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Can anyone tell me who Louise
Fletcher is—or more precisely, was? In 1975 Louise Fletcher won an Oscar
for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched in the movie “One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest.” It was a very touching moment at the Oscars, because
she signed her acceptance speech in honor of her parents who were both
deaf. She had her moment in the sun, and then her career sank like a
stone. She almost literally was never heard from again.
That was a hard one, but I
guarantee nobody’s going to get this next one. Who were Zaeger and
Evans? I’ll even give you a hint—think pop music. In the late 60s
Zaeger and Evans had a smash hit song, runaway number one hit, one of the
worst songs ever to make it to number one, “In the Year 2525.” Then
they too disappeared, never again had a song so much as make the charts at
all. Louise Fletcher and Zaeger and Evans were classic one hit wonders.
Now that you’ve had your
lesson in pop culture, I’ll explain how this ties in with a sermon this
morning. The prophet Micah is grouped together with a handful of other
books of the Bible in what we call the minor prophets. Big-name prophets
like Isaiah and Daniel get all the attention, while folks like Micah are
relegated to what we in the newspaper industry call the back of the book,
almost an afterthought. Micah is so obscure, he might not even have made
the Bible at all, except for his one-hit wonder.
Micah’s story is brief, only
seven chapters, and most of it is typical prophetic condemnation of the
selfish Jewish society where the poor are oppressed and the worship of God
forgotten. But in the sixth chapter Micah gets it right—so beautifully,
simply, elegantly right that his words soar right to the top of the
charts. He said that worship of God wasn’t a matter of riches. No one
can buy God’s heart, not by sacrificing thousands of sheep, not with an
endless river of olive oil, not even by giving God one’s first-born
child.
No, the prophet wrote, God has
already told you what was required, if only you had been listening. Only
three things are required, three action verbs—do justice, serve others
in mercy and walk humbly with God. Do, serve, walk. That’s it. You see,
I have this theory. I think the reason why people get off the track in the
Christian way of life is that they think it’s so complicated, so
impossible to put into practice, but it’s not. It’s really quite
simple. Do, serve, walk.
Now I can hear you saying,
“Pastor, that’s oversimplifying things. Those three, justice, mercy
and humility, are big subjects. They’re hard to master.” Actually, I
know those are big. But instead of thinking of them as impossible
mountains to climb, think of them as monuments to inspire, to keep us
going and striving. In World War II, the three major allied leaders would
meet periodically to discuss strategy. They were Franklin Roosevelt for
America, Winston Churchill for Britain and Joseph Stalin of Russia. When
photographers would take their picture together, the leaders were
nicknamed the Big Three.
Their photo was distributed
around the world to inspire people to keep fighting—Churchill, the lion
of Britain, Stalin, whose iron will could not be broken, and Roosevelt,
forever the optimistic believer in a brighter future. In the same way,
justice, mercy and humility can inspire us, even though we keep stumbling
and falling along the way, to get up and keep striving to live lives that
God can be proud of. So this morning I want to talk about Micah’s one
big smash hit—what does it mean to do justice, love mercy and walk
humbly with your God?
When you are invited to go on an
outing, what is almost always the first question asked? What should I
wear, right? Should I dress up or dress down? Do I wear jeans or a tie or
a sweater or shorts? If you’re headed for a potluck dinner, at church or
somebody’s house, what’s the first question you ask? What should I
bring, of course. Do I bring dessert, or salad, or meat loaf? If you’re
going to your kid’s soccer game, you want to know whether to bring a
lawn chair or water bottles or sun block. Whenever we go anywhere, we
always want to be prepared, or else we could end up miserable.
But what do you bring if
you’re coming before the Lord? What do you pack to be prepared when you
knock on his door? And maybe more importantly, what do you leave behind,
at home? What will move the heart of the host of the great feast? People
often imagine that money, or some extension of what money can buy, will
make everything all right in a relationship. How often have you seen a
parent try to make up for a lack of time spent with a child by buying
expensive gifts? Good sign in front of a church: “Dad, he’ll
appreciate your presence a lot more than your presents.” No, money
can’t buy love, and it can’t buy God’s heart.
What does move the heart of God?
Justice. That’s a difficult word to fully understand, but again, we make
things more complicated than they need to be. Here’s the heart of
justice, folks—it’s all level ground at the foot of the cross. None of
us is better than another; we’re all in the same boat, and that boat is
full of sinners who are forgiven by God’s love. However, there is a
catch. Jesus called his followers by many names, but two of the most
prominent are “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light
of the world.”
It’s not enough just to exist;
we are supposed to stand for something. And one of the things that Christ
calls us to stand for is the idea that everybody is equal in his sight,
that our neighbor’s interests are just as important as ours. Yet one of
the hallmarks of our modern culture is that people think their
self-interest is far more important than anyone else’s self-interest.
They are willing to take any shortcut, break any rule or law, to get what
they think they deserve. Hear that last word, it’s a motto on many lips
today: I deserve it.
Here’s a wild story of
injustice I read on the Internet only yesterday: in New Jersey a woman
named Kathleen Jones is headed for a long stretch in jail and her twin 14
year old daughters are in the hands of juvenile authorities after Mom and
the girls were convicted of robbing a bank together. But it’s more of a
family store than that: the 16 year old daughter was convicted of
conspiracy, and Dad was convicted of being an accessory to the robbery,
and probably will do jail time, too.
It all started with Kathleen,
the Mom, becoming a teenage mother. Later on she hooked up with Kevin
Jones, just out of prison after serving three years for drug dealing. To
condense the story a little, the family bought a house and took on a
$1,000 a month mortgage, but no one apparently held a job, and they missed
payment after payment until they were about to lose the house to
foreclosure. That’s when the 14 year olds decided to rob the bank. They
got themselves ski masks and toy guns and stuck up the bank while Mom
drove the getaway car.
Unfortunately they weren’t too
bright, and one of the girls took off her ski mask as she ran past the
video camera, and it took the cops only three days to track them down in
their home. But here’s the kicker. When the cops got there the family
was just back from Atlantic City where they had taken the money to gamble.
None of the bank loot had been used to pay on the mortgage. They felt they
were entitled to a good time.
This is the strange world we
live in today, the weird attitude people have toward what is just. Many of
the unjust things in the world are beyond our control, but we can exercise
control over our behavior, and here is the best capsulized explanation of
justice I know of: when two children divide up a cake, one gets to cut,
and the other gets to choose. The procedure is designed so that the
interests of both are the concerns of both. But justice is only the start
of the story. Justice is the foundation, the means by which we are then to
love mercy.
Mercy moves the heart of God. We
are to be merciful to our fellow pilgrims on this earth, and in that we
have the perfect role model in our Lord Jesus Christ. Gang, what was the
one thing Jesus most wanted for all the people of the earth? He wanted
them to be whole—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, morally
whole. Whenever he encountered someone with a problem, he was moved to
pity and he took action. He restored them. But that’s just an extension
of God’s love for the world, the love that caused him to send Jesus into
the world—to make sinners whole, to restore them to eternal life.
Maybe we can’t bring sight to
the blind with a touch, the way Jesus did, but we’re still called to
acts of mercy in our everyday life, in imitation of him. Honestly, justice
is easy compared to mercy. That’s why mercy is the next step up the
ladder. Justice can be achieved just by getting along with your fellow
man, without bringing God into it at all. But mercy? That’s where the
divinity with us really catches fire. Can we heal like Jesus did?
Absolutely. We can be patient, instead of brusque. We can be kind, instead
of rude. We can love, and give up indifference. We can forgive, instead of
seeking revenge.
All of these are wonderfully
healing, truly extending mercy to the world, just as Jesus did. Who, after
all, has forgiven us more, or shown us more mercy?
More than 20 years ago a Turkish
terrorist tried to kill Pope John Paul II. He shot the pope in St.
Peter’s Square in Rome, and many outraged people around the world wanted
this man to be executed. Instead, he was imprisoned, and on Christmas Day
1983 the pope visited his would-be killer in his jail cell. They spoke
together, alone, for 20 minutes, and what they said could not be heard by
anyone else. When he emerged from the prison, however, the pope was asked
what he had told the assassin, and said, “I spoke to my brother, whom I
have forgiven.”
The next week Time Magazine ran
the story on its cover with the headline, “Why forgive?” Can you
imagine how the story of the pope’s forgiveness changed the world in a
very profound way? He, of course, was on a big stage. But when we show
mercy to others, we are not only imitating Christ, we are changing the
world, maybe in only a very tiny way, but equally profound.
Finally, what is required of us
is humility. Sometimes it makes me wonder why God made human beings with
such a huge streak of pride. I don’t really have a good answer, but if I
did I’d sure be proud of it. Seriously, isn’t it true that the number
one fault that gets people into trouble is their pride, their feeling that
they have earned everything they’ve got, that they’ve got the world on
a string. Nobody better dare tell them what to do.
I read a sobering statistic this
week. Scientists in Australia have determined that the number of stars in
the visible universe is 70 sextillion. Picture in your mind the number
70,000, and then follow that with 18 zeroes. In other words, 10 times more
stars in the visible universe than there are grains of sand on all the
beaches in the world. And that’s only the portion of the universe that
we can see. Some say the universe is so vast that the light from distant
stars hasn’t had time to reach us yet. God has all of this—all of
this—in the palm of his hand, and yet—make eye contact with me—he
has both the power and the love to know you and me by name.
All he asks is that we walk with
him, and not try to get out in front leading the parade.
What we need to understand, and
not just understand, but take deep into our hearts, is that God is the
creator, and we are the created. We need to love the idea that God created
us in our mother’s womb, that he knew us by name when he did so, that
there was a purpose behind that construction, that he has a plan for us as
individuals and that plan was part of his master plan for the world’s
salvation that has been in place since the dawn of time.
Some people will try to tell you
that you are the end product of chaos, that molecules spinning randomly in
space somehow came together to form life, and through the millions of
years since then, by fits and starts that had no pattern, you emerged. Is
that likely? Is that even possible?
No, you are who you are because
God wanted it that way. In the letter to the Ephesians Paul writes that
“We are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which he has prepared us to do.”
God has given us our talents and
abilities. Whatever good that we do, he has made it possible, but more
than just giving up the ability, he has led us to the situation, and then
planted in us the desire to do something about it. Does that make sense to
you? If we ask why God allows his people to suffer, maybe sometimes it’s
because he’s waiting for us, the people he’s endowed with all these
abilities, to do something about it. That’s his grace for the world. We
are instruments in his hand, making the world perfect as he intended it to
be.
If we are able to do good
things, should that make us feel proud? No, because we’re not the author
of the play, just the actors. But should it make us feel loved?
Absolutely. God loves us so much to allow us not only to take a part in
the play, but to help choose the ending. Walking humbly with God means
listening when he speaks, seeking out his will, taking his words into our
heart and then taking action to bring the play to a happy ending. We can
do it because God takes delight in working through us, his beloved.
Samuel Morse, the inventor of
the telegraph, received many honors for his invention, but felt that he
was unworthy of the praise. He wrote, “I have made a valuable
application of electricity, not because I was superior to other men, but
solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must reveal it to someone,
and he was pleased to reveal it to me.”
Micah knew what God had revealed
to the world: “I don’t need blood sacrifice. I need a change of heart,
a new attitude. I need justice, mercy and humility from my people. Give me
those, and together we can change the world.” Amen.
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