THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY 2002

Bishop Nzimbi of our former companion diocese of Machakos in Kenya was particularly find of Psalm 126 - "Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy." He summarized the meaning of that psalm with the phrase, "the way down is the way up."

This morning I want to look at the Good News of the Cross, which the world sees as folly, not through the lens of Paul's powerful words in this morning's Epistle lesson, nor through the equally powerful words of Jesus as recorded by Matthew, but through the words of the prophet of ancient Israel, Micah.

Hear again the words of Micah, the prophet: "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 6:8)

These words come at the end of a long and bitter lament by the prophet. The gulf between God and God's people is so great that there is no offering that they might make that would bridge the gap. Their unfaithfulness has led them so far from God that there is no way that they can return by their own strength. Even the forbidden sacrifice of the first-born will be of no avail, so wide is that abyss.

What will avail - what will always avail - is the act of remembering.

You may recall that on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, I spoke about the danger of terminal amnesia, the danger of so forgetting who we are that we run the risk of losing our life in Christ. That remembering involves a calling to mind of the saving acts of God, of what God has done for us. And that is the direction to which the people of God are pointed by the prophet Micah. They are to recall what the LORD has told them about what is good, about what is pleasing to God in human behavior. But that revelation is a revelation of God's character as much as it is a revelation of God's will for human beings.

Micah gives us a somewhat uneasy trio of requirements. We are to do justice, to love kindness or mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. It is the first two that are in tension, for justice and mercy often seem to be in conflict. But that tension shouldn't be resolved too easily. It is important that we embrace both justice and mercy, because God does. God loves justice nearly as much as God loves the people of God. And God acts to establish justice. From the deliverance of the Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt to the present-day struggles for justice, God has been at work to make justice present and real for us. Or to put it another way, God hates injustice and will move heaven and earth to put an end to it, whether it's societal injustice of the sort that the women of Afghanistan suffered under the Taliban or the more localized injustice that I cause by my sin. Micah calls us to work for justice - to do justice - because that is what God does. If we are to be children of God, our character should reflect God's character. Micah calls us to repent of the sin which causes injustice and to work with God to root out injustice in our society and world.

But God is not only a God of justice, but also a God of mercy, of loving kindness. Micah calls us to love mercy, to love kindness. This is not a call to a theoretical appreciation of mercy, to the valuing of it as a concept or principal, but to an active love, to love in action. And here's the rub for many of us. We enjoy being shown mercy, but we often have difficulty in showing mercy. To show mercy, as someone once observed, involves giving up our right to exact a penalty from those who have wronged us. And that can be very hard. But that is what God has done in Jesus, giving up the right to exact from us the penalty for having wandered so far from God, for having so seriously fallen short of God's justice that we could never bridge the abyss between us and God, not even if God were to allow us to sacrifice our first-born.

But that, of course, is precisely what God has done. The only-begotten Son, the Incarnate Word, God made flesh, goes to the Cross that we might receive the mercy of God, that the abyss might be bridged. That act, that self-offering upon the Cross is described beautifully by Paul in the Letter to the Philippians:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Which brings us to the third call from Micah - to walk humbly with our God. Here I would make two important points. We walk humbly with God because we know that our walk with God is a gift. We don't deserve to have fellowship with God, but God has called us to such fellowship. Only in humility, only in recognizing both our unworthiness and God's incredible generosity are we able to walk with God. But there is a second, and perhaps even more important reason that we must walk humbly with God. That is the way God walks with us. From the beginning - and not just in the life and death of Jesus - God has chosen to walk humbly with God's people, God has chosen to suffer with God's people, to be patient and forbearing, calling them, calling us, back into relationship, wooing them, wooing us. God did not have to do that. God did not have to be that way. God chooses to be that kind of God. To say what I have said before, I believe that in some sense God does not want to be God except in a relationship with us. God wants to be, yearns to be, Emmanuel, God with us.