It Starts Small

The book of Micah belongs to a larger collection called the minor prophets. This collection is also known as the book of the twelve. The book of the twelve focuses on justice. It explores the ways God brings peace into the world and into our lives.

G. K. Chesterton said, and John Perkins quotes in his book One Blood, “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem,” which is a statement as true in our society as it was in Micah’s day.

Micah spends most of the first half of the book trying to get his people to see the problem. Everyone was worried about Assyria invading from the North. Micah’s trying to tell them that they are focused on the wrong issue. Their true problems are already here and have been here for a long time. In chapter two, we see him use the image of God leading his people through a breach in the city walls. God was going out, not into the conquered city. He was leading his people out of Jerusalem with all of its oppression and into exile.

I want you to see the truth in Chesterton’s words. It is not that we can not see the solutions most of the time. The issue is that we are not even seeing the problems—not in ourselves, our churches, our societies. We do not see the problems, or we don’t understand them rightly. In chapter two, Micah lays out the problems present in his society. He admits that his people probably don’t want to hear about it. Then he asks a beautiful question.

He asks, “Don’t my words do good to those who walk uprightly?”

Is not it helpful to point out problems no one seems to see?

Is it not that helpful if you actually want to work towards peace?

Peace. Tension. Justice.

There is a tension in the book of Micah. The Bible in general highlights this tension between peace and the work of justice. You can see the tension most clearly in the life of Christ, himself, and in Jesus’ teachings. When Jesus is born, the angel declares peace on earth. In the same chapter, Herod orders a genocide of his own people and their children. When Jesus begins his ministry, he addresses the tension. He says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” Or as Beuchner paraphrases that first teaching, “The Kingdom of God is so close we can almost reach out our hands and touch it. It is so close that sometimes it almost reaches out and takes us by the hand.”

Two passages today that bear this tension to us, the tension between hope and justice. Micah 5:1-5; 6:1-8.

Our hope is in Christ, not in ourselves. The tension between hope and justice exists because he draws us into the work. He’s all powerful, able to harvest a vineyard with a word, and yet he sends out laborers into the vineyard. We know that one day we will live in the New Jerusalem, in the house of God forever. We will eat at the table of our Lord together with the saints in peace. We know that we will dwell secure. Christ’s kingdom will stretch to the ends of the earth. He will be our peace. These ideas are in tension with the biblical insistence. God’s people should be engaged in the work of justice in our communities today.

I want to give you a bad analogy this morning which far too many people believe. Imagine going for s walk from your home. A long walk. Image getting to where you are going and you are tired, so you decide to take a train home. But waiting on the train you grow impatient, and eventually decide to walk back to save time. So most of us can probably guess exactly what happened. As you walked past the train stop near your house, the train rolls by. You saved yourself no time and expended a lot of effort. If you had just waited through your impatience you could have rested.

So if the kingdom of God is about us as a people going somewhere we are longing to be, it’s about the future. It’s entirely in the future. Then, us doing anything to get there is just wasted energy. If justice in the church is like a political movement, we are trying to change the world. We see it needs to be changed. So, should we just wait? We’ll get to the same place in the same amount of time. Again, that’s a bad analogy far too many people believe.

If that is your thought (and it had been mine for many years), I want you to change the way you’re thinking.

The kingdom of God is not a kingdom far far away. The kingdom of God is not a place at all. You can not go there, because according to Christ, it’s already come, on this earth, in this life. You can not wait for something that’s already arrived. The kingdom of God is not something we can create as a church. Instead, it is something we reach out and touch. Or, it reaches out to us. It’s something we find. God is calling us to value it the way he values the kingdom. So repent. The time is full, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

In our passage, Micah calls out Bethlehem as the place from which salvation will come for the people of God. This is why we read this passage at Christmas. We have seen the salvation of God in Christ, who was born in a manger in Bethlehem. This makes a certain kind of sense in our minds, and we can regard it as prophesy.

But have you thought about what sense would it have made in the minds of Micah’s hearers?

Their minds would have gone to Bethlehem for the same reason Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem in the first place. I do not mean the census—I mean because Bethlehem was the city of David, and because city gives the wrong image. Bethlehem was rural. The name literally means “house of bread,” it was a farming community. Bethlehem is often mentioned in today’s churches. You could be forgiven for thinking it was the seat of power for the whole region. For Micah’s readers, Bethlehem was a footnote in King David’s biography.

Salvation for Israel from Bethlehem does not make any kind of sense. God does surprising things. Once, God delivered Israel from the stronger nations around it through a shepherd boy from Bethlehem. Micah is not guessing where Jesus might be born. He encourages his people to remember the history of God’s faithfulness to them. He does not know at this moment what exactly God will do to deliver his people. He trusts that God will save them from their own sins and the oppression of other nations. Micah simply has faith that this is who God is. God will stay with us and guide us through our wanderings. He will bring salvation for us from the least likely place, and when we least expect it.

Think about Palm Sunday. Typically we would be reading the story of the triumphal entry, Christ riding into Jerusalem to the crowds shouting “Hosanna!” which means, God, please come save us now. And we all feel a tension in that story. We know it’s not going to work out, not the way they want. We know Jesus is going to do and be something and someone they don’t expect. I would tell you, the tension in that story is the same tension I have been talking about this whole time. They, like us, do not understand that the kingdom they were wanting was already here. They were willing to revolt to obtain it if only Jesus were willing to ignite the flame. That kingdom was already at hand.

So I gave you my bad analogy for the kingdom of God and working for justice. Now I want to give you some good ones for what the kingdom of God is like. We are always crying out to God. We cry for and crown kings like Saul. These kings make us competitive with other nations. They help us win. We’re always wanting to walk down the wide road. We desire to pass through the wide gate of the capitol. Meanwhile, where is God? How is he working? What is he doing? He’s in Bethlehem anointing shepherd boys. He walks up the narrow path. It’s all knotted with tree roots. There is a gate you could not even get a chariot through if you tried.

Working for justice in the kingdom of God is like using another good analogy for what the kingdom of God is like. It is really more about finding something valuable in places. These are places that no one but God thought to look. It is like finding a treasure or a pearl in a field. For the first time, you understand that this small thing is invaluable. It is worth more than everything else you have bought in your entire life.

God is in unexpected places. The shepherd boys and carpenters from Bethlehem are sometimes worth more than all of Jerusalem and Rome combined.

When Jesus died a few days after palm Sunday, it seems a lot of people went home disappointed. I think of the two disciples on the road to Emmeus, going home. I’m sure they were not the only ones. That Passover was meant to be the moment everything changed. Finally revolution, with this miracle worker at the head of Jewish armies. Finally, freedom. Finally we can create a kingdom with some justice in it. Jesus is the only one looking at the Roman soldiers. He is thinking, there may be something in this field. It might be worth everything I have.

And of course everything did change. He did not go to Rome on the broad street and knock down the broad gate and declare victory. He went into death instead, where no one else would dare to go. He found something valuable in us. It was valuable enough for him to give everything he had to buy us back into his kingdom. All the people shouting hosanna would have their prayers answered that day. They just did not understand. We don’t understand until Jesus shows up in our life and at our table.

Justice is not a train that arrives at the same time you do. It is not a movement that is finally going to overthrow whoever is on top at the moment. It is not a thousand rams or ten thousand rivers of oil or a firstborn child. Justice is a kingdom very near. You can almost touch it. It is a king so close he can reach across heaven and earth to reach us.

In the end, justice is about seeing the way God sees and valuing what God values. It grows like leaven in bread. It goes from one person to another until the whole lump is leavened. Justice is not a destination. It is a law that sometimes contradicts other laws. So, you have to choose this day whom you will obey and what you will value. I pray that what you find is worth everything.

I will end just by returning to the famous passage in Micah 6. I know I did not really touch on it. It is only because it is a passage which does not really need any explanation. Like when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, we know who our neighbors are. We do not need further explanation, we simply need to trust and obey. Micah repeatedly reviews the history of Israel. He demonstrates that the Lord desires and anticipates blessing his people. To bless them and not curse them. He is standing watching the road, waiting for us to come home. Over and over again, we are the ones choosing to abandon the true kingdom. We know it is at hand, but we do not look or reach out. We do not value the people he values. We see the treasure in the field. We walk away thinking we would rather keep what we have. We don’t want to redeem that thing with dirt all over it.

⁶ What should I bring before the Lord
when I come to bow before God on high?
Should I come before him with burnt offerings,
with year-old calves?
⁷ Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams
or with ten thousand streams of oil?
Should I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the offspring of my body for my own sin?
⁸ Mankind, he has told each of you what is good
and what it is the Lord requires of you:
to act justly,
to love faithfulness,
and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:6-8

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