“Learning to Walk Properly”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Text: Micah 6:1-8
I was in the breakfast cereal section of the grocery store not long ago, standing in front of the great array of possibilities that were there. I was standing right in front of the high fibre, low fat, low taste section. A little voice in my head was saying, “A good man would buy those cereals.” To the right of me were Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops, I looked adoringly upon them and another voice said, “Do not eat these, Stirling. They will kill you.”
As I was in the dilemma - tasteless or sugar-full, healthy or detrimental - I was saved when around the corner came a woman I hadn't seen for a number of months with a cart. She was pleased to see me again. She noted that I had moved from the community and was living elsewhere. But, she was very quick to explain to me what had happened to her life in the interim.
It was a tale of woe that would have made Job quiver! She had so many conflicts, so many problems, and so many challenges! I stood there and I listened because she clearly needed a compassionate ear. At the end of it all, having recounted this list, she simply said, “What do you do when it all goes wrong?” I don't know how many times in my life I have heard that question posed, often with a supplemental, “What does God do when it all goes wrong?” Clearly, she wanted some guidance, some word from me. Alas, I feel my comments were banal. But, I had listened.
A few days later, as I was walking through the Board Room of our church, above the fireplace I saw an inscription. It is one that I talked to Dr. Hunnisett about in light of Senator Keith Davies service, because he had pointed out at one point how meaningful the inscription was, but I had forgotten. The inscription was from the words of Micah. It outlines the answer to the question: “What do we do when it all goes wrong?”
“What does the Lord require of you” wrote Micah, “but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
These words of The Old Testament have probably been repeated as much as any phrase or section therein. It has been quoted for centuries as one of the great statements of faith or the greatest statement of faith of all time in The Old Testament. What does the Lord require of you but “To do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” I thought, “If only I had those words on the tip of my tongue when I was encountered by that woman!” Alas, I did not! There is something both timeless and timely about the words of Micah. That is something so profound and deep, that even in its simplicity, it reaches the heart and the soul, unlike most other religious quotes.
Why? Well, it was written at a time of immense social upheaval for the southern kingdom of Judah. It was written in early 700 BC, at a time when the nation was in chaos. The audience for whom he was writing was probably greedy landowners. These greedy landowners were supported by corrupt, religious and political leaders. In effect, the way that this was demonstrated, the way that this was lived out, was a who's who of those who were practicing inequity and injustice. They practiced covetousness. People's lands were stolen. There was fraud. There was murder. There was usury. The poor were sent packing and treated unjustly. It was a blow-by-blow description of injustice, of immorality, and a time when the nation was in turmoil.
Just like his contemporary, Isaiah, Micah wanted the Word of God to go forth in that world and in that condition. He was worried about Judah. He knew that if Judah continued to walk along this path, it would face more destruction. So, Micah says these words: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
These words arise in a very fascinating literary move by Micah. He crafts all of this as if it were a court room scene, taking place out in the nature, before the great mountains of Israel and Judah, as a land that had some marvellous mountains that arose up from the lakes and the seas. Micah was thinking of God when he looked at these mountains.
The answer that so many people gave to the problems that beset the nation was as follows: First of all, they should blame God for their problems. Blame God! Micah comes to God's defence. He simply says, “Look, what have I done wrong?” as if God is speaking. “What have I done wrong? I mean, I have brought you out of the land of Egypt. I brought you from Shittim, which was the place where you were in a mess, when there was immorality, where there was injustice, to Gilgal, that great place where you were about to embark upon the conquest of Jericho. I was with Moses. I was with Aaron. I was with Miriam.” He accounts for all these great moments in Israel's history. It is as if God is giving a defence of himself. In other words, “Why are you acting like this? Why are you so unjust? After all that I have given you!” So, God is not to blame, according to Micah.
Then, some people came up with the idea, “Well, maybe we have just not been religious enough? Maybe we haven't given enough sacrifices. How about we kill a thousand more lambs and give them to God? How about we give ten thousand rivers of oil to God? How about we sacrifice our first-born child and give it to God? Then we will please God. Then there will be righteousness. Then we atone for all that has happened and is wrong in the land, and we can continue with our injustices.” Micah says, “No! No! God is not the author of your demise. God is gracious. All your religious observances and all your sacrifices mean nothing! What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Now I would suggest to you my friends that the first two of the three great things that are needed here are dependent on the third. I know that is not either explicit or implicit in the text from Micah, but I think it is true that we do justly, and we love mercy, because we are walking humbly with God. If we walk humbly with God, then we do justly and we love mercy.
All of this raises the question, “What does it look like to walk humbly?” Richard Foster, in a brilliant book that I commend to you all, Seeking the Kingdom, made the following observance about walking humbly. He writes:
Humility is illusive. It cannot be obtained by seeking it. The more we pursue it, the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't. But there is a way for humility to come into the habit patterns of our lives. Holy obedience opens the door. It is a central means of God's grace to work humility into us. It is not hard to see how this can be, for when the whole of our vision is filled with the holy, petty selfishness is squeezed out. Perpetual consciousness of necessity eliminates self-consciousness if it is God-consciousness.
Foster is suggesting that to walk humbly with our God means that it has to be habitual. You see the problem with Israel and the problem with Judah as well, was that both were as corrupt as each other at the time, and they played the religious game. They wanted religion to atone or appease their injustices and immorality. They didn't walk with God in a humble way as a routine, as a habit, but rather they decided to pick and choose when they were going to follow God and when they were going to walk humbly with him.
I must say that when I decided to preach on this text, which by the way is from the Lectionary, I did so months and months before I had my operation for my hip replacement. I have had some people ask if the title of my sermon, Learning to Walk Properly, was going to be a blow-by-blow description of my physiotherapy over the last two months. One person even said to me in a coffee shop, “If that is the case, Andrew, I'd frankly rather just not be there.” It is not about that at all! But, I have learned something.
One of the things I have learned from my physiotherapist is how to use the treadmill properly. Why is this important? It is because when I go on a treadmill I build up a rhythm, and that is a gentle rhythm of walking, not particularly strenuous, not particularly strong, just a rhythm of walking. It is as if my muscles have memory of that walking. Walking becomes a habit, as opposed to consciously having to think about every step. I build up a rhythm so I walk properly as a result of the constant repetition. It is the same with exercises. Your muscles learn from repetitive activity. I think our faith and our walk with God is exactly the same. I think we walk humbly with God when it is a repetitive exercise, when it is a daily adventure, when it is a part, an integral part of our whole existence. I think we walk humbly when we make it a habit, and we make holiness a pursuit.
There is something more. To walk humbly means to know one's relative position to God. The problem with the greedy landowners and the corrupt religious and political figures around in Micah's day is that they thought they were more important than God. The pursuit of money and wealth and power and pleasure superseded any acknowledgement of God's righteousness or God's grace. In other words, they had subjugated God and elevated themselves. Micah wants to reverse this, and to elevate God and have the people walk humbly.
I love a comment by the great black scientist who is at Tuskegee University, George Washington Carver. He made an immense amount of money and he was very successful for what he did with peanuts. He made a deal with God when he was younger. He said to god, “God, teach me the mysteries of the universe.”
God said, “I can't do that. That knowledge is for me and me alone.”
So, he then asked the following: “Well, in that case, teach me the mysteries of the peanut.”
God said, “I can do that. That is more your size.” And he taught him the secret of the peanut.
You see, George Washington Carver wanted God to elevate him by giving him all the mystery. But, God wouldn't. God gave him the mystery that was needed in order that he would serve him.
To walk humbly is to know our place, but it is more than to know our place. It is also to know and to recognize that God has been merciful to us. There is a wonderful line in 1 Corinthians 4:7, a text from which I preached last year, and it simply says: “What do you have that you did not receive?” The greedy landowners, the corrupt, the unjust, the immoral grabbed what they thought was theirs no matter who they hurt. They held on to it at all costs.
But, God reminded them, “Look, it is out of Egypt that I brought you. It is from Shittim to Gilgal that I took you. It was with Moses and Aaron and Miriam that I was with you. You wouldn't have a land at all. There would be no Judah. There would be no Israel if it were not for me. You better walk humbly with a God who has given you everything.” They heard this, and they were shattered.
To walk humbly with God is to walk habitually and to know your relative place. It is to know the mercies that you have been given. The woman that I had been speaking to in the cereal section had forgotten anything good that she had been given in her life. Her perspective was so clouded by the things that she didn't have and the things that she was losing that she had lost sight of God's mercy in her life, and she needed to reclaim it. I hope I can talk to her again.
If you are going to walk humbly with God, then you also better do so justly, and you had better love mercy. It is not just about us and our relationship with God. It is also about the relationship we have with one another. And this, Micah knew was the transformation that needed to take place. I think during my time of recovery and rehabilitation there was one moment that will stand out above them all. Just a few days after the surgery and I had just started to walk, I was using a walker and I went down the hallway in the hospital just before I was to be released, and I actually stood upright.
That might be strange to be a source of exaltation, but it is the first time in my life that I have ever stood completely upright with my legs at the same length. It was an emotional moment that I will never forget. It seemed like the world looked bigger. It seemed that everything was in a different contour and shape. It was really quite amazing. I can't describe it. I thought, “It's wonderful to be upright!”
The physiotherapist came along and could tell the joy of my being able to do that. I said, “You know, this is the first time in my life that I have actually been upright.”
He said, “Wait a minute! Stop, Reverend! I am going to write this down.”
And, he wrote this down: “The Minister of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church says that this is the first time in his life that he has been upright!”
He said, “Do you think I can use this sometime in the future?”
I said, “I am going to tell people about it before you get a chance to blackmail me, how about that?” So, here I am, telling you.
It is wonderful to be upright. But to be upright is not just about your situation and where you stand; it is where you stand in relation to everybody else. That means that if you are going to walk humbly with God, you had better do justice, and you had better love mercy. That is what it means to walk humbly with your God. This is exactly what the corrupt did not want to hear in Micah's day. I think there is something so profoundly timeless about his words that they resonate in our ears and in our world.
Think about it for a moment. Are there not parallels? They wanted to sacrifice their first children to appease God so that they could keep practicing their immorality and their greed. Are there not cultures now in this world that eliminate little girls at birth for the sake of something higher in life? Is there not a spirit in the heart of some people that says plant a bomb in an airport because your nation is more important than peoples' lives? Is that not completely losing a sense of loving mercy and walking humbly with your God?
Is there not that euphemism used in military exercises to do a “cleansing operation,” which means basically mop up whoever might have been left from your enemy once you have nearly defeated them? Is that to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your Lord? Is to take the mentally ill and prohibit them from having proper care and cutting those funds that help them and support them, meanwhile having them end up in shelters around the world and in cities, is that to do justly, and to have mercy, and to walk humbly with our Lord?
I was reading in a newspaper that in Britain bankers are getting billions of dollars, billions of pounds collectively, bonuses while the economy is in ruins, and people who had absolutely nothing to do with the economic devastation are having to cutback to the bare necessities. Is that to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? I think Micah would have a field day today! I do! No, to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly is what God requires of us.
There is a wonderful television program that emanates from the British Television Channel 4. It is called, if you haven't already seen it here in Canada, The Secret Millionaire. It is where a person who has made millions of pounds goes to live in a community amongst the poor, and does so for a considerable period of time, and then gives a lot of money away. In one story that touched my heart, because I know where he went on the west side of Newcastle, the poor working class part of that city, where there is high unemployment and high street crime and overdoses and clinics that can't be funded. It is a terrible area in many ways. This man, who was originally a taxi driver, but was now the head of a conglomerate of taxi companies and a multi-multi-multi millionaire, goes and lives in west Newcastle for weeks and weeks, but he goes incognito.
There, he sees a young child who cannot get an education because his father died and his mother was living with his grandfather and they can barely survive, and this brilliant child might not receive the university education that he needs. He sees a farm that is built in the middle of a concrete jungle that is there to help the poorest of the poor, and is a place for young children to be able to go and work on the land and to have a sense of community. He goes and sees this drop-in centre for teenagers, who come off the streets where there is gang violence and there are drugs, and it gives them food and something to do. He realizes that all three of them are suffering and all three of them potentially can close or not reach their destiny, and this millionaire gives them thousands and thousands of pounds. When he reveals who he is, they are overwhelmed. They cannot believe the joy!
In an article in The Guardian some weeks later after the show was over, they asked him, “Why did you do this? Why did you agree to be The Secret Millionaire?”
He said, “It is very simple. Someone along the road was merciful to me, and I must now be merciful to others. This is what is required of me.”
And, I can hear Micah, in the background, saying, “That is what it means to walk humbly with your God!” Amen.