“What Does The Lord Require of You?” Congregational Hymn Sing

This hymn sing can be used when Micah 6:8 is in the lectionary (4th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A) or at any time in the church year.

“What Does The Lord Require of You?” Congregational Hymn Sing

Introduction: “What does the Lord Require of You?

“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?
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?”
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? - Micah 6:6-8

What does the Lord require of you?
What do I have to do, what do we have to do, to make things right with God?
What can I do to possibly please God?
To make it so that I deserve God’s loving kindness?

So ask the people of God in the book of Micah. In this passage today they are using extreme hyperbole. They start with a modest offering: a burnt offering, a calf - and then it drastically increases: thousands of rams, then ten thousand rivers of oil - or even a beloved first born. It sounds abhorrent to our modern ears but there were many ancient cultures that practiced child sacrifice.

These questions raised in Micah echo throughout Scripture. As Christians and adherents to the New Testament we believe that God sent Jesus so that might be saved through his grace, justified, and made right with God. Paul echoes this sentiment throughout his letters that there is nothing we can ever possibly do to earn God’s love and forgiveness - Christ has already done that for us! We are already loved and grace is freely given. We could never do enough, never offer up enough, never sacrifice enough to make it so that we have earned our salvation, made ourselves worthy of God’s love. We will always fall short. But that’s the Good News! God’s grace is offered to us - unmerited, undeserved - and yet - still given.

And yet as Scripture so wisely states in the book of James, faith without works is dead. And while God’s love and grace are freely given, we are called to be transformed by that love and grace, made more holy, more like God, through love of God and love of neighbor as self.

The question raised in Micah 6:8 - “What does the Lord require of us?” is not the question of what we need to do as a part of a transactional salvation - it is a question of what our lives, forgiven through the grace of Jesus Christ, should be transformed to look like.

And so what does the Lord require of us? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Let us sing “What Does the Lord Require of You?,” FWS 2174

Do Justice

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” - Luke 4:16-21

In order to understand what it means to do justice, we must first understand what it means when we say that our God is a Just God. When we talk about the justice of God, that is not a justice of punishment or retribution. It is not a justice that is concerned with human laws, our courts, our prisons, and our “justice system.” It is not a vigilante justice, like some superhero who pursues their own justice.

God being Just means that when God sees the world get off track, sees injustices, God works and calls us to work alongside God, to make things right again. Right as in how God created the world to be before sin entered it.

Examples of God’s justice in Scripture include God leading the people out slavery in Egypt. God saw people enslaved, humans owning other humans, and saw how unjust it was. How wrong. And so God worked through ordinary people, like Moses and Miriam, to lead them out of Egypt and to break the bonds of slavery.

Now, after leading the Israelites out of slavery, we have these books of the Bible that we refer to as the Law - Leviticus and Deuteronomy and really books we struggle to read straight through because we don’t get them all. But in those books God issues the decree of Jubilee. Every fiftieth year there is a reset where things are made right - where all people rest, lands return to original owners (such as those who may have had to sell them because they fell on hard times), and any enslaved people were also to be made free.

Meredith Miller, the author of the book Woven, puts it like this: “It’s as simple as this: Our God is an Exodus God, so we will be Jubilee people. God goes first to rescue us; we respond by being restorers for one another.”

Basically, every 50 years, things were supposed to be made right. The playing field was leveled back out. Sadly, the commandment of Jubilee has been long left unpracticed in our world and would certainly not be a popular take with politicians, wealthy land owners, those who exploit the work of others, and all the economic systems of the world that put profit over people.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism once wrote: “Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.”

We are called to practice social holiness. To see the world through God’s eyes, to enter into our world marred by injustice, and to be restorers - restorers of human dignity, restorers of freedom, restorers of Love, restorers of all that is good. This involves, for example, not just making sure that the hungry have a meal to eat but addressing system injustices such as food deserts. This involves not just treating all humans with equality, but fighting against systems which seek to diminish the humanity of whole groups of people. To not just help pay for a medical bill, but to work for a system where people don’t die because they can’t afford care. This is Holy Work.

This is what it means to do justice.

Let us sing, “Lord, Whose Love Through Humble Service,” vs. 1, 3, 4, UMH 581

Love Kindness

“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who alone does great wonders,
for his steadfast love endures forever;” - Psalm 136:1-4

The Hebrew word translated here in Micah 6:8 as "kindness" is hesed. The Bible Project says this word “combines the ideas of love, generosity, and loyal commitment all into one. Hesed described an act of promise keeping loyalty that is motivated by deep personal care” This word is translated many different ways in the Bible: kindness, mercy, steadfast love, loyal love, loving-kindness. It is used occasionally to describe a person, like Ruth who swore to stay by the side of Naomi, pledging “where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people” - she is said to have shown steadfast, loyal loving-kindness. Hesed. Most of the time, however, overwhelmingly, it is used to describe the character of God.

God shows loving-kindness by never abandoning God’s people. The entirety of Scripture is the story of God’s loyal love for the people of God and ever expanding outward to all creation. God’s loving-kindness, God’s loyal love, for the people of God, never fades.

So just as God is a Just God and we are to do justice, God is hesed, God is Loving-Kindness, and we are to be exemplars of loving-kindess. We are called to treat one another with love, generosity, and loyal commitment. We are to keep our promises to God and to one another to love one another by showing deep personal care for one another.

When the Scripture says we are to love kindness it is not talking about politeness or good manners. This is not simply not being rude to one another or “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.” This is not Southern hospitality or Midwest niceness. Loving kindness, hesed, goes much deeper.

Loving kindness is about treating one another as God would treat each of us - with kindness that reaches down deep into a well of mercy and care. Treating each other with loving-kindness means to be people who treat each and every person they come across as one fashioned in the image of God, as inherently beloved.

Let us sing “When We Are Living,” vs. 1 & 4, UMH 356

Walk Humbly with Your God

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?’” - Matthew 16:24-26

To be humble is to not think of one’s self higher than what one ought. To walk humbly with God is to never think of one’s self as on equal par or knowing better than God. Such is the downfall of humanity - we always think we know better than God. That we know better than God of who is in and who is out. That we know better than God of how much wealth and material possessions we need. That we know better than God of how independent and self-reliant we can be. No, walking humbly with God is not an easy path. It is the path that Christ talked about when he said that we must deny selves, take up the cross, and follow him.

When we submit ourselves to God’s ways and walk with God, that is the path of what we call sanctification. To be sanctified is to be more holy. To let the Spirit work within us to model us after Christ. When we let God have all of us, when we daily walk with God, we will become more like God - which includes becoming more Just and becoming more like God’s loving-kindness.

Becoming more like Jesus is the path to fulfilling the two greatest commandments - Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

This is what the Lord requires of us - to humble ourselves to walk with God, to day after day, choose to continue walking with God so that we might become more like God. This is pleasing to God. Jesus wants us to walk with him. God desires for us to be in relationship. The Spirit wants to work within and through us for a more just, kind, loving world.

May it be so.

Let us sing, “Where He Leads Me,” vs. 1, 2, 4, UMH 338