Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, February 3, 2002, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12; I Corinthians 1:18-29 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people.
–Micah 6:2
With those words, court is in session. The plaintiff is God. The defendant is God's people — not one or two or some or even many of them but all of them, all of us. The jury is made up of the mountains, the foundations of the earth and everything in between — the whole creation. And Micah the prophet is the bailiff: Hear ye, hear ye the complaint of the Lord against the people of God for breach of covenant.
Supposedly we 21st-century Americans are the most litigious society in the history of the world, but even by our standards this is a humdinger of a lawsuit. So what's the beef?
You heard it: we've become tired of God. In what have I wearied you? I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I gave you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Well, that can't be what's soured us on God No, of course not. What's wearing us out, and obviously wearing God out too, is that we've forgotten all about it.
What, for example, did King Balak of Moab devise, and what did Balaam son of Beor answer him? Don't you remember? It's like a pop quiz. And the correct answer, which all of God's people know by heart, is that in the days when Moses and Aaron and Miriam were leading you through those forty years in the wilderness on your way to the Promised Land, you happened to travel through the country called Moab, and Balak the king of Moab objected to having a whole nation of refugees tromping through his territory, so he sent for a holy man by the name of Balaam and asked Balaam to pronounce a curse on you to make you go away. And Balaam was happy to oblige: he saddled his ass and rode out to head you off, but his faithful ass that he was riding on suddenly refused to carry him and lay down on the ground underneath him and told him in so many words that he was a jerk, and Balaam figured that was a sign from God that God actually liked you riff-raff, so he turned around and went home and told the King of Moab to drop dead. Don't you remember, people? You were homeless, despised wanderers and God was with you!
You've also forgotten what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, too, haven't you? How Shittim is the last place you went through before you came to the River Jordan, and Gilgal is the first place you came to after you crossed the river into the Promised Land, and you carried the Ark of the Covenant and yourselves and all your stuff across on dry land while God held the waters back. That's what happened from Shittim to Gilgal!
You've forgotten. You've forgotten where you came from and how you got where you are. You behave as if none of it ever happened. You go through the motions of gratitude and generosity; but you live as if God never did anything for you and never will. You take care of yourselves. You give of yourselves grudgingly, grousing about the outrageous sacrifices that are demanded of you. You don't do justice because you're still waiting for justice to be done to you; you don't love kindness because life has not been kind to you; you toot your own horn because the humble finish last.
What we're up against here is nothing less than two contradictory and mutually exclusive realities competing for our souls. You can see that in all its starkness if you state the teachings of one of them in the terms of the other, as one preacher did when he recast the Beatitudes according to the world's wisdom, thusly: Blessed are the meek, for they shall get to go home early with a pink slip and a pat on the back. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall get done to them what they are loath to do to others. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall get it done to them a second time. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for they shall be called fanatics.
God's version versus the version we have doped out on our own: Which is more real to us? That's what it comes down to. Each of them claims to be the absolute truth. Each of them dismisses the other as absurd and self-defeating. All of us feel caught between them, so what do we do? We come to church, hoping we can resolve it here. And will we? Good question.
While we're working on that, let's be clear about a couple of things.
One: We not going to resolve anything by ourselves. God's controversy is with all of us at once, collectively. As near as I can tell, God's attitude seems to be that we helped each other to wander off into the fantasyland that the world calls reality, and by God we're going to help each other back home. I am God's chosen instrument to save you, and vice versa. So if we want to be saved we're stuck with each other.
Two: This is not a strategic choice we have to make. Micah isn't trying to get us to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God so that God will be nice to us. Jesus isn't telling us to be poor in spirit and meek and mourn the way things are and make peace and be willing to be persecuted for righteousness' sake just so that we can feel happy or at least superior. Paul isn't encouraging us to choose foolishness over worldly wisdom so that we can get some heavenly reward. All three of them are saying that once God's reality is your reality and not just an odd and curious alternative, this is the kind of person you become and this is the way you live. It's not the way things ought to be; it's the way things are. Right here. Right now.
Amen