I don't have a sermon for us this morning. Now I know that some of you are probably thinking, "Thank God," and you are ready to clap, jump up and get another cup of coffee, maybe a cookie or two. But before you do that, let me explain myself. What I mean to say is that I don't have a clear understanding and insight into the authoritative word of God, at least as Micah shares it. I have to admit that I have struggled for much of my career with the question that Micah the prophet asked of his readers thousands of years ago: what does the Lord require of me? And what am I to make of his answer: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? I struggle to make sense of that; so I share that struggle with us this morning, with perhaps no permanent conclusions, only more questions and considerations.

You see, I've always believed that we are to live our faith in every aspect of our lives, that every moment, every experience is to be permeated with God's spirit and Christ's grace. No part of our life is to be divorced from God, nothing that we do should be different from what Christ would do, or did in his life, Nothing that we think should stray from Christ's words. Many people who call themselves Christian would claim agreement with that understanding. Yet the reality is that we really don't believe it. We do make separations and distinctions between our religious faith and the way we live our lives and how we think about our life together on this earth.

When I was just beginning in pastoral ministry, I would hear people's excuses about why they didn't come to church anymore. One of the primary ones was that the people who went to church were hypocrites. They said one thing on Sunday morning, and did the opposite the rest of the week. I don't hear that excuse much anymore, probably because many people in our society have never been church attenders and therefore don't need an excuse because they have never made the distinction between talking about faith and living faith.

I always thought that the label of hypocrisy was a bad excuse to use even if it were sometimes true. After all, I certainly had seen that sin lived out too many times in parishioners. So I came up with what I thought was a thought-provoking answer. "Church is a home for sinners, not a haven for saints." What better place for hypocrites to be than in church where we have the opportunity to save sinners. The implication was, of course, that why should this sinner be calling other sinners names? If church is indeed the place for sinners to come and be welcomed, why wasn't this person coming? Usually people making this excuse quickly changed the topic and got away from me before I could ask them for their real reasons.

I have recently begun to question if church people really are hypocrites. Oh, I am sure there are a few, but I wonder if it really is a valid accusation for church people. I may have been unfair to agree with that label in formulating my smart come-back to excuses for not coming to church. I have begun to think that perhaps what people see in us who are church people is not falsely living what we say we believe, but the practice of separating life into separate containers or cubicles so that they don't contaminate one another. We have our work lives that center on getting something done for pay. We have our play life where we do fun things that make us feel good. We have our money lives where we accumulate, invest, and spend our finances to get what we think we really need. We have our social lives where we only fellowship and share with those who meet our standards. And on we can go. With all of these different compartments, we still have another life that we segregate: we have our religious life that centers on our church and on our bibles. Somehow we don't let any of them touch one another. And if we do, serious conflicts arise that call into question the living of all of the different aspects of our lives. It's easier and more orderly to keep
them separated.

As I said, I firmly believe that our religious lives are supposed to define and integrate all of the other aspects of our lives, so that we don't have different compartments or cubicles where we push various things to hold onto them. Rather our faith is to help us to evaluate what is compatible and what goes together and discard all of the rest. Our lives are meant to be whole and integrated so that whatever we do, think, or say will be consistent with the words of Christ to his people.

What does the Lord require? For ancient Israel of Micah's time, the question surrounded events of great transition. Israel and Judah had been enjoying a time of great prosperity because the powerful nations surrounding them were distracted. Then the tides changed, and the powerful country of Assyria conquered and destroyed Israel and forced Judah to pay tribute, give up her independence, and accept foreign corrupting elements into her worship.

For ordinary citizens, the crush of Assyria upon the nation was appalling. The rich and powerful Jews used their influence to exploit the poor and vulnerable making the gap between rich and poor wider. Judah as a nation used its budget to arm itself and to build fortifications to hold off further invaders rather than care for the needs of its citizens. Somebody had pay the tribute to Assyria to keep the nation from being destroyed, so the rich and powerful protected their wealth by making sure that the poor and dispossessed paid far more than their fair share. Life had become desperate and hopeless for those with nothing, while the wealthy and powerful still enjoyed their fine lifestyles. As life began to get even worse, Micah tried to provide hope in a hopeless situation, but tried to do it honestly and straightforwardly. And one of the things he did was to disturb his
readers with hard questions about what they were doing with their lives.

Micah says, "Our current situation is a punishment from God. What must we do to change God's mind? How shall we establish and live our relationship with our creator and savior God? Should our worship emphasize burnt offerings? Maybe thousands of offerings with thousands of rivers of oil to make them burn brightly? Or maybe the sacrifice of our oldest children to show that we will give up our best so that we may keep what we have? Will this satisfy God and encourage God to help us out of our present difficulties? Will this get us back into the good graces of our God? Will this enable the good times to roll again?"

Maybe to put it into our modern context, we would say today, "God, would it help if all of us read our bibles everyday? What if we agreed to memorize 25 verses of scripture every day for the next year? Or what if we tatooed and branded John 3:16 on the backs of our oldest children?"

Sounds utterly ridiculous, doesn't it? We do need to read our bibles, probably become very familiar with some biblical verses to help us through difficult times, and even live John 3:16. But doing only these things and going to extremes like tatooing and branding is still centering on what I must do to appease God, not how I ought to live a Godly or Christlike life. Likewise with the ancient Jews, scripture provided a sacrificial means to maintain a healthy relationship with God, but offering the appropriate sacrifice, or offering an exaggerated and unreal number like ten thousand sacrifices to turn God's head is mere folly. And to even suggest sacrificing a child testifies to the corrupting foreign influences that threatened Judah's worship. So what is it in worship that God desires or demands?

Micah uses words completely opposite of what we would expect. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your Lord. What in the world does that mean and how do we live them? If one does justice, how can we be kind and humble before evil? And if we are humble and kind, won't the powerful walk all over us and crush us? Maybe God intervene like a big brother and beat up the bullies who taunt us or try to hurt us? I rather doubt it, but God's power is more powerful than our enemies. So how is that played out?

I've been considering lately that perhaps it has to do with living a consistent and whole life without compartments and cubicles to keep every thing separate and orderly. Our work lives, play lives, social lives, money lives, and religious lives and all of the rest of our lives are to be mixed up and mingled with one another, messy though that may be. Maybe life isn't supposed to be orderly where the pieces don't touch. Maybe life is supposed to be filled all at once with all of the experiences that we have; and maybe life is supposed to find ways to integrate the different parts and make them consistent with one another,
tossing out the pieces that don't fit and looking for the missing pieces that will fill in the gaps.

This is where I believe our faith comes in. We use our religious faith to form the framework and guidelines and rules for how to live the rest of our lives and to make sense of how the puzzle pieces are supposed to fit together. To do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God help to form the border for how life is supposed to look and for how the picture will finally come together.

As I said, I don't have any conclusions or authoritative words that give full sense to this passage and to our question. So I wonder how we put our lives together so that they make sense in living our faith? How does our faith guide the rest of our lives? Do how we live our lives have any bearing on how our nation remains faithful to God? Are there any parallels between Judah and America in how God may be judging us? What does it mean for our nation and for us as individuals "to do justice, to live kindness, and to walk humbly with our God?" I leave the struggle for answers with you.