – we’re not perfect. We’ve failed so many times before. How can we live up to the standards set by the disciples, who dropped everything to follow Jesus, or the Israelites, who wandered for years in the desert to follow God’s commands, or those like Paul, who were even imprisoned for preaching the gospel. We doubt we can live as they did – and so we want to know: what’s required of us? What must we do to please God?
We are constantly trying to figure out what it is we need to do to please God. We think of the heavens opening up at Jesus’ baptism, and Jesus hearing God’s voice saying, “with you I am well pleased,” and we want so much that same assurance of God’s love, even as we feel so much less deserving of it than was Christ. We are not alone in our wondering. We read in Micah today, the questioning Israel brings before God: “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?” Perhaps these suggested gifts don’t sound very meaningful to us, but the offerings, the calves, the rams, even the firstborn. These represent all that was important and of value to the Ancient Israelites. We’re not much different when it comes to trying to please God. We know that we are sinful – we know that we’re often not doing what God wants – but instead of trying to change our behavior, to transform our lives, we wait until after we’ve made bad decisions, and then scramble to make bargains with God. “God, I swear I’ll never do X again if you’ll just do X for me.” “God, I promise I’ll go to church every Sunday if you forgive me for X.” We hope that our offerings will appease and please God, as Israel wonders if its guilt offerings are what God desires.
But Micah, the prophet, has some clarity to offer, and I can almost hear the “you know the answer” tone-of-voice he must have been using with the people. Micah answers, “God has told you, people, 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?” We already know, Micah reminds us, what we are to do. God has told us. Maybe we haven’t been listening, or perhaps we haven’t believed what we’ve heard. But we know the requirement of faithful living: to walk humbly, to love kindness, or mercy as some texts read, and to do justice. These are the requirements – not the electives – but the requirements of faithful living, good living.
What does it mean, though? How do we do these things? What is justice, and mercy or kindness, and humility? To walk humbly with God. To me, this last requirement seems the place to start – we need to adjust our attitudes first before we set about to act. Humility is something we may describe as a virtue, but our society rarely honors humility as if it was a valuable trait. We learn that we need to be more self-confident to get what we want. We learn that we have to market ourselves if we want to get ahead. We have to be able to name our skills and talents, and be proud of them if we want to get noticed, get promoted, be respected. And of course, there is some truth to these theories, some importance to them. But how do we walk with God, walk humbly with God? I think when it comes to our relationship with our Creator, our lack of humility, our abundance of arrogance, always comes back to our desire to choose our own path without input from God. As individuals, as a denomination, as a nation, we don’t want anyone telling us what to do, even if that anyone is God. We want God to bless us, but not necessarily to guide us, or direct us. But if we want God’s presence to bless us, we have to be humble enough to allow God to teach us and mold us. At General Conference 2000, Bishop Joel Martinez was preaching on humility within our church. He said, “Is there any person from whom we have nothing to learn, no gift to receive?” The answer must be a decided ‘no’. With humility, we have much to learn, much to receive, if we can only become humble before God and one another. The world is watching us. We are watching each other, measuring every move. Let the world see a humble people, a people realizing imperfection, and pain, but ready to work hard to move ahead. Let us show each other humility, humility that says, “I don’t understand you, but as your brother, your sister in Christ, I want to see your perspective, to feel your pain, and to listen to your heart”. Walking humbly might mean admitting that we don’t know the answers anymore than the next person does when it comes to faithful living. Humble living might mean letting someone teach us something about God that we didn’t think had anything to share. It might mean following God instead of following the crowd.
We are called to love kindness, or mercy. What is mercy? Mercy, according to my thesaurus, also means leniency, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, tolerance, charity, benevolence, and generosity. Each synonym has slightly different implications, different suggestions of what mercy is. Compassion we see in Christ’s embrace of people seemingly unlovable. Forgiveness we ask for ourselves, and promise to others each time we pray the Lord’s prayer. Charity expresses Christ’s command for us toward those who are hungry, thirsty, and empty, and also expresses the goal of our missions and ministries as a church. When we think of mercy, do we think of all these things, all of these possible aspects of mercy? Perhaps we should. Our humble walk with God is the attitude we must have toward ourselves if we are to be God’s people. In the same respect, then, mercy is the attitude we hope God adopts toward us. We seek a merciful God. Likewise, it must be the attitude we embrace when we deal with others, both outside and inside the church. We must be merciful when we consider others, interact with others, give love to others, become angry with others, disagree with others. Having adopted humility for ourselves, the only appropriate response toward others is mercy. God shows us mercy through the gift of grace, but grace is God’s to give, and not our gift to give or withhold from others. But mercy – we can share mercy with our neighbors, as we share what we know of this loving and grace-ful God.
Finally, we are to do justice. This, to me, is the action part – we’re not simply to love justice, but to do it, put it to action. How do we do justice? The answer, perhaps hardest to do, is easiest to imagine. Do you know someone, anyone, who is in need? How can you act to meet their needs? How can you act to show them love? How can you try to make things equal, fair, level? This is justice, to bring to those who don’t have what we do have. We practice justice when we donate to the food pantries, but go beyond, to figure out why we have hungry people in a land of plenty. We practice justice when we don’t simply avoid being racist, but when we reach out to those who don’t look like us and build relationships. We practice justice when we move outside of our comfort zone in order to share God’s love. We practice justice when we make decisions and live lives that the rest of the world questions as strange or out of sync with societal values.
What does God require of us? Just three things. To walk humbly, to love kindness, to do justice. I’m reminded of the prayer of Ignatius of Loyola: “Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward, except that of knowing that we do your will.” Let us be prepared. Let us be bold. Let us be humble walkers, lovers of mercy, doers of justice. This is what God requires. We have a lifetime to complete the course. Amen.