Micah 6:1-8
Reader one: Micah was a farm boy. He lived in a small village about 20 miles from Jerusalem. That was a day’s journey away – on foot.
Reader two: Which does not mean that Micah was a country bumpkin. He knew what was going on in Jerusalem, and it made him angry. But Micah loved the countryside, and in his book he writes about sheaves brought to the threshing floor and the jackals howling at night. It was the luxurious life-style, the official corruption – that he saw in the cities of Jerusalem and Samaria – that got him fuming.
Reader one: Like today’s editorial writers, like today’s preachers, Micah lashed out at the government and religious leaders – the people of the ruling class who exploited the common folk. They are greedy and hypocritical, he said. They pay the minimum wage without benefits, while their CEO’s pull down astronomical salaries. Here’s what Micah said about the leaders of his day.
Reader two: “Hey! Listen up! Government officials take bribes. If you want something done, you slip them a bit of cash under the table. The preachers in their big mega-churches are no better. They know who gives the big donations to their church – and they preach exactly what those big donors want to hear. And so those born-again politicians stand up and say, ‘Look. God is on my side. Look at me! I’m doing God’s will!’”*
Reader one: But the prophet Micah experienced God as a kind and loving parent who finds it hard to understand why the children – the children that are loved so deeply – why the children seem to walk away.
Reader two: "O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For 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.”
Reader one: And then the prophet Micah speaks the words for which he has been remembered through all these generations – possibly some of the most powerful words in all of the Hebrew scriptures.
Reader two: “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before God 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?
God 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?
Reader one: You mean, that’s all?
Reader two: God has told you 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?
Reader one: Maybe that’s everything.
Reader two: Yes, that’s what the Lord requires of you. To do justice. To love kindness. To walk humbly with your God!
Note: Suggested music: “What Does the Lord Require of You,” by Jim Strathdee, 1986, Desert Flower Music.
*Vs.3:11 – very loosely paraphrased. You may wish to amend this.
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