Author: Steve

Sex is good, even beautiful. Many, many non-Christians and even Christians do not know that this is what the Bible teaches and what we believe. But we heard it clearly in last week’s text, especially Genesis 1:31 and 2:18. For human beings to be male and female, with sexuality as part of our nature, is good. For there to be a single sex, for the Man to be alone, was not good.

When we come to the Song of Solomon, this biblical view of sexuality as something good and beautiful is confirmed beyond a doubt. It’s a wonder that anyone who has read this book of the Bible could ever imagine anything else, but even Christians often regard this Scriptural love poem as an anomaly, something not quite fitting into our theology and perhaps just not quite “fitting.”

We really need to hear the whole book, the whole long poem, but I’m going to focus on Song of Songs 2. For the record, I last preached on the Song of Solomon back in 1989. Back then I, perhaps foolishly, tackled chapter 7 in a sermon on the importance of family love, including romance between husband and wife. But I think the lovely call and yearning of chapter 2 lets us get the idea without worrying about the titters of children and youth (not to mention some adults) in the congregation.

It was supposedly a Jewish maxim that no one under age thirty should study the Song of Songs. That’s perhaps just anxiety arising out of a fear that what is there is “dirty” or somehow inappropriate for younger minds.

The misunderstanding of how Christians view sex is largely because of the ages-long inroads of gnosticism into the church and the surrounding culture’s confusion of the gnostic view with the Christian view. Gnostics were an ancient cult, spun out of Christianity but also drawing on neo-Platonism, which taught that the material world was secondary and inferior to a spiritual world. Thus material bodies, including the human body, are like prisons for the human spirit. The goal of religion is to free one from the sins and limitations brought about by being embodied.

Christian (and Jewish) faith, on the other hand, celebrates the material world–and human bodies–as the good creation of God, something beautiful, not dirty and not opposed to spiritual life. The sexuality which is part of our bodies is included in this goodness and beauty, and the Song of Songs is a witness to this.

All this does not keep us from drawing spiritual analogies from the love imagery of the Song of Songs. A long Christians (and Jewish) tradition has seen this book as an allegory for the relation between God and His people. And of course that is played out in other places in Scripture (in the prophet Hosea and Ephesians 5 and in the last chapters of Revelation). One of the reasons to hold onto our conviction that sex is good and beautiful is to uphold that human end of that allegory. God’s love for us is a beautiful thing and it is signified and glimpsed in the beauty of sex.

Of course, we manage to do disastrous and ugly things with sex all the time. But that is true of all the gifts with which God has blessed us. But the beauty remains and shines through when ever we receive the gift of sex as God meant it to be received and offer it to each other and to Him in the goodness in which it was created.

Happy new year, everyone! It’s good to be back here after a little break surrounding Christmas, visiting family, and no sermon on January 3. I’ll start out with this photo of an album cover from my days in the 1970s in the Westmont College Choir. That’s me over on the far left (my right in the picture). Fortunately the picture quality is such that you cannot see my ridiculous sideburns of the time.

As my wife and various friends can attest, my singing ability is lacking, mostly in terms of staying on tune when singing by myself. But I can do O.K. when singing in a group, especially when surrounded by others who have the same part. I remember some really joyful moments doing a Bach motet or the Vivaldi Gloria with the choir, joining in the beautiful flow of multiple musical lines, managing to stay on our bass part while hearing the other parts weave in and around us. It’s a musical experience that’s just not possible for a single voice alone, even one much more on key than mine might be.

I want to begin a short series of four sermons on a biblical view of human sexuality with the thesis that God’s creation of human beings has a beauty something like polyphonic choral music. The text is the creation of human beings in Genesis 1 and 2, specifically Genesis 1:26-28, 31, and 2:18-24. When Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” we are learning that God has bestowed on us a gift, the divine image, which was designed from the beginning to be shared by among and through human difference, the first of which is the difference between male and female.

Genesis 1:26 has God saying, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” Ancient Christian interpreters read this as an obvious reference to the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit speaking among themselves, in the plural. Some modern Old Testament scholars believe that interpretation is misguided, but enough will allow it that I’m not embarrassed to bow to ancient wisdom and see yet another way in which the revelation of Christ shows us things in the Old Testament which could not be recognized or understood otherwise.

In any case, this Genesis 1 conjunction of that plural suggestion of the Trinity and the creation of human beings in the divine image invites us to see that image at least partially consisting in the differences among human beings. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three different divine persons yet one God, distinct and yet in unity. Human life was created to be like that, to reflect that divine harmony across differences, with the differences themselves a source of beauty and joy. And the first difference mentioned, in apposition to the creation in God’s image in verse 27, is that of male and female.

Our sexuality is a gift that is meant to be shared across the differences between the sexes. As the old trinitarian formula goes, “the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.” Yet all are God. Male is not female, yet both are human and together reflect and image the divine unity.

I (and I would guess it’s true of many others) sing much better in a group. My voice is really meant to be shared in a choir, not heard alone. Likewise, our individual sexuality is a gift from God meant to shared first in the human family, a harmony of the inherent differences which brings forth love and joy. Beyond the family and direct sexual activity, the differences between men and women constantly refresh and bless human community and allow us again to embody and reflect the divine community of harmony in diversity.

When the creation of humanity is told the second time in Genesis 2, God says in verse 18, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The individual human being, of either sex, is created to live in community which truly reflects the image of the triune God. That community often begins in family, but does not end there. Ultimately the aim is the community of the people of God, a whole redeemed body sharing the gift of human difference, whether gender, race, age, etc. So the single person too joins in the gift of God’s image by joining with others to live together in harmony.

The starting point, then, for a biblical understanding of human sexuality, is to accept that built-in human difference as a gift meant to be shared, and in being shared to point us back toward God and the eternal sharing of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Was the Virgin Mary a narcissist? It might sound like it in verse 48 of the song she sings in our text for this Sunday, Luke 1:39-56, “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” On the lips of a pop singer or a star athlete, such words might well sound like narcissism or egoism, an unhealthy overestimation of one’s own importance in the great scheme of things. But to see such self-aggrandizement here in the mother of Jesus would be to misunderstand both the character of Mary and the true meaning of the word “blessed.”

Putting Mary’s self-appraisal in context, we see immediately, from both the angel’s greeting to her in last week’s text (Luke 1:30) and Elizabeth’s proclamation about her in verses 42 and 45, that Mary’s self-understanding that she is a blessed woman was previously affirmed of her by others before she ever claimed it of herself. Mary is only humbly accepting a role assigned to her first and foremost by God.

Moreover, “blessing” here is an undeserved favor which goes beyond any merit Mary may have of her own accord. Even in Catholic doctrine which attributes moral perfection to Mary, her sinlessness is the consequence of God’s blessing, not the reason for it. To be blessed is not to be superior in any way, but to have received a gift unearned.

That same theme of mysterious, undeserved, unexpected blessing carries over into the rest of Mary’s song in the beautiful but tumultuous reversals of verses 51 to 53. The proud, the powerful and the rich–the seemingly blessed of the world–are all brought low, but the lowly, poor and hungry are raised up and truly blessed by the coming of the Savior whom Mary bears within herself.

Advent was originally conceived as a “little Lent,” a time when those to be baptized on Epiphany were taught the faith and amended their lives. It was a sober time of introspection and correction. Advent remains a good time for you and I to consider our concept of God’s blessing and to look for how it is being mysteriously given where we might not expect, to the poor, to refugees, to powerless people in the present world’s order. And may we seek such blessing ourselves by coming alongside those whom God wants most to bless and humbling ourselves to receive blessing rather than to earn or take it.

Beth and I always stay for credits and a possible “Easter egg” following a movie at the theater. The one I enjoyed most came at the end of, I believe, a Spiderman film several years ago. I probably have details wrong, but as I remember it a military and scientific team has surrounded a discovery in the desert or some wilderness place. We see all the security and force guarding some secret. Then the camera zooms in and at the center of it all is a huge, ancient hammer. Then it fades out.

I looked at Beth, but she was totally baffled by the mystery. What was the hammer about? She hadn’t read the right comic books, so the teaser in that trailer was totally lost on her. I laughed and said, “Thor! They’re doing a Thor movie.” That subtle announcement was totally lost on her.

Our text from Luke 1:26-38 tells us that Jesus’ birth was preceded by a mysterious announcement that baffled even His mother. The angel messenger carried mysterious news. First, there was the simple fact that he was appearing to a young girl of humble circumstances saying that she was “favored.” Verse29 says that Mary was “much perplexed.” What could the angel of the Lord possibly want of someone from her background and class? Why would she be favored?

The angel’s announcement and explanation only deepen the mystery. Mary is going to have a son. She will name Him Jesus and He “will be great,” says verse 32, “will be called the Son of the Most High,” in other words, “the Son of God.” To this unknown woman in a tiny country on the edge of the Roman empire, God is announcing the greatest mystery the world will ever see.

Mary’s perplexity extends even to the practical question of how such a thing might occur, since she is a virgin. And the answer to that question simply makes it all even more mysterious, the Holy Spirit, the power of God will “overshadow” her, says the angel in verse 35. No human male will be involved in this baby’s conception.

Thus we enter into the great mystery at the center of Christian faith, the Incarnation of the Son of God. May our response echo Mary’s own response to the mystery and her perplexity. Let us learn to say in all the perplexities we face, “let it be with me according to your word.”

 

I just learned about the “royal prerogative of mercy,” while following up on what is probably an apocryphal preacher’s story about Queen Elizabeth (the first) granting mercy to her would-be assassin. Even in present-day English monarchy and the members of the British commonwealth, there is a right reserved for the person on the throne or some designated official in commonwealth countries to grant a pardon solely on the basis of mercy. It’s somewhat like a presidential pardon in our country.

The apocryphal story has Elizabeth wanting to attach some conditions to the pardon. When the prisoner pointed out that mercy by definition has no conditions, she granted him an unconditional pardon and he became a loyal subject. The implication is that such mercy is much like God’s.

In our text for this week, Luke 1:57-80, mercy has a starring role. First, in verse 58, Elizabeth’s relatives remark that God’s gift to her of a son in her old age is “his great mercy.” Then, near the end of Zechariah’s song of praise in verse 78, he declares, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us.”

That legend about Queen Elizabeth had mercy transforming a traitor into a devoted servant. In seeing Elizabeth and Zechariah’s experience of God’s mercy in giving them a child transformed into deep and beautiful praise, we see that God’s merciful forgiveness of our sins (verse 77) transforms us into His devoted servants and worshipers.

And God’s mercy truly received transforms us in another way. We cannot truly and fully worship God for His mercy without learning to be merciful ourselves. So let our seeking of full worship this Advent guide us into greater willingness to offer mercy to those around us.

We come this Sunday to the end of the church year and to the end of our series of sermons from the prophet Micah. It’s “Christ the King” on the church calendar and the closing verses of Micah, 7:11-20, fittingly display the shepherd-like rule of the King caring for His people, restoring their nation and forgiving their sins.

On a side note, these verses are more evidence against any sort of dispensationalist replacement eschatology which has God completely annihilating the present world at the end of time. Instead, what Micah pictures in the short run for the people’s return to Jerusalem is also the long-term Christian hope, that both ourselves and the world we live in will be restored, renewed, cleansed and perfected in the kingdom of God.

So as we speak of a restored vehicle or home as “just like new,” God will restore the lives of His people and the land and city in which they live, making all “just like new.”

In the Gospel for today, John 18:33-37, Jesus says that His kingdom is “not of this world.” A better translation is “not from here.” The point is not that the kingdom of our Lord is and belongs somewhere else, but that its source, its authority, its peace and beauty come from beyond this world. Jesus says that’s why He came into our world, to testify to the truth of that kingdom, the reign of God over the world and everyone in it.

As Micah displays so wonderfully in our text, God’s intent is to draw us and our world into the beautiful peace which God enjoys within Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That peace includes things as mundane as the rebuilding of walls, as harsh as the shaming of enemies, and as comforting as the forgiveness of all our sins. By the same eternal love which unites the Trinity, God will eliminate our divisions, heal our brokenness, and unite us in Himself.

The last verse of the text, verse 20, is taken up and paraphrased in the last verse of the Magnificat, Mary’s song, in Luke 1:55. It tells us we can count on this promise of restoration, that it’s an ancient promise which God made good first to Abraham and his descendants, continued to make good through the Son of Mary, and will make good to all the spiritual children of Abraham. We confidently hope for that day when everything will be made just like new.

Sorry, I can’t help the fact that I enjoy both science fiction and Arnold Schwarzenegger films. So when I read our text Micah 7:1-10 again today, verse 5 jumped out at me and called to mind the older and better Schwarzenegger 1990 version of “Total Recall.” Micah says, “Put no trust in  a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace.”

In “Total Recall,” of course, Arnold’s character Douglas Quaid discovers that his memories have been altered and that the person he thought was his loving wife Lori is part of a conspiracy to keep him from remembering his role in a revolution on Mars. Lori and Quaid end up in a battle to the death as trust evaporates and the deception is revealed.

The beginning of Micah 7 is a depiction of the final outcome of a society like the one described in our text last week, the last half of Micah 6. In Micah 6:10-12, God voices His great displeasure with greed and the cheating and dishonesty it engenders. Here in Micah 7:2-6 we see the outcome of such practices in the evaporation of human trust, even between the closest and most intimate of friends and family members.

As a pastor I can testify to how terribly often I’ve heard the story of how greed dissolved trust in a family when aged parents became incompetent or passed away. It happened in my wife’s family. Love of money and selfishness has many and varied consequences, but the way it breeds suspicion and distrust is one of the worst.

Micah also points in verses 3 and 4, very relevantly for us, to the failure of trust in public officials in a society motivated by greed and profit. Officials and judges take bribes, the powerful get what they want and justice is perverted. And “the best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge.” In other words, you don’t want to get very close to people, especially those in positions of power, whose driving aim is to accumulate wealth.

Unlike last week’s text, which was unrelenting bad news, we come to some grace at the end of the passage. Verse 7 is a deep expression of trust in God, which in its context echoes the closing verses of the prophet Habakkuk.

In verses 8 to 10 we are reminded that trust in God (and perhaps in each other) is not just an individual matter. We hear Jerusalem (Zion) speak with confidence in God that her enemies will be defeated. She acknowledges her sins against God in verse 9, but trusts that her punishment will be temporary and that God will save her.

Again, the city is speaking as one voice, all the people together as one person here at the end of the text. That’s the context for salvation, for deliverance from our enemies. God brings into His community of grace, a community where we actually can learn to trust each other and trust Him.

It’s a familiar and old game. Put less in the package and charge the same price. It’s been happening with cold cereal and coffee for a long time. It’s been ages since that “pound sized” can of coffee actually weighed a pound. This picture from a 2014 Boston Globe article displays a table full of pairs of food packages, all of which display an old larger version against a new smaller version which nonetheless looks very much the same.

It’s a very old game. In Micah 6:9-16 we hear God through the prophet condemning the wickedness of Israel in the form of dishonest, deceptive weights and measures. In a time with no standardization of such things the problem was even more acute. Verses 10 and 11 spell out at least a couple different ways folks were deceived. One was through a “scant measure.” If a basket is used to measure grain or flour, its flexible sides can be squeezed inward to make the measure smaller. Another way was through a set of varying weights for one’s scales, maybe one set for buying and another for selling.

Micah’s culprits once again are “the wealthy” in verse 12, and their dishonesty in buying and selling is termed “violence.” They are doing violent harm to the people they exploit through deceptive measures. People are actually going hungry because they do not get full measure for the prices they pay for food.

God’s response in verses 13 to 15 is some poetic justice. Those guilty of this deceptive harm to the poor will themselves eat but still feel hunger, try to save only to have their savings evaporate in time of war, and plant crops without reaping any benefit from them.

We may be tempted to skip over passages like this because we don’t find much of a “spiritual” message in them, little to uplift or point us toward the love and grace of God. But just a little pause and reflection reveals that it just is God’s grace and love which makes Him care so much about such things, care so much about just trade and honest dealing, whatever our business may be.

Once again, the Scriptures drive us into the realm of the political, suggesting that matters like trade agreements and regulation of business are not spiritually neutral. God’s call for justice in Micah 6:8, our text for last week, shows us that we cannot approach these matters from a purely pragmatic standpoint, without reflecting on how our laws and treaties affect people everywhere. And this week’s text drives that home, in case we missed the point, specifically apply God’s requirement of justice to business practice.

There’s little comfort or even hope in these verses by themselves. That’s reserved for the next and last chapter in Micah. But it’s enough for this week to remember that God is looking out for those who suffer injustice, which is comfort if we are the sufferers and fair warning if we are the perpetrators.

I had a vague memory of this cartoon before I searched and found it again. I can’t remember when I saw it first, but it speaks volumes to the spirit of students and Christian disciples. Our Gospel reading from last Sunday, Mark 10 about the rich young man, had him expressing the same sort of desire to access (and be responsible for) the the bare minimum required for spiritual success, for eternal life.

What we find in this coming Sunday’s text, Micah 6:1-8, is our Lord graciously willing to answer that sort of minimal requirement question, just as Jesus was willing to answer it when asked about which is the greatest commandment. And the answer is the same, what God requires, the bare minimum expected of human beings, is to love God and love our neighbors. Micah’s words in verse 8 are, “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Notice though, that the question about “what’s going to be on the final,” gets posed in the hope and expectation that the answer will be something rather straightforward and doable, even if it’s difficult. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment or what is necessary for eternal life, the subtext of the question is the same as is stated explicitly in verses 6 and 7 of Micah 6. Micah lists possible strategies for pleasing God, from simple offerings commanded by the Law to extremes of “thousands of rams” or “ten thousand rivers of oil.” The final extreme is the sacrifice of a first-born child.

What’s hoped in Micah’s extreme examples is that there is a simple, doable transaction which can be deliberately and completely carried out, “the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul.” Just tell us what we have to know and we will learn it. Just tell us what we have to do and we will do it. The answer to such questions is both easier and simpler and more difficult and complex. What God wants is for everyone of us to enter into a relationship of love with Him and with each other. And relationships take more than payment to be healthy, no matter how great the payment is.

We all know this. Simply giving things to or doing things for your spouse is not enough if you don’t really care how he or she feels, don’t really want to spend time together, don’t really enjoy being united in your marriage. Micah reminds us that it’s the same way with God. There’s no formula of prayer, Bible reading, tithing and church attendance which is going to produce a loving relationship with God, no matter how extreme your devotion. It’s not that those spiritual disciplines are unimportant, it’s that only the harder, longer road of being together with Him and with others and learning to really care about what God cares about will meet the requirement.

I’ve never watched the “reality” food show “Chopped,” but I understand that it’s a cooking competition where four chefs compete across three rounds (appetizer, entree, dessert) with the aim of not being the one “chopped” for that round. The title of the show is of course a play on an integral part of the art of cooking, chopping ingredients, but getting chopped is not good for the contestants themselves, whether literally (because the chefs are working so quickly accidents are common) or figuratively.

Micah 6:7-15 makes great use of the Hebrew word for “cut off” or “chop,” ending with it in verse 9 in regard to Israel’s enemies, then speaking four times in verses 10 to 13 of God cutting off from people various aspects of their power and culture. Their horses, cities, sorceries and idols will all be cut off and destroyed. These are all aspects of human life on which people tend to rely rather than on God. So the Lord is going to chop from His kitchen every person and ingredient which does not belong.

The violence of the metaphor is increased in that it follows verse 8 in which the remnant of Israel is promised a transformation from being like sheep to being themselves like a raging lion among sheep, ripping and devouring their foes.

One important thing to note, however, is that both the transformation of God’s people from weakness to power and the cutting off of that which distracts us from Him is God’s work. God is the chopper, not us. Even when His people become a devouring lion, that’s God’s decision and action, not a human choice.

It might be better for us to focus on the last few verses and wonder what God might want to chop from our lives and hearts. Where and how have we foolishly relied on substitutes for God rather than on Him? Certainly military might and social power continue as temptations. We might think ourselves exempt from reliance on sorcery and fortune-telling, but how does our dependence on technology and statistics compare? And of course as idols appear again in Micah’s focus we must acknowledge that idolatry is still very possible for us.

Let us, like the rich young man in this week’s Gospel reading from Mark 10:17-31, discern what needs to get chopped in order that we might last to the end of the show and inherit our Lord’s kingdom.

I grew up in one of the nicest suburbs of Los Angeles, eleven blocks from the beach in the home where I lived the longest before college. So I have no very extensive experience of small town life. But I did enjoy regular extended summer (and one winter) stays with my grandmother in a town of what was then less than 2,000 in population in Arizona. We would walk to the post office and the corner drug store where I’d browse the comic books and to the 5 and dime store where penny licorice was for sale and which doubled as the Greyhound bus depot.

Cottonwood, Arizona is now a town of about 12,000 with a Walmart, McDonalds, and several strip malls and a larger population outside the city limits. But in the 1960s our family once decided I needed a necktie for a church event and could not find one for sale anywhere in town. Most of the local men wore bolo cowboy ties if any at all. It wasn’t a place in which you expected to find folks dressed for success or wielding national influence.

The second most well-known passage of Micah, chapter 5 verses 1 to 6 (or at least verses 2-4) tells us that the Messiah was expected to come from a small town. I imagine Him coming from a place like Cottonwood, from among men who mined or repaired machinery and found no need to wear neckties and women who baked pies and hung laundry out to dry. Bethlehem was a humble origin for David, king of Israel and it would be the humble birthplace of the Messiah descended from David.

In Advent and Christmas season we read this text and mostly focus on verses 2 and 4, and the first phrase of verse 5. Most commentators say that verse 3 should be understood as a reference to Israel as the woman in labor (see the similar thoughts in Micah 4:10), but I think that fails to appreciate the way this text was understood prophetically in the New Testament. So I think it’s perfectly all right to see here a prediction of the virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus.

The difficult verses of the text are the first, fifth and sixth. We can solve the first by assigning it to the preceding bit in chapter 4 and seeing it as a prophecy of the humiliation of Judah’s last kings at the hands of Babylon. It’s not so easy to see what to make of verses 5 and 6. They certainly don’t refer to any historical personages or events of successful action against the Assyrians. Most commentators take them as a reference to the messianic deliverance from all Israel’s enemies, with Assyria (literally Asshur) standing in here as a collective name for all her foes.

What I would like to see in verses 5 and 6 takes us back to the small town theme around Bethlehem. The Messiah’s deliverance and peace for His people is something executed through “seven shepherds and eight installed as rulers.” In other words, leaders are raised up out of the community and become themselves agents of defense and deliverance. That suggests the general importance of the communities of God’s people in His work. God works through “small towns” of people and that is where the action of the Messiah, Christ our Lord takes place. Jesus was born in a small town, in a humble community. We ought to keep on looking for Him in such communities.

I remember pretty well the few times I’ve had to get around with a limp, even on crutches. Not long after Beth and I met I sprained my ankle pretty bad and had to get around the Notre Dame campus on crutches in the snow. Twenty years ago I broke my foot playing racquetball and had to limp around in stiff sandal while it healed. Then just about three years ago I tore a ligament in my foot, once again while playing racquetball. I clumped around in an orthopedic boot for a couple months and limped a bit for several more.

I’ve since given up racquetball and I still really have no conception of the pain and struggle of being permanently mobility impaired. Yet my tiny experiences of lameness tell me it would be a truly challenging way to live. That’s why there is an incredible note of hope at the beginning of the promise of Micah 4:6-13. The “lame” are the remnant whom God will assemble to restore Israel, to make them a “strong nation” again after the defeat and humiliation of the exile.

It’s a constant biblical theme. God starts where we do not expect, with people we would not expect to be at the center of His kingdom work. From that unexpected place of weakness and insignificance He builds a people who give Him true glory and praise. That’s what Mary the mother of Jesus sang while still carrying our Savior within her, understanding it to apply not just to her own lowly position, but to all God’s people.

There’s a fascinating connection of our text from Micah with this week’s lectionary assigned Gospel lesson from Mark 9:38-50. In verse 45 Jesus adds to admonition of the Sermon on the Mount to remove an offending eye or hand a command to cut off a foot that causes you to stumble, because “it is better to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.”

It might be worth spending some thought on how you and I might want to become “lame” in order to receive the gift of life from Christ our Savior. What limitations or disabilities might it not be good to accept if they draw us away from sin and the road to hell, and closer to Jesus’ path of righteousness and life?

My daughter who lives now in Toronto in Ontario, Canada misses the mountains. Though she was born in the flatland of Nebraska, she lived from age 5 through college here in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded on the west by the Coast Range to the north by the Coburg Hills and to the east by the Cascades. Even while a Nebraska toddler she was driven to mountains all over the west and was taught to hike up them and appreciate their beauty. Now after six years in Toronto she still moans over Skype to me, “Daddy, it’s all so flat!”

Not everyone shares that desire to see and ascend the geographical heights. My wife would much rather take a trip to the coast than to the mountains. But Scripture talks about one mountain to which everyone will want to go, the “mountain of the Lord’s house,” in the first verse of Micah 4:1-5. The prophet is envisioning the day when the destruction of Jerusalem predicted at the end of the previous chapter will be repaired and the temple height will be the desire and destination not only of Israel but of all people. They will all be saying as in verse 2, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.”

The rest of verse 2 reveals that the point of going up God’s mountain is to be instructed by God’s Word. That Word manifests hugely in verse 3 by exercising perfect judgment between peoples and nations so that war is done away with. This verse contains the most well-known words in Micah (also appearing in Isaiah 2:2-4) which are also some of the most well-known phrases in the Bible as a whole, the promise that swords will be beaten into plowshares and that war will be learned no longer.

Like the way the sight of a high mountain captures the attention and imagination of those who see it, Micah’s (and Isaiah’s) vision of peace has captured the imagination of people longing for relief from war down through the ages. It spoke to ancient Israel beset by enemies and it spoke to African-American slaves in the 19th century. The spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” has the chorus, “Ain’t gonna study war no more, no more.” It still speaks to us as we consider all the wars in which our nation has been involved and still is involved. We long to climb a mountain and learn peace.

Micah adds to the negative image of the cessation of war shared with Isaiah a positive image of a life of peace in verse 4, “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” The reign of God’s peace implies a place to live for every person, a place where they find both what they need (the provision of the vines and fruit trees) and safety from enemies. It’s another way of picturing God’s provision for His flock.

Verse 5 is a source of debate for scholars, regarding its fit into the flow of Micah’s message. One school sees Micah 4 and 5 as a long dialogue between Micah and his opponents. So verse 5 is read as opposition to the “universalism” of verse 2 which has all nations coming to learn the ways of the Lord. Verse 5 then is the narrow, “nativist” reply of those would see only Judah enjoying the Lord’s instruction and blessing.

Better, I think, is to read verse 5 as a recognition that verses 1-4 are about an incomplete promise from God. That peace and welcome and inclusion of all people has begun in Christ, but is still frustrated by the fact that the peoples of the earth stubbornly cling to and walk in the ways of other gods, whether those are false spiritual entities or the idols of money and power. Read that way, verse 5 is a commitment to walk in that way of peace which God teaches and which God will bring to completion, no matter what others are doing at present.

We were supposed to walk about 6 miles that day. We walked at least twice that, because our leader did not know what he was doing. I was on Boy Scout trip sponsored by our area council, not with our own troop and usual leaders. A Boy Scout executive had arranged a bus ride for us to the Grand Canyon, where we were to hike down the Hermit Trail, spend a night, hike along the Tonto Trail in the Canyon to Indian Gardens for another night, then up the well-used Bright Angel Trail.

The problem was that executive’s lack of understanding of topographic maps. He simply laid a ruler along the course of the Tonto Trail to measure its distance. What he failed to account for is all the twists and turns and long trips up and back down side canyons needed to traverse any section of the Grand Canyon’s length. So what was supposed to be a morning hike to our second camp became an all-day slog with heavy packs loaded with all the water we needed. It could have been a dangerous situation, but fortunately some of the older boys from my own troop had more sense and backcountry experience than our leader did.

I will confess that many of us Scouts did not have very nice things to say about that leader by the end of the trip. Micah has even worse things to say in chapter 3 of his prophecy about those who mislead God’s people. Their failure is not just lack of knowledge and experience. It’s willful falsehood and exploitation of the people.

It’s hard to know how to forge any redemptive message out of this text, which begins in verses 2 and 3 by picturing the leaders of Israel as butchering cannibals boiling up a stew of human flesh and ends in verse 12 by decreeing the destruction of Jerusalem.

Those leaders are chastised for their concern for self-interest, while those they lead and teach suffer in poverty. One immediately thinks of politicians who look out for the special interests which fund their campaigns, but who only give lip service to any concern for the common good.

Part of the challenge of the text is that it is not only political rulers, the king and nobles, who are addressed, but religious leaders, the prophets and priests. They too are concerned only to make money on the prophecies and teaching they offer (verse 11), while those charged with justice are corrupted by bribes.

There is some redemption in this text in the very fact that through the voice of Micah God notices! Injustice and corruption will not go unpunished. Leaders who exact a price from the people will in the end pay the price themselves. God cares about what is happening in this world.

That in fact has been the great comfort and true peace of oppressed peoples in many times and places, whether African American slaves in this country or the poor refugees fleeing Syria and Iraq today. God knows and cares about their plight and will set the balances right and bring the powerful oppressors to justice. Perhaps one question for us is whether we will be on the right side of that balance when it happens. For that we need to turn our hearts and minds over to the one great and true leader our world has seen, the great Shepherd toward whom Micah pointed at the end of chapter 2.

“Don’t preach to me” (or “at me,” or as a T-shirt evidently says, “on me”) is a widespread and common injunction. Children say it to parents (as in a Madonna song that uses the phrase) and irreligious people say it in general to the religious people around them (as on the T-shirt). It can be an expression to decline any spiritual instruction or persuasion, but it’s also often used to decline any moral censure or even instruction.

Our text for this coming Sunday, Micah 2:1-11, shows that the desire not to be preached to has been around a long time. In verse 6, those who hear Micah’s prophecy against coveting and stealing land from others, especially from the poor, respond by saying they don’t wish to hear such messages of judgment, “one should not preach of such things…”

One current form of this ancient imperative has a venerable history among American Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. Then Cardinal Bernadin spoke at my Ph.D. commencement at Notre Dame, talking about, among other things, some of the economic injustices in the world. When my father-in-law heard it, he said that the Cardinal should stick to his own business in the Church and leave economics and such matters to others.

Many American Christians would agree that the only concern of preachers should be private, individual morality. Public morality should not be addressed from the pulpit. It’s often expressed as a principle that preachers should not talk about political matters. Such a restriction is supported by the view that religious tax exemption excludes churches and preachers from the political arena.

Without trying to resolve the thorny issues around tax exemption, separation of church and state, etc. I will simply note that neither Micah nor the rest of the biblical prophets accepted that “do not preach of such things” principle. They felt led by God to challenge injustice even at the government level and to call the rich and powerful to repentance.

As we read this text we may feel convicted of our own covetousness and thirst for acquisition, even if we do not perceive any direct injustice to others in wanting and obtaining more money and property. Let’s not respond like Judah did to Micah, “Do not preach…,” but instead be willing to hear and apply the word of God to the changing of our minds and lives.