1 Truth Telling - Micah 6:1-8 - 29 January 2017 Chapter 6 - New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) 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? 7 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? 8 He 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? We have heard a lot this last few weeks/months about truth telling. It seems like the truth has taken a bit of a beating lately. We have seen people propagating false news just to hook us with some outrageous headline that feeds our particular bias - as we scroll on Facebook or some other news feed. Each click means cash for them that is the bottom line truth that they are interested in. And we ve all seen the media fury over alternate facts as people argue about who has the bigger crowds at the Trump s inauguration. Such is the case when numbers and ratings and popularity are god. Blatant deception and lying, of course, needs to be condemned by all if democracy is to survive. Lying and false witness is one of the 10 Commandments the bed-rocks of our personal and social ethics. But before we get on too high a high horse, it seems to me, we need to step back and think a little bit about truth and lie. Our Scriptures would suggest a degree of humility. 1 John 1:8 puts it this way If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. There is that word truth again. On a personal level for someone to look in the mirror and say:
2 I am an alcoholic. I am not happy in my job/marriage. I am not doing work that is good for me or for society and I need to make a change. To come to such a place of truth telling is not easy. For many it s a long and very painful journey. Sometimes, no... often, it is easier to live a lie than to face the truth. And of course, truth telling in the public sphere is equally fraught. Can t people see it building a pipeline is going to bring good jobs and prosperity to this community and to my kids and grandkids! Or Can t people see that building a pipeline is making only a few short term jobs and is far outweighed by the destruction of the environment that is threatening my children and grandchildren. Two takes on truth from two different perspectives. Which is true? Well both are true in a way. It depends on your perspective. So the first point is that pointing fingers at one another and calling each other liars, is not all that helpful. So how must we be guided as Christians? How do we understand truth? This is where our Scriptures and our tradition are hugely helpful. And one of the richest treasures that we have is the prophetic tradition the great prophets of Israel. The scripture that we heard read today is from one of those prophets, the prophet Micah. Let s take a closer look at biblical prophets in general and Micah in particular. I think it will be a very present help in times of trouble to quote the Psalmist. Perhaps we could begin by what a prophet in the Hebrew tradition is not. The prophet is not a fortune teller of the future. Often we see that cartoon image of the prophet with a sandwich board reading, the end is near. Now while they often issued warnings, it was more in the terms of if you continue in the way you re going, this is where you ll end up... and that is not God s desire.
3 They were often outsiders and not part of the priestly caste and professional prophets that surrounded the King or the ruler. In Micah s time these were the prophets that lived in the capital of Jerusalem and in the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in Samaria. These court or temple prophets were the ones the King would go to talk to when he was deciding to go to war or sign a peace treaty and would ask them What does the Lord say? And they would most likely decide what to say on the basis of what the king want to hear. The true prophets of Israel were not in anybody s pocket. Because they were absolutely clear that there was only one true king and ruler and that was God, who rules the heavens and the earth. All earthly authorities were subject to the rules and laws of God. So, when mighty King David sinned by taking another man s wife, it was the prophet Nathan that confronted him with the law and judgment of God. Think about that. How many other kingdoms at the time would put up with such people. Kings of the nations saw themselves as divine. Not in Israel. God was the ruler. The King ruled only because God gave them that authority. And that authority was to be used for justice in the building up of good and righteous rule. And when this didn t happen, the prophets of Israel spoke up. In Micah 6 the prophet imagines God in a great courtroom where Israel is brought in to face charges of breaking the laws of God. The crimes injustice, idolatry, corruption and the crushing of the weak. Especially injustice the powerful oppressing the poor and weak. The jury are the great hills and mountains of the earth that stand faithful all Creation created and ruled by God. But God is both the prosecutor the one who has brought this case but also the injured one. God speaks not just as a judge or ruler but as a brokenhearted parent. O my people, what have I done onto thee? And God reminds them of all the lovingkindness and faithfulness that God has shown bringing them out of Egypt, giving them leaders, defeating their enemies as they came into the promised land. And what have they done in return? Oppressed and enslaving their fellow citizens. Put up with unfaithful rulers who exploit and oppress. Faced with their sin, what is their official response? Confession? Repentance? No, rather an attempt to buy off God. What can I do? How about thousands of rams as a burnt offerings? What about 10,000 rivers of oil? And if it s really that bad
4 how about my first born for sacrifice? All of it again showing their complete misunderstanding and distortion of God s commandments. Worship can never make up for or erase wrongdoing. Micah, the prophet, speaks for God and reminds the people to: Do justice. Love kindness. And walk humbly with your God. Let s take a closer look at each one. Do justice. At the heart of God is liberation of the oppressed. That is the story that Micah reminded the people. God is the one who freed them from bondage in Egypt. The God who gave them laws and commandments so that they would be a holy people and that they would prosper. At the heart of God s vision for the world is justice for all. Love Mercy. The actual Hebrew word is love hesed - which is most often translated loving kindness. It s primarily used to describe God s love, faithful love for God s people. In is same faithful love that God has for us that we are to have for one another. We are to be our brother s keeper. There is a saying I like by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. He says, freedom for wolves is death for lambs. Truth looks very different depending on where you stand. Freedom which we so worship in our society, without mercy and without a sense of common good just means a free meal for the strong, for wolves. It was just these injustices that Micah saw so clearly in the powerful of his day. And in a world where the top few billionaires own the same amount as half of the poorest people in the world there can be no justice and no lovingkindness that really makes any difference at all. Walk humbly. There is a wonderful sense that we need to walk the walk rather than talk the talk. Martin Luther King Jr. in his letters from a Birmingham Jail talked about the greatest challenges for justice making. Not those Ku Klux Klan people that violently opposed but those said that say it is too radical a thing to walk for justice and disturb the status quo. Comfortable middle-class folks. Stay
5 home and pray and maybe write a letter to someone powerful... but not walk and be noisy for justice. Perhaps the translation humbly does not adequately capture what might I was trying to say. Humbly can mean that we become a doormat and that is never what Micah wanted to say. Perhaps a more accurate translation might be, to walk attentively with God. We talk about it as attentive to the Holy Spirit God s presence on Earth speaking to us still. Humbly like humus (its root) in the soil ready to have a seed of faith or challenge or repentance planted in this soil so it can grow up into the fullness of life that God wants for us. So...back to truth-telling. For the bible it is always grounded in ethics of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God. Not simply in words or even worship. It is walking the talk. That is our grounding truth... and if we don t do that, as we are reminded again, we sin and the truth is not in us. I ran across this video based on a Cherokee story that speaks to me about what we must do to walk the walk... each day... the story of the two wolves. Take a look. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzzqm4yhpns