You Took the Word and Made it Heard

The title of this post comes from the Ben Folds song Not the Same. (For those of you who don’t know, click on the song title and the link will take you to a YouTube video of it.) The entire quote is as follows:

You took the Word and made it heard
And eased the people’s pain, and for that
You were idolized, immortalized,
And you were not the same after that.

I use this as my post title mostly because this post is about my first preaching experience here in Peru (which we in the PCUSA call Preaching the Word, one half of ministry, the other being the 2 sacraments.) However, I challenge you all to think for a minute about what this song has to say to us if you understand the “you” to be Jesus of Nazareth. (I recognize that has some controversial implications – if you have anything to say, please, post a comment! That’s a big part of why I do this whole blog thing…to get your feedback so that you can share in this adventure with me.) I don’t think this interpretation of the song is too far-fetched, by the way, as Ben has already sung in the first verse about a friend who, after a drug trip at the top of a tree, gave his life to Jesus (those of you who know Ben Folds know this really isn’t that strange compared to some of his lyrics!). So stew on that for awhile and let me know what you think.

Oh, and I am by no means trying to sound pompous or make messianic claims about myself by using the same words to refer to myself and to Jesus Christ. I just thought it would make a catchy post title about “the Word.”

Speaking of the Word, have you heard the Word is love? Whether you have or not, you should check out this video of Common Ground, my college a cappella group singing “The Word” by the Beatles at their Homecoming Concert. I’m so proud of them! And of course let me give credit where credit’s due: Thanks to Meredith Rutledge for suggesting this song for us to sing, Stefanie Higgins for an incredible arrangement, Joy Dudley for a beautiful solo, Cathy “Shmoo” Reber for some amazing percussion, and Liz MacMurry, Stacy Yi, Kristen Pantazes, Elizabeth Smith, Ethyl Yap, and Lizzy Jensen for this performance, and all members of Common Ground, past and present, for being awesome. Watch it, I swear, it’s incredible.

Ok, ok, on to the actual subject of this post – my first preaching experience in Peru (which, incidentally, was my first “real” preaching experience ever!). I preached Sunday night, October 18, for maybe 15 or 20 people at the IEP Ingeniería as part of the month’s theme of “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” While the IEP still doesn’t ordain women to ministry, me preaching as a woman was not incredibly radical for this church – laypeople preach every Sunday night, and while the majority are men, I know that at least one other woman member has preached since I’ve been part of the church and it seemed to be accepted fairly well, with the understanding that she was a layperson, not an ordained minister. Still, 2 (myself included) out of 8 or so is nowhere near equality, and the church is very divided about the ordination of women. During my first month here, I helped lead a church-wide workshop/discussion on the ordination of women and saw that even in one of the more progressive churches of the denomination, there is still plenty of resistance. Preaching in this context, knowing that I was participating in a potentially revolutionary movement of holy subversion, was both very humbling and very empowering for me, and I hope it was the same for the men and women who graciously received my sermon.

Below is an English translation of what I preached that night. To hear clips of the sermon in my weak-but-improving Spanish, check out the Red Uniendo Manos’s Podcast Kuzka, created by fellow YAV Joe Tobiason. He’s put a lot of work into publishing information about the Red Uniendo Manos, the organization here that I’m working for, on the internet where anyone can access it. Also check out the English translation of the Red’s monthly newsletter, the Retama? I’m being serious, click on these links, it’s a much more comprehensive explanation of what we are doing in Peru than my blogs, since Joe’s official job is to publish this stuff, while mine is to chase screaming children around a church (that is of course not my whole job…but some days I think I spend more time doing that than anything else! Oh the joy of 5-year-olds!).

Anyway, the sermon:

Scripture: Micah 6:6-8: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Our theme this month is “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” We’ve talked about the Reformation itself with Martin Luther in the 17th century, and we’ve also discussed the motto, the slogan of the Reformation: A Reformed Church, Always Reforming. I want to talk a little bit more about this theme tonight. The Reformation was a very important and climactic moment for the Church as a whole and particularly for our respective traditions, the PCUSA and the IEP. But I believe that the most important role of the Reformation for us, for the Church today, is to remind us that in every century, every age, we need to be open to the continual reformation of our thoughts, our hearts, and our lives in accordance with the Will of God. And for this, we go to the prophet Micah of the 8th century BCE.

Honestly, we don’t know much for sure about the life of the prophet Micah. As I said, he lived and prophetized in the 8th century BCE, when the nation we casually refer to as “Israel” was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. This century was a time of fear for both kingdoms because they consistently felt the threat of Assyria, the daunting political superpower to the north.

As Martin Luther denounced the sins of the Catholic Church in the 18th century, Micah, in his own context, prophetized against two great sins that he saw in the people of Israel and Judah: the worship of Gods other than Yahweh and the creation and maintenance of unjust social structures that exploited the poor at the expense of the rich. Micah proclaimed that the people needed to repent of their actions and change their ways of live. But how? What is acceptable before the eyes of God?

And this is where we enter with tonight’s text. The text begins with a series of questions. This should be fairly obvious, but it’s important that we know that the implied answer to each question is “no.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?”

No.

“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?”

No.

“Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

No, not even this.

Micah renounces these appeals to sacrifice. In our modern, Christian context, this doesn’t seem that strange or radical. Of course we don’t offer burnt sacrifices to God. It’s not part of our religious practices. Truthfully, when we think about sacrifices in this sense, we often think of paganism, of things that have no relation to “our Christianity.” But such a reading misses the point because that’s not how it was for the communities of Israel and Judah. Burnt offerings were their way to worship, to pray, to communicate with God. To ask and receive pardon. All of the very specific and sacred rules and instructions are written in the Old Testament. Burnt sacrifices were to them like worship services, prayers, and Bible study are to us.

It’s easy for us to forget this, but it’s the essential element to understand the text. Micah is not simply offering his people new ways to praise the Lord and follow God’s will. Micah is telling them that their current established practices are worthless if they don’t behave, in both a personal and social context, like followers of God. I believe this point comes across more clearly in a passage from Isaiah, the most famous prophet of Micah’s time. It is Isaiah 1:11, 15-17, if you want to look for it. In this passage, Isaiah, speaking as the voice of God, asks:

“The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?...I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams an the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

If I understand these texts, Micah and Isaiah are telling the eighth-century Hebrews and us, modern-day readers, that our religious practices are empty if we are not living in accordance with the Will of God. Just like Martin Luther told the 18th-century Catholic Church. Just like Jesus told the Pharisees in his time on earth. And just like the Word of God tells us today. If we say that we are “Reformed Church,” we need to remain always open to the possibility of new reforms.

And finally, in verse 8, Micah gives us his answer.

“He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

This is how we live as followers of God. In every age and century, this is how we make certain that our religious practices are not empty but are in fact full, full of the love of God. This is how we know we are following the Will of God.

But how do we do this? Here it’s more complicated, isn’t it? Because although the Word of God doesn’t change, contexts and situations do. And it is for this that God has given us the Holy Spirit, manifested in our minds and hearts. With this Word and this Spirit, we, the people of God, can make our humble attempts at discerning the Will of God in our own contexts.

Let us return now to “the answer” in Micah 6:8, where Micah tells us what God has called “good.” Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God. These three simple things are what God requires of us.

But still, what does this mean in our present context? I don’t have the final answer; no one does. But I can offer you ideas from my own life and my own experiences. They are not comprehensive: this is only my humble understanding of part of the Will of God. But, if I may, I would like to offer these thoughts to you.

Do justice. Here we see our relationships with the world. We must treat every other person, every part of Creation with justice. But what is “justice”, really? Often, when we think of justice, we think of a severe judge handing out punishments. But I want to propose another definition because this first understanding is our human distortion of the word. In the Kingdom of God, justice is simply that which serves love. Love for God, love for all people, love for Creation.

In this manner, when we conserve our natural resources, we do justice. When we denounce poverty and the structures that cause it, we do justice. When he help our brothers and sisters, when we help people we don’t know, when we help people we don’t even like, we do justice. Justice is that which serves love. And with this definition, justice and mercy are not the opposites that we often make them – they are two complementary parts of the Reign and Will of God.

Which brings us to the second part: Love mercy. This has to do with our relationships with others. And notice that it’s not “act with mercy” or “behave mercifully,” it says love mercy. Loving mercy has to do not just with our actions, but with our hearts and the thoughts and feelings behind our actions. When we respect the humanity of every person, we love mercy. When we care for those whom society has rejected, we love mercy. When we forgive our friends and our enemies not seven times but, as Jesus tells us, seventy times seven times, we love mercy. It is an act of profound humility.

And this brings us to the third part: Walk humbly with your God. Here we are talking about our relationship with God and with ourselves. The Church in every age has committed the sin of triumphalism, of pridefully thinking that we have the final answer and understand fully the mystery of God. Of acting as if we are God. This was the sin of the priests in Micah’s time, of the Pharisees in that of Jesus, of the Catholic Church in that of Martin Luther, and sometimes, it is our own sin.

Admitting that, how do we walk humbly with our God? We put the Will of God, which desires the well-being of the whole world, before our own wills. We admit that we are not always right and do not always know the truth, or what we ought to do. We accept help from God and from others. We make ourselves the servants of all. Each time we behave in this way, we walk humbly with our God.

We are the people of God. God has created us to do God’s work. But we are also humans, sinners. Yes, God has shown us what is good, but we are going to fail, both as individuals and as a Church. But we can be and we must be open to the new reforms of each day. The reforms that bring us closer to the will of God. And what is God’s Will?

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God.