The ways of God
Commentary
People tend to say in times of personal or community disaster, "God works in mysterious ways." The point they are making is that when we can't figure out any logical answer to a situation, it must be the work of God. It is one way of making sense out of an inexplicable event.
Our lessons for this Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany highlight the ways of God that are totally mysterious because they are so unlike the way the world around us functions. Yet, what is striking about these lessons is that they make their point about the uniqueness of God in order to stress what is good. They redefine what God desires, what God considers power and wisdom, and the kinds of people who receive divine blessing. In so doing, they turn the world on its ear.
Micah 6:1-8
"But we go to church every chance we get and we pay our dues" was not sufficient defense to prevent the Lord from taking the people of Israel to court. The opening verses of our pericope throw the remainder of the passage into a form that is best described as a covenant lawsuit. It is a case in which God sues the people of Israel for infidelity and disobedience, and as such it is similar to the passage in Hosea which begins at 2:2.
Specifically, in verse 1 God calls on the people of Israel to prepare their defense and shout it to the mountains, and in verse 2 the Lord calls on the mountains to hear all the testimony, as though the mountains themselves were to serve as the jury. Often in the case of covenants natural phenomena were summoned to be witnesses to what each party swore to the other, as in the case of Joshua's use of a stone at Joshua 24:26-28. That the mountains here are called "enduring foundations of the earth" calls to mind the structure of the three-storied universe in which the flat earth was suspended over the deep below by mountainous supports. More precise than "enduring foundations" is "primeval foundations," for the Hebrew word defines those supports which existed from the creation of the universe. Their authority is well established.
But what is the nature of the offense that the people of Israel have committed? The Lord pleads with them to state what has happened to have separated themselves from their covenant partner. God cries for their testimony: "Answer me." Before they have chance to speak, however, the Lord reminds them of all he has done on their behalf: the redemption from bondage in Egypt, the sending of Moses and Aaron and Miriam, the protection of the Lord throughout the wilderness wanderings -- all "that you may know the saving acts of the Lord" (v. 5). The translation "saving acts" derives from the Hebrew word which in the singular means "righteousness." The translation gives us an insight into that word: "righteousness" is the saving action of the Lord in which God accomplishes what is necessary for the welfare of the people. Everything described here about the exodus and the wilderness should have demonstrated to the people the faithfulness of God, but somehow they had become "wearied" of him.
Verses 6-7 reflect the response of the people, apparently shouting to the mountains their eagerness to please the Lord through all kinds of religious rites and ceremonies. They express their willingness to bring burnt offerings of calves, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, even their firstborn children. It is precisely what any self-respecting god would desire.
But a voice answers them, a voice perhaps from the mountains, perhaps the prophetic voice of Micah. The voice announces that they already know what the Lord requires: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (v. 8). They know because the Lord has "told" them (the older RSV's "shown" is not only inaccurate but misleading) in prophetic announcements, in the law codes, and in the teachings of the wise. God desires "justice," a positive order of existence for all the community, what God loves (Psalm 99:4); "kindness," actually, covenant loyalty, precisely what has been missing on the part of the people; "to be humble to walk," recognizing who is God around here and to live life accordingly. The punch line "before your God" emphasizes the covenant that defines the relationship between God and the people, the covenant that seems to have been forgotten by Israel in the days of Micah.
Perhaps the suit and the defense here demonstrate how different the Lord is from all the gods who are served by that "old time religion." It is not "good enough" for the Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
This piece of the apostle's correspondence to the Corinthians demonstrates how different indeed God is from the deities of all other religions. In doing so, it also defines how different is the nature of God's people from those of the world.
First, what a difference a cross makes! To the eyes of the world the crucifixion of Jesus on a cross is nothing other than the execution of one more criminal by the Roman Empire. For Christians to place their faith in one who died like a common thief, naked and bleeding and gasping for breath, is utterly ridiculous in worldly terms. The word that Paul used was not "ridiculous" but "foolishness." Simply put, staking one's faith and fate on the cross is illogical, irrational, and unwise. It is not the way the world does business.
The world thrives on power and intellect. Power means having clout, and it comes from financial strength or from political ties or from threatening weapons. Intellect is the ability to understand things and to solve problems and to provide expertise which someone else needs or wants. From that perspective no one in his or her right mind would imagine that power to save the world from its sin could occur in a beaten and vulnerable man hanging on a cross.
The apostle's words here indicate that these attitudes about power and wisdom are not merely a modern phenomenon. They existed in the two classes of people he knew in the first century: Jews and Greeks. What rubs the apostle the wrong way in this pericope is, first, the use of wisdom, especially by the Greeks. By the philosophies for which they were famous they sought to come to the knowledge of their gods. That Greek philosophy even entered Judaism by way of Hellenism, enhancing the wisdom traditions already present among the Jews. The world of the time, especially evident in cosmopolitan Corinth, had the divine world all figured out.
The second issue Paul raised in these verses is the demand of the Jews for signs. We can chuckle over the representation of Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar as he asks Jesus to "walk across my swimming pool," but signs were always an important part of the Old Testament tradition. It was by such "signs and wonders" that the Lord brought Israel out of the bondage in Egypt (see Deuteronomy 6:22; 26:8), and so the people of Israel grew up on the tradition that God's acts of deliverance were verified by the empirical evidence of power and release from oppression.
Against the insistence of the Greeks on wisdom and against the Jewish demands for signs is the crucified Christ, "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (v. 24). The vulnerable one on the crossed beams, naked and thirsty, is the powerful means by which God saves sinful humanity. Suddenly it becomes clear that wisdom is not a body of knowledge gained through study and discipline but a body of flesh and blood exposed for all the world to see and given for all the world to be redeemed.
Such a concept is so different from our common worldly way of thinking that Paul concludes the paragraph by stating what is now obvious: "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (v. 25). The sentence is somewhat reminiscent of the word of the prophet Isaiah: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).
Having established that God's power and wisdom are revealed in the vulnerable and foolish, Paul moves on to define the nature of the Christian community and the reason for God's call to this motley bunch. For clearer understanding the paragraph might be structured as follows:
The Christian community is
Not wise
Not powerful
Not of noble birth.
God chose
The foolish to shame the wise
The weak to shame the strong
The lowly to bring to nothing what is
So that no one might boast before God.
Christ Jesus is
Our wisdom
Our righteousness
(Our) sanctification
(Our) redemption
So that we might boast in the Lord.
The structure points out immediately that the Christian community has nothing to boast about except the Lord Jesus Christ. If they and we came to God through our own wisdom and logic and power, then we could indeed boast of our accomplishments and intellect. Since, however, God has brought into being a community with neither wisdom nor power, the only source of boasting is in the Lord. The concluding sentence of the paragraph alludes directly to Jeremiah 9:22-23, where the classes of people who have nothing to boast about are the wise, the strong, and the rich. Perhaps that is one of the reasons some of our churches prefer to baptize infants. The message is clear: babies cannot claim to have known or done anything to become God's children. Their new identity is based on nothing other than the cross and resurrection of our Lord.
Matthew 5:1-12
This familiar pericope represents a mountaintop experience for Jesus, and that expression means far more than the way we usually use the term. While it might seem extravagant to wax eloquently over the definite article "the," this three-letter word deserves our attention. The story could have been told by indicating Jesus climbed "a mountain," but "the mountain" makes the reader wonder why the elevation of turf has been so articulated.
In the synoptic gospels "the mountain" seems to call to mind an entire tradition rather than simply a lofty location. The tradition of "the mountain" originates in the Old Testament, where "the mountain" usually means Sinai/Horeb or Zion. Both mountains stand out as especially significant because of the functions they served in the communication between God and the people of Israel. One of the functions was the revelation of the will of God through the gift of the law or Torah, "instruction." On Mount Sinai/Horeb Moses received the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-
17; 34:11-26) and the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23). On Mount Zion the people of Israel received their instruction from the Lord on a regular basis, and one day, on the Day of the Lord, all nations would come to Mount Zion in order to learn the Torah of the Lord (Isaiah 2:2-3). That Day will mark the beginning of the Reign of God over the world.
When Matthew has Jesus ascend "the mountain" in order to teach the crowds the Beatitudes as introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, we readers do well to recognize the tradition behind the expression. That tradition does not lead us to conclude that Jesus is the new Moses; rather it enables us to recognize Jesus as the Son of God. It is God who gave the Torah on "the mountain," and it is now the Son of God who brings a new Torah on "the mountain." Without that divine authority Jesus appears as nothing more than a raving lunatic when he says repeatedly in the Sermon, "You have heard it was said to the people of old ... but I say to you." Only the Son of God could add a "but" to the Torah God uttered on Sinai.
As for the content of his teaching on the mountain, Jesus uttered first a series of "blessings." That in itself is unusual because it is usually "woes" that occur in a series (see Amos 5:18--6:7). The blessing formula "Happy are those who ..." generally occurs singly as at Psalm 1:1 and Psalm 34:8. Think of the meaning of the contrast: Amos speaks of the Day of the Lord, the beginning of the Reign of God, in terms of woes. Jesus announces the Day of the Lord, the beginning of the Reign of God, in terms of blessings.
In terms of the traditions of the day those who were healthy, wealthy, and wise were considered to be blessed by God. Old proverbial wisdom taught the simple doctrine that the good would be rewarded and the wicked punished. Some of the prophets already announced the opposite of that doctrine, because the Day of the Lord would turn things upside down (see Micah 4:6-7; Isaiah 61:1-2). Jesus heaps those eschatological reversals one on top of the other.
The kingdom of heaven will belong to "the poor in spirit." Luke's version reads simply "poor" (Luke 6:20). Matthew's "poor in spirit" might represent an attempt to connect the teaching more directly to Isaiah 61:1: "good news to the oppressed," indicating not an economic class but a group of people prevented from experiencing honor in the community. Moreover, in Psalm 34 (where the "happy are those" appears at verse 8) the psalmist identifies himself as "this poor soul" who had been oppressed. That the kingdom of heaven belongs to them is a contradiction of the popular teaching.
Those who are mourning will be comforted, Jesus announces. Such comforting is the salvation work of God, especially in the preaching of Second Isaiah (40:1; 49:13; 51:3, 12; 52:9). It is also one of the eschatological promises connected with the call of Third Isaiah at 61:2: "The Lord has anointed me ... to comfort all who mourn ..." a passage Jesus applied to himself at Luke 4:16-20.
That "the meek will inherit the earth" calls to mind two different psalms. At Psalm 34:2 the "meek" are those who are invited to listen to the wonders of God and to participate in giving thanks and praise. (This is the third time we have alluded to Psalm 34.) In addition, the expression of Jesus was more like a refrain in the acrostic Psalm 37. "The meek shall inherit the land" appears at verse 11, and they are joined in that inheritance by "those who wait for the Lord" (v. 9), "those blessed by the Lord" (v. 22), "the righteous" (v. 29), and "you" who "wait for the Lord" (v. 34).
The beatitudes go on to announce blessings on those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, on the merciful, on the pure in heart, on the peacemakers, and on those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. The last is expanded by verses 11-12 where the third person changes to the second and the blessing is directed specifically to you who are persecuted "on my account." It is not persecution in general but specifically for those who confess Jesus as Lord in the midst of danger and ridicule. Their reward will be great in heaven, for having followed Jesus in bearing the cross, they will follow him to life eternal.
In the beatitudes Jesus promises the blessings of the kingdom to come. Yet, because he himself is the Son of God, and because in him the promised kingdom is already beginning, those who hear the promised blessings already begin experiencing them here and now. Speaking not as a new Moses "on the mountain" but with the authority of God "on the mountain," Jesus narrows the gap between the future and the present. Those who hear his words in faith already taste the blessings to come.
When we consider the types of persons who are identified as the recipients of divine blessings here, we can see why Paul made such an emphatic point out of God's wisdom and power and the kinds of people God chose to be the church. It certainly would be no way to run an airline, but it is the way God works to gather and run the church. And when you think about it, you might not find it to be all that religious.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Micah 6:1-8
The important thing to remember about this text from Micah is that it represents a court case between Israel and the Lord. God is the plaintiff in the judicial procedure, Israel is the defendant, and the hills, mountains, and foundations of the earth are the jury. God, the plaintiff, presents his case in verses 3-5, Israel, the defendant, replies in verses 6-7, and verse 8 is the verdict that confirms God's position and judges Israel for what she should have done but has not done.
The Lord's most telling accusation against his people is that they have been weary with him (v. 3). God recounts, in verses 4-5, all of his saving acts on behalf of his covenant people in the past. He has delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, given them his guidance in the law and led them safely through the terrors of the wilderness, prevented Balaam from bringing a deadly curse upon them, and brought them through the Jordan from Shittim to their first encampment in the promised land at Gilgal.
Yet despite all of God's loving deeds toward his people in their past history, they have forgotten what God has done. They have not kept that memory of the sacred history that gives a people gratitude, and hope for the future, and patience in the midst of tribulation (surely a three-point sermon). Instead, Israel, like so many in our time, is just weary with God -- weary of her constant pleading with him and inability to find him. She is in some kind of trouble, and she wants God to bail her out, but God has not answered or helped, and Israel is disgusted with him.
What does it take to call this unresponsive deity to her aid? Israel asks (vv. 6-7). Should she sacrifice burnt offerings to him of calves a year old that are so much more valuable than newborns? Would God be satisfied with thousands of rams, as Solomon offered him (1 Kings 8:63), or with literal rivers of precious olive oil used for food and healing? Or maybe, the disgusted speaker says sarcastically, God would like Israel to offer those child sacrifices forbidden in the law (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 18:10) and condemned by the prophets as pagan practices (Jeremiah 7:31, et al). What does it take to appease an implacable deity? That is Israel's exasperated question.
The answer is given in the words of God's prophetic spokesman in verse 8 -- an answer that condemns Israel. God has shown his covenant people what is good, and he has shown all of us what is good and what we are to do, for his reply is addressed to "O man," "O 'adam" in the Hebrew, meaning "humankind." The Lord has shown all of us what he requires of us. He has not left us to stumble around in the dark, making up the rules as we go along, and searching vainly to find the proper paths for our lives. No. God has guided us, and he says very plainly how he expects us to act.
First of all, reads our text, God wants us to do "justice," mispat. That can refer to legal justice, and certainly our society is often lacking in just courts of law. But while the meaning of "justice" in this passage includes judicial equity, it is also much broader than that. Mispat means to establish God's order in every area of life -- in our nation and society, our towns and homes. God wants every relationship of life structured and conducted according to his will, given us through the scriptures -- permeated with his love, his fairness, his forgiveness, his mercy, his straight and upright truth.
Second, our text says that what God requires of us is "to love kindness," but once again, the meaning goes beyond our understanding of those words. The term for "kindness" in the Hebrew is hesed, which is a covenant term. It means to be faithful to our covenant with God and with one another, to be bound together in solidarity with them, to be a community that lives in steadfast loyalty to God and to other human beings. And we are to love those ties -- love our relation with our Lord who has made us in his image, love our relation with our neighbors for whom we are always responsible. Thus, faithful covenant solidarity with God and all around us is not understood as a duty here in our text, but as a pleasure, rendered in loving-kindness, because God has first loved us.
Finally, Israel is told in our text that she is expected to walk "humbly" with her God. While that meaning eschews all proud self-righteousness and self-will, the word for "humbly" is hasene'a in the Hebrew, which has the meaning of "attentively," "paying attention to," "watching." We are to walk "attentively" with our God, not in proud self-independence as so many of us desire, but paying attention always to what God wants. We are to watch him for what is good, seeking after his will and not our own, being alert to his guidance and commands for the way we conduct our lives. Through sermon and scripture, prayer and meditation, we are to be intent on God's guidance of our steps and future. And if we do that, then it will become possible also to "do justice" and "love hesed." The first two requirements rest on the third -- to seek always after our God, in every relationship of our daily round.
The prophet Micah, throughout his book, is sure that Israel never lives up to these requirements laid upon her by her Lord. And of course we never live up to them either, do we? All by ourselves, with our own strength and will, we repeatedly do not rely in all things upon our Lord.
But within the book of Micah, there is also the promise of a Messiah, come from Bethlehem Ephrathah (5:2-4) -- a Messiah whose birth we celebrated a few short weeks ago at Christmas. According to our gospel lesson from Matthew 5, that Messiah once again laid these requirements of God upon us, when he gave his Sermon on the Mount. And his requirements and these of Micah seem impossible for us to meet -- as they are, indeed, if the Messiah has left us on our own.
But the gospel, the good news, of course, is that he has not left us to depend upon our own devices and wills to satisfy the requirements of our God. Instead, Jesus Christ has forgiven us all our sins and shortcomings by his death and resurrection. And then, he has sent his Spirit into our hearts, transforming our lives and giving us the willpower and ability to do the good that we are required by God to do. We do not earn our way into the favor of the Lord, good Christians -- not by multitudes of sacrifices, as Micah says. Rather, God accepts us as "good" because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And then he enables us to do the "good" by the power of his Holy Spirit. Our responsibility is to trust that God in Jesus Christ can, in fact, work that transformation in our lives. For as Christ works in us, we will, indeed, find that we do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
Our lessons for this Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany highlight the ways of God that are totally mysterious because they are so unlike the way the world around us functions. Yet, what is striking about these lessons is that they make their point about the uniqueness of God in order to stress what is good. They redefine what God desires, what God considers power and wisdom, and the kinds of people who receive divine blessing. In so doing, they turn the world on its ear.
Micah 6:1-8
"But we go to church every chance we get and we pay our dues" was not sufficient defense to prevent the Lord from taking the people of Israel to court. The opening verses of our pericope throw the remainder of the passage into a form that is best described as a covenant lawsuit. It is a case in which God sues the people of Israel for infidelity and disobedience, and as such it is similar to the passage in Hosea which begins at 2:2.
Specifically, in verse 1 God calls on the people of Israel to prepare their defense and shout it to the mountains, and in verse 2 the Lord calls on the mountains to hear all the testimony, as though the mountains themselves were to serve as the jury. Often in the case of covenants natural phenomena were summoned to be witnesses to what each party swore to the other, as in the case of Joshua's use of a stone at Joshua 24:26-28. That the mountains here are called "enduring foundations of the earth" calls to mind the structure of the three-storied universe in which the flat earth was suspended over the deep below by mountainous supports. More precise than "enduring foundations" is "primeval foundations," for the Hebrew word defines those supports which existed from the creation of the universe. Their authority is well established.
But what is the nature of the offense that the people of Israel have committed? The Lord pleads with them to state what has happened to have separated themselves from their covenant partner. God cries for their testimony: "Answer me." Before they have chance to speak, however, the Lord reminds them of all he has done on their behalf: the redemption from bondage in Egypt, the sending of Moses and Aaron and Miriam, the protection of the Lord throughout the wilderness wanderings -- all "that you may know the saving acts of the Lord" (v. 5). The translation "saving acts" derives from the Hebrew word which in the singular means "righteousness." The translation gives us an insight into that word: "righteousness" is the saving action of the Lord in which God accomplishes what is necessary for the welfare of the people. Everything described here about the exodus and the wilderness should have demonstrated to the people the faithfulness of God, but somehow they had become "wearied" of him.
Verses 6-7 reflect the response of the people, apparently shouting to the mountains their eagerness to please the Lord through all kinds of religious rites and ceremonies. They express their willingness to bring burnt offerings of calves, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, even their firstborn children. It is precisely what any self-respecting god would desire.
But a voice answers them, a voice perhaps from the mountains, perhaps the prophetic voice of Micah. The voice announces that they already know what the Lord requires: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (v. 8). They know because the Lord has "told" them (the older RSV's "shown" is not only inaccurate but misleading) in prophetic announcements, in the law codes, and in the teachings of the wise. God desires "justice," a positive order of existence for all the community, what God loves (Psalm 99:4); "kindness," actually, covenant loyalty, precisely what has been missing on the part of the people; "to be humble to walk," recognizing who is God around here and to live life accordingly. The punch line "before your God" emphasizes the covenant that defines the relationship between God and the people, the covenant that seems to have been forgotten by Israel in the days of Micah.
Perhaps the suit and the defense here demonstrate how different the Lord is from all the gods who are served by that "old time religion." It is not "good enough" for the Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
This piece of the apostle's correspondence to the Corinthians demonstrates how different indeed God is from the deities of all other religions. In doing so, it also defines how different is the nature of God's people from those of the world.
First, what a difference a cross makes! To the eyes of the world the crucifixion of Jesus on a cross is nothing other than the execution of one more criminal by the Roman Empire. For Christians to place their faith in one who died like a common thief, naked and bleeding and gasping for breath, is utterly ridiculous in worldly terms. The word that Paul used was not "ridiculous" but "foolishness." Simply put, staking one's faith and fate on the cross is illogical, irrational, and unwise. It is not the way the world does business.
The world thrives on power and intellect. Power means having clout, and it comes from financial strength or from political ties or from threatening weapons. Intellect is the ability to understand things and to solve problems and to provide expertise which someone else needs or wants. From that perspective no one in his or her right mind would imagine that power to save the world from its sin could occur in a beaten and vulnerable man hanging on a cross.
The apostle's words here indicate that these attitudes about power and wisdom are not merely a modern phenomenon. They existed in the two classes of people he knew in the first century: Jews and Greeks. What rubs the apostle the wrong way in this pericope is, first, the use of wisdom, especially by the Greeks. By the philosophies for which they were famous they sought to come to the knowledge of their gods. That Greek philosophy even entered Judaism by way of Hellenism, enhancing the wisdom traditions already present among the Jews. The world of the time, especially evident in cosmopolitan Corinth, had the divine world all figured out.
The second issue Paul raised in these verses is the demand of the Jews for signs. We can chuckle over the representation of Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar as he asks Jesus to "walk across my swimming pool," but signs were always an important part of the Old Testament tradition. It was by such "signs and wonders" that the Lord brought Israel out of the bondage in Egypt (see Deuteronomy 6:22; 26:8), and so the people of Israel grew up on the tradition that God's acts of deliverance were verified by the empirical evidence of power and release from oppression.
Against the insistence of the Greeks on wisdom and against the Jewish demands for signs is the crucified Christ, "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (v. 24). The vulnerable one on the crossed beams, naked and thirsty, is the powerful means by which God saves sinful humanity. Suddenly it becomes clear that wisdom is not a body of knowledge gained through study and discipline but a body of flesh and blood exposed for all the world to see and given for all the world to be redeemed.
Such a concept is so different from our common worldly way of thinking that Paul concludes the paragraph by stating what is now obvious: "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (v. 25). The sentence is somewhat reminiscent of the word of the prophet Isaiah: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).
Having established that God's power and wisdom are revealed in the vulnerable and foolish, Paul moves on to define the nature of the Christian community and the reason for God's call to this motley bunch. For clearer understanding the paragraph might be structured as follows:
The Christian community is
Not wise
Not powerful
Not of noble birth.
God chose
The foolish to shame the wise
The weak to shame the strong
The lowly to bring to nothing what is
So that no one might boast before God.
Christ Jesus is
Our wisdom
Our righteousness
(Our) sanctification
(Our) redemption
So that we might boast in the Lord.
The structure points out immediately that the Christian community has nothing to boast about except the Lord Jesus Christ. If they and we came to God through our own wisdom and logic and power, then we could indeed boast of our accomplishments and intellect. Since, however, God has brought into being a community with neither wisdom nor power, the only source of boasting is in the Lord. The concluding sentence of the paragraph alludes directly to Jeremiah 9:22-23, where the classes of people who have nothing to boast about are the wise, the strong, and the rich. Perhaps that is one of the reasons some of our churches prefer to baptize infants. The message is clear: babies cannot claim to have known or done anything to become God's children. Their new identity is based on nothing other than the cross and resurrection of our Lord.
Matthew 5:1-12
This familiar pericope represents a mountaintop experience for Jesus, and that expression means far more than the way we usually use the term. While it might seem extravagant to wax eloquently over the definite article "the," this three-letter word deserves our attention. The story could have been told by indicating Jesus climbed "a mountain," but "the mountain" makes the reader wonder why the elevation of turf has been so articulated.
In the synoptic gospels "the mountain" seems to call to mind an entire tradition rather than simply a lofty location. The tradition of "the mountain" originates in the Old Testament, where "the mountain" usually means Sinai/Horeb or Zion. Both mountains stand out as especially significant because of the functions they served in the communication between God and the people of Israel. One of the functions was the revelation of the will of God through the gift of the law or Torah, "instruction." On Mount Sinai/Horeb Moses received the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-
17; 34:11-26) and the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23). On Mount Zion the people of Israel received their instruction from the Lord on a regular basis, and one day, on the Day of the Lord, all nations would come to Mount Zion in order to learn the Torah of the Lord (Isaiah 2:2-3). That Day will mark the beginning of the Reign of God over the world.
When Matthew has Jesus ascend "the mountain" in order to teach the crowds the Beatitudes as introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, we readers do well to recognize the tradition behind the expression. That tradition does not lead us to conclude that Jesus is the new Moses; rather it enables us to recognize Jesus as the Son of God. It is God who gave the Torah on "the mountain," and it is now the Son of God who brings a new Torah on "the mountain." Without that divine authority Jesus appears as nothing more than a raving lunatic when he says repeatedly in the Sermon, "You have heard it was said to the people of old ... but I say to you." Only the Son of God could add a "but" to the Torah God uttered on Sinai.
As for the content of his teaching on the mountain, Jesus uttered first a series of "blessings." That in itself is unusual because it is usually "woes" that occur in a series (see Amos 5:18--6:7). The blessing formula "Happy are those who ..." generally occurs singly as at Psalm 1:1 and Psalm 34:8. Think of the meaning of the contrast: Amos speaks of the Day of the Lord, the beginning of the Reign of God, in terms of woes. Jesus announces the Day of the Lord, the beginning of the Reign of God, in terms of blessings.
In terms of the traditions of the day those who were healthy, wealthy, and wise were considered to be blessed by God. Old proverbial wisdom taught the simple doctrine that the good would be rewarded and the wicked punished. Some of the prophets already announced the opposite of that doctrine, because the Day of the Lord would turn things upside down (see Micah 4:6-7; Isaiah 61:1-2). Jesus heaps those eschatological reversals one on top of the other.
The kingdom of heaven will belong to "the poor in spirit." Luke's version reads simply "poor" (Luke 6:20). Matthew's "poor in spirit" might represent an attempt to connect the teaching more directly to Isaiah 61:1: "good news to the oppressed," indicating not an economic class but a group of people prevented from experiencing honor in the community. Moreover, in Psalm 34 (where the "happy are those" appears at verse 8) the psalmist identifies himself as "this poor soul" who had been oppressed. That the kingdom of heaven belongs to them is a contradiction of the popular teaching.
Those who are mourning will be comforted, Jesus announces. Such comforting is the salvation work of God, especially in the preaching of Second Isaiah (40:1; 49:13; 51:3, 12; 52:9). It is also one of the eschatological promises connected with the call of Third Isaiah at 61:2: "The Lord has anointed me ... to comfort all who mourn ..." a passage Jesus applied to himself at Luke 4:16-20.
That "the meek will inherit the earth" calls to mind two different psalms. At Psalm 34:2 the "meek" are those who are invited to listen to the wonders of God and to participate in giving thanks and praise. (This is the third time we have alluded to Psalm 34.) In addition, the expression of Jesus was more like a refrain in the acrostic Psalm 37. "The meek shall inherit the land" appears at verse 11, and they are joined in that inheritance by "those who wait for the Lord" (v. 9), "those blessed by the Lord" (v. 22), "the righteous" (v. 29), and "you" who "wait for the Lord" (v. 34).
The beatitudes go on to announce blessings on those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, on the merciful, on the pure in heart, on the peacemakers, and on those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. The last is expanded by verses 11-12 where the third person changes to the second and the blessing is directed specifically to you who are persecuted "on my account." It is not persecution in general but specifically for those who confess Jesus as Lord in the midst of danger and ridicule. Their reward will be great in heaven, for having followed Jesus in bearing the cross, they will follow him to life eternal.
In the beatitudes Jesus promises the blessings of the kingdom to come. Yet, because he himself is the Son of God, and because in him the promised kingdom is already beginning, those who hear the promised blessings already begin experiencing them here and now. Speaking not as a new Moses "on the mountain" but with the authority of God "on the mountain," Jesus narrows the gap between the future and the present. Those who hear his words in faith already taste the blessings to come.
When we consider the types of persons who are identified as the recipients of divine blessings here, we can see why Paul made such an emphatic point out of God's wisdom and power and the kinds of people God chose to be the church. It certainly would be no way to run an airline, but it is the way God works to gather and run the church. And when you think about it, you might not find it to be all that religious.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Micah 6:1-8
The important thing to remember about this text from Micah is that it represents a court case between Israel and the Lord. God is the plaintiff in the judicial procedure, Israel is the defendant, and the hills, mountains, and foundations of the earth are the jury. God, the plaintiff, presents his case in verses 3-5, Israel, the defendant, replies in verses 6-7, and verse 8 is the verdict that confirms God's position and judges Israel for what she should have done but has not done.
The Lord's most telling accusation against his people is that they have been weary with him (v. 3). God recounts, in verses 4-5, all of his saving acts on behalf of his covenant people in the past. He has delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, given them his guidance in the law and led them safely through the terrors of the wilderness, prevented Balaam from bringing a deadly curse upon them, and brought them through the Jordan from Shittim to their first encampment in the promised land at Gilgal.
Yet despite all of God's loving deeds toward his people in their past history, they have forgotten what God has done. They have not kept that memory of the sacred history that gives a people gratitude, and hope for the future, and patience in the midst of tribulation (surely a three-point sermon). Instead, Israel, like so many in our time, is just weary with God -- weary of her constant pleading with him and inability to find him. She is in some kind of trouble, and she wants God to bail her out, but God has not answered or helped, and Israel is disgusted with him.
What does it take to call this unresponsive deity to her aid? Israel asks (vv. 6-7). Should she sacrifice burnt offerings to him of calves a year old that are so much more valuable than newborns? Would God be satisfied with thousands of rams, as Solomon offered him (1 Kings 8:63), or with literal rivers of precious olive oil used for food and healing? Or maybe, the disgusted speaker says sarcastically, God would like Israel to offer those child sacrifices forbidden in the law (Leviticus 18:21; 20:2-5; Deuteronomy 18:10) and condemned by the prophets as pagan practices (Jeremiah 7:31, et al). What does it take to appease an implacable deity? That is Israel's exasperated question.
The answer is given in the words of God's prophetic spokesman in verse 8 -- an answer that condemns Israel. God has shown his covenant people what is good, and he has shown all of us what is good and what we are to do, for his reply is addressed to "O man," "O 'adam" in the Hebrew, meaning "humankind." The Lord has shown all of us what he requires of us. He has not left us to stumble around in the dark, making up the rules as we go along, and searching vainly to find the proper paths for our lives. No. God has guided us, and he says very plainly how he expects us to act.
First of all, reads our text, God wants us to do "justice," mispat. That can refer to legal justice, and certainly our society is often lacking in just courts of law. But while the meaning of "justice" in this passage includes judicial equity, it is also much broader than that. Mispat means to establish God's order in every area of life -- in our nation and society, our towns and homes. God wants every relationship of life structured and conducted according to his will, given us through the scriptures -- permeated with his love, his fairness, his forgiveness, his mercy, his straight and upright truth.
Second, our text says that what God requires of us is "to love kindness," but once again, the meaning goes beyond our understanding of those words. The term for "kindness" in the Hebrew is hesed, which is a covenant term. It means to be faithful to our covenant with God and with one another, to be bound together in solidarity with them, to be a community that lives in steadfast loyalty to God and to other human beings. And we are to love those ties -- love our relation with our Lord who has made us in his image, love our relation with our neighbors for whom we are always responsible. Thus, faithful covenant solidarity with God and all around us is not understood as a duty here in our text, but as a pleasure, rendered in loving-kindness, because God has first loved us.
Finally, Israel is told in our text that she is expected to walk "humbly" with her God. While that meaning eschews all proud self-righteousness and self-will, the word for "humbly" is hasene'a in the Hebrew, which has the meaning of "attentively," "paying attention to," "watching." We are to walk "attentively" with our God, not in proud self-independence as so many of us desire, but paying attention always to what God wants. We are to watch him for what is good, seeking after his will and not our own, being alert to his guidance and commands for the way we conduct our lives. Through sermon and scripture, prayer and meditation, we are to be intent on God's guidance of our steps and future. And if we do that, then it will become possible also to "do justice" and "love hesed." The first two requirements rest on the third -- to seek always after our God, in every relationship of our daily round.
The prophet Micah, throughout his book, is sure that Israel never lives up to these requirements laid upon her by her Lord. And of course we never live up to them either, do we? All by ourselves, with our own strength and will, we repeatedly do not rely in all things upon our Lord.
But within the book of Micah, there is also the promise of a Messiah, come from Bethlehem Ephrathah (5:2-4) -- a Messiah whose birth we celebrated a few short weeks ago at Christmas. According to our gospel lesson from Matthew 5, that Messiah once again laid these requirements of God upon us, when he gave his Sermon on the Mount. And his requirements and these of Micah seem impossible for us to meet -- as they are, indeed, if the Messiah has left us on our own.
But the gospel, the good news, of course, is that he has not left us to depend upon our own devices and wills to satisfy the requirements of our God. Instead, Jesus Christ has forgiven us all our sins and shortcomings by his death and resurrection. And then, he has sent his Spirit into our hearts, transforming our lives and giving us the willpower and ability to do the good that we are required by God to do. We do not earn our way into the favor of the Lord, good Christians -- not by multitudes of sacrifices, as Micah says. Rather, God accepts us as "good" because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And then he enables us to do the "good" by the power of his Holy Spirit. Our responsibility is to trust that God in Jesus Christ can, in fact, work that transformation in our lives. For as Christ works in us, we will, indeed, find that we do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
