Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Imagine with me a nation. This nation has a remarkable story to tell of adversity, divine
providence, and seeing hope come alive in their midst. With their lips, the people of this nation
– particularly its rulers and elites – talk the talk of religiosity. They appeal to their heritage as a
way to justify the policies and actions of the present. And yet, the religious façade is used as a
tool of corruption, inequality, and exploitation. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots is
ever widening. Political and religious leaders appeal to religion to justify practices that generate
wealth for themselves at the expense of the vulnerable among them. The oppressed, the
unprotected, widows, foreigners, minorities, the poor bear the cost of the nation’s unjust
systems. While the powerful “talk the talk” of religion, they fail to “walk the walk.” They are
arrogant and uncaring towards any and all, particularly those who would challenge their power.
Out of that nation the voice of a prophet is heard that says no amount of religious ritual
or talk can save the nation from the damning fruits of its life. It has strayed far from God’s hopes
and intentions, both for the nation and for the world. With all the breath the prophet has in his
lungs, he tells anyone who will listen that the people of this nation have forgotten their story
and, in doing so, have forgotten God. They have fallen out of right relationship with God and,
consequently, with one another and the world around them.
That prophet, Micah, emerged within Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, in the 8th
century. He was one in a line of prophets who called the people of Israel to repent, to
remember God’s call, to remember that they were once oppressed, to remember God’s care for
them, and to pattern their life accordingly. Because, after being led out of bondage in Egypt;
after being given the law which, if practiced faithfully, would make them the blessing to the
world they were called to be; after arriving in and settling in the promised land; Israel became
unfaithful.
Our reading from Micah this morning puts us in a cosmic courtroom where God, the
judge and the prosecutor, is exacerbated with Israel. God wonders if God has done something
wrong. Has God misguided or mistreated God’s people, “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” But then God recounts God’s saving acts for Israel,
recounts their history and the ways God has cared for God’s people. A voice, speaking
rhetorically on behalf of Israel, wonders what sacrifice, what religious practice, what ritual
might assuage God’s righteous anger and bewilderment. None of this matters or makes any
difference as we arrive at, perhaps, one of the most well-known verses in Scripture:
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?
God desires more than empty words. God desires more than ritual divorced from faithful
action. God desires justice that is measured by how well the most vulnerable fare in the
community, a loyal love that is commensurate with the kind of loyal love that God has showed
toward us, and a careful walking in one’s ethical life. Naming or claiming religion – all the
spiritual or religious practices – they mean nothing if we aren’t a voice for the oppressed, the
exploited, the weary among us; they mean nothing if we don’t respond to God’s love and
kindness by sharing it with others; they mean nothing if we aren’t listening for God’s voice and
invitation…and following.
Move through history to a different nation. Faced with economic instability, extreme
inflation, and political unrest, the people of this nation long for prosperity and stability. A
charismatic politician emerges, promising that he can unify the country, restore national pride,
rebuild the economy, and weed out the internal threats to the nation’s thriving. He capitalizes
on the disillusionment of the people and tells them they are not to blame for their
circumstances. Naming a minority group as the source of all that is wrong this leader galvanizes
the people against the “other.”
Slowly at first, this leader grasps more and more power. He dismantles democratic
institutions, installs sympathetic partners in positions of power, and creates police forces to
silence dissent. The scapegoating of the “other” for the nation’s challenges increases, starting
with discriminatory policies then moving to more overt actions like displacement, arrest and
detention, and then finally death for many. The leader has become an authoritarian, dragging
the country into international conflict.
All along the way, Christian language is used to support and justify the policies and
actions. And the Church, finally being in a position of prestige, willingly goes along. Despite all
signs pointing to a perversion of the gospel, the church – both Christian leaders and everyday
Christians – curries favor with the authoritarian leader and contorts their faith to hold on to
their place of privilege and power. Christianity and violent nationalism have become
synonymous and inseparable.
Out of that nation a prophet arises. A young theologian who teaches and preaches and
proclaims that true Christianity is not something we can put on like a cloak to sanctify what is
antithetical to the gospel. He says that following Jesus is not a half-hearted endeavor, but rather
something that demands the whole of oneself…even if that puts us at odds with the powers of
violence and empire.
That prophet, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taught, wrote, and spoke out against the rise of the
Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. But more than speaking about and
resisting politics, Bonhoeffer spoke about the gospel and the failure of the church to live by it.
He decried the leaders of the German national church for giving up following Jesus in exchange
for positions of worldly power. He urged everyday Christians to live lives of radical faithfulness
to Jesus, regardless of the social or political cost.
In Bonhoeffer’s seminal work, The Cost of Discipleship, written in 1937, he argued that
the German church had secularized and politicized the Christian faith and begun to live by what
he called “cheap grace.” “Cheap grace,” he said, “is grace without discipleship, grace without
the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Cheap grace – or Christianity as a
general concept or spiritual language rather than a living relationship with God and others –
allowed the German church to support Hitler, the Holocaust, and world war.
Focusing on Jesus’ calling of the disciples, which we heard in the lectionary the last two
weeks, and then moving into the Sermon of the Mount, part of which we heard this morning in
the Beatitudes, Bonhoeffer says true and costly discipleship is a life utterly and completely
shaped by following Jesus. The call of Jesus to follow him, Bonhoeffer says, “is not an abstract
doctrine, but the re-creation of the whole of our lives. The only right and proper way to [be a
disciple] is quite literally to go with Jesus.” Rejecting that call was the failure of the German
church which shaped the horrors that followed.
Draw what parallels you will between the world of the prophet Micah or the world of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and our current world, but the point stands regardless: no matter what era,
administration, or nation in which we find ourselves, the call to follow Jesus, our call as a the
church, the path of discipleship requires the whole of us and the whole of our lives. It is not a
nice addition to what once was; it reshapes everything. And our world so desperately needs to
be reshaped. Because there is truth in the way our world was recently described by Stephen
Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Trump. He said:
We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and
everything else. But we live in a world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by
force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed
since the beginning of time.
He’s not wrong, at least about most of it. Strength and force and power produce results.
Privilege and power feel good to hold while they last. The stronger among us – whether
individuals or groups or nations – can take what they want with little immediate consequence.
But what that vision of the world gets wrong is the reality that existed at the beginning of time
and that will last at the end.
Because we live in a world that was created in love, that was called “very good” by its
creator, in which humanity once lived in unbroken relationship with God and one another. And
God, the creator and ruler of all things, is not a God that rules by strength, or force, or power,
but rules in loving kindness, in gentleness, in righteous anger, yes, but also in mercy.
What assessments of the world like Stephen Miller’s misses; what the capitulation of the
German national church to authoritarian and violent power forgets; what religious language and
ritual to sanctify corruption, inequality, and exploitation of the marginalized in ancient Israel
gets wrong; is that that world of love and kindness and mercy and justice still exists…and it will
be the only thing left after nations rise and fall, after the forces of power lose their strength,
after those in places of privilege fall. Because strength and force and power don’t last. What
does and will last is the kingdom of God.
God’s kingdom turns everything in our world upside down…which is actually right side
up. While strength and force and power are the ways of the world, the way of the kingdom,
which is no less present and real, is something else entirely. Those who are blessed – who are
content and happy and fulfilled with a peace that cannot be taken away – are those who are at
the end of the ropes and are desperate for God, those grieved by all that is evil in the world,
those who want no part in the world’s pursuit of power, those who long to see all that is good
and right in the world prevail, those eager to aid all in need and ready to forgive all who wrong
them, those who single-mindedly pursue the will of God, those who put peace and the common
good over their rights and interests, those who overcome evil with good. Those are the ones
who are truly blessed. As the Apostle Paul tells us, this is “foolishness,” but it is the way of Jesus,
the way of God’s kingdom, the way of the cross and sacrificial love.
It’s not a coincidence that Matthew put the Beatitudes right after Jesus called his
disciples. There is a reason Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship is an exposition on the Sermon
on the Mount. It is the disciples – those who follow Jesus not just with their words, but with
their lives – who are able to see the kingdom of God around them. It is those who have said yes
to Jesus’ call to follow him that are able to look through the darkness and chaos of our world
and see hope. It is those who have learned to live and love like Jesus that can be a part of the
healing of the world.
Jesus is calling you and me. Jesus is calling us, the Church. The call is the same that the
disciples heard, “Come and follow me.” It may seem impractical – foolish, even – given the state
of our world. But just as dangerous as compromising our faith for power and privilege is
cynicism and inaction. This world is not as it should be and the Beatitudes remind us what is
true and lasting. And if all else fails, if you feel stuck, you need something more practical to do,
remember what is good and what God requires of us: to seek justice, love kindness, and walk
humbly with God. When we do that, God’s kingdom comes.