So Neil said to me when leaving the church last week, “well that was another cheery reading.” Those of you who were here last week and for the last few weeks will know he was being sarcastic. The readings for this series on the minor prophets have been rather intense to say the least.
Personally, I find their social critique reassuring as I try to make sense of government policies that benefit people who have two or more mansions while others are homeless, political parties that continue to debate about committing to net zero despite coral bleaching, algal bloom and all the many other signs that we are literally destroying our world, and nations that continue to build armies and will not commit to nuclear disarmament despite the horror and destruction of war. The prophet’s witness, to a God that is not actually ok with this and has and does and will call people to account on it, helps me name and manage my rage.
But as we have reflected on a number of times throughout this series the prophets are always about judgement and hope. Their fury and rebuke must be balanced with messages of hope that things can be different and so this week it has been good to have something a little cheerier.
As part of my preparation for the service each week I try to read the reading each day. It is my way of trying to really inhabit the story and I have to admit I did appreciate starting my day with the hope, the joy and the beauty of this reading.
But, as always, before we get into it let’s pray, “We thank You, holy God, for Your word which You have revealed to us in creation, through Jesus our saviour and our sacred Scriptures. We pray this morning that you will speak to us afresh through this word and that it may dwell in us and amongst us. Amen.
So Micah is actually the sixth of the minor prophets. We have skipped over Jonah as Mel is going to tell the Godly Play story of Jonah at our family service in 2 weeks’ time.
You will note on our table that Micah is a contemporary of Hosea and Amos. Hosea and Amos were based in the Northern Kingdom of Israel and their message focused solely on them. Whereas Micah was from the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He lived in a town called Moresheth, 30 kilometres outside of Jerusalem. His message was for Israel and Judah.
As I said in the sermon on Amos, it was a time of relative strength and prosperity for both Israel and Judah. Scholars sometimes refer to it as a biblical “silver age,” second only to the golden age of David and Solomon. However, it was also a time of self-serving rulers, corrupt judges, false prophets, and idolatrous people. Much of this wealth and prosperity was fueled by unjust practices and as always it was not evenly distributed. The people of small towns in particular, did not prosper in the same ways as the people from the capital cities of Jerusalem and Samaria. This was something that Micah was particularly attuned to coming from a rural village himself and he critiqued it vehemently,
“Woe to those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! They covet fields and seize them, houses and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance.
Therefore, thus says the Lord: Now, I am devising against this family an evil from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk arrogantly, for it will be an evil time.”
It was also a time of military and territorial expansion. Something that was also critiqued by Isaiah and Amos and now Micah,
“Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets give oracles for money.
Because of you Zion shall be ploughed as a field and Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins.”
However, in the following chapter in the verses we read Micah envisages something different. In place of war, oppression, greed and injustice Micah proclaims the peace, law and justice of God.
While, the message of Micah has this specific audience and context, its message is again universal across time and place.
Micah’s vision of a time when “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks,” is a vision that Christians continue to draw upon. The modern ploughshares movement which began in the 1980’s is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian Pacifist movement that advocates resistance to war.
Shane Claiborne has recently put out a book called “beating guns” telling the story of his efforts to combat gun violence in America. Deeply concerned about school shooting, loss of life to guns and inspired by the idea of beating swords into ploughshares Claiborne opened RAWtools in Philadelphia n 2022. RAWtools is a workshop that takes guns off the streets and transforms them into works of art and everyday items such as tools and musical instruments.
And this sculpture titled “Let Us Beat our Swords into Ploughshares” stands in the North garden of the UN Headqurters. It is meant to symbolize the desire to put an end to war and to convert the means of destruction into creative tools for the benefit of humankind. It was presented to the United Nations in December 1959 by the Government of the USSR. Some might consider this ironic in light of Russia’s current war against the Ukraine. But I hope it remains a prophetic reminder that it has not always been this way and that it need not always be this way.
This call for peace by the prophet Micah, anticipates Jesus – the Prince of Peace. In the sermon on the mount he declares,
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
He goes on to say,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evildoer. But whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. . .
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
And of course his actions on the cross demonstrate his fierce commitment to this.
When one of Jesus’ disciples cuts of the ear off, of one of the slaves of the high priest who had come to arrest him, Jesus said,
“Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?”
This week our bible study group chat had a little debate about the war between Israel and Gaza. There was a difference of opinion, but we were able to disagree respectfully and civilly. It was a very small disagreement really and not a big deal in the scheme of things, but I think this is where peace starts. The ability to resist the temptation to just have respectful conversations with people who agree with you entirely is a small act of peacemaking in our ultra polarised world. And I think it matters.
This conversation led me on a deep dive into groups in Israel and Palestine who are working together for peace. I found myself reading about groups such as “Combatants for Peace,” a group of ex-combatant Israelis and Palestinians who have now rejected all forms of violence in order to end the occupation and search for peaceful, equitable solutions to the conflict. And the Parents’ Circle Families Forum, that brings together Palestinian and Israeli families whose loved ones have been killed in the conflict.
These groups have been working together for peace long before October 7th and the current war.
At a recent gathering members of these groups came together to mourn and declare that war between their two peoples is not the inevitable cost of securing a Jewish state or creating a Palestinian one.
A Palestinian member of Combatants for Peace, who has lost 60 members of his extended family in Gaza, spoke. He said “The Israeli army is still killing shamelessly. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist in their eyes. I personally understand the great fear and hurt that struck Israelis after the events of Oct. 7. But does killing tens of thousands of people, causing hunger, fear, terror, and indescribable pain, promise security and peace for Israelis?”
An Israeli woman, whose son was murdered at the music festival on October 7th also shared, “In the few times that I am able to raise my head above my private pain at the loss of my most beloved son, I find only one goal to live for—to search for what I can do to help our wounded humanity to heal, so that no more mothers will be broken by the killing, the loss, the violence.”
A Palestinian member of Combatants for Peace responded, “I am a mother, and I listened to the Israeli mother talk about the murder of her beloved son. And I think of my daughter. I think about the rapes and murders of civilians in Israel, about the genocide in Gaza, about the hostages, about the killings in my home city. And I cry. Yet being here gives hope. Being here is the most loyal action I can take as a Palestinian and a Muslim—to try to listen to the other person above the noise of the war and the hatred.”
These people, refusing to take sides, but still working for peace, give me hope too.
No message on the prophet Micah would be complete of course without Micah’s arguably most famous passage from chapter 6. I will finish with this verse,
“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
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?
This is what I see in these people who are working for peace. This is what I see in so many of you who are working for peace in this divided community. May these words be for us a source of strength and encouragement on the journey of life and faith.
