Sermon:  “What Does the Lord Require of You? Do Justice”

Our Hebrew Scripture lesson today is actually the same one you heard read last week, but it’s important enough to our life together as a community of faith that we’ll be hearing it again today – and for the next 2 weeks – as I begin a 3-part sermon series based on it, and our lectionary Gospel selections from Mark. 

Let us pray now our prayer of illumination:  Lord, open our ears to the power and promise of your Word.  May your Holy Spirit guide and inspire us as we listen for your voice “still speaking” to each of our hearts.  Amen.

Micah 6:6-8

⁶“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? ⁷Will 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?”  ⁸He 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?

What does the Lord require of you? Today’s sermon looks at just that first part of the answer, to do justice.  We’ve heard that answer from the prophet Micah more than once, I expect – since it’s the text of a beautiful song that we’re singing as our Benediction Response today (I love it; it was sung at my ordination), but Micah 6:8 is also a part of our church’s Open & Affirming statement.  It’s there, I’m guessing, because those who wrote our statement believe it is a part of our church’s mission to do justice by extending open hospitality to all who would (as I say in our invitation to communion) “seek to know the presence of Christ” in our midst.  That’s one way we do justice here, but we Christians – like Micah’s Jewish people before us, our brothers and sisters in covenant with God – we Christians must continue to ask ourselves, “How ELSE do we do justice?” 

The answer to that question is not always obvious, but I believe today’s New Testament lesson from the book of Mark holds some clues for us, although this text is one of the most difficult teachings in the Gospels.  I would invite you to read along in your pew Bibles, if you’d like, because the whole context is important – it’s on page 876.  And for that reason, to “set the scene” for the action, I’m actually starting a little earlier than it says in your bulletin, with Mark 9, verse 33.  This house in Capernaum is probably Peter’s house, the one where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law in Mark, chapter 1, and where, in chapter 2, the friends rip off the roof to lower down their paralyzed friend to be healed.  So the child in the story here is very likely Peter’s own little daughter or son. 

Hear the Word of the Lord:

Mark 9:38-50

³³Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” 

³⁸John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

⁴²“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

 ⁴⁹“For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Do you see what I mean now by how important it is to know the setting of a text, why our colonial ancestors insisted on whole chapters being read at once?  Taken out of context, just the part about getting thrown into hell could easily be abused by an angry preacher with an abusive agenda.  When the disciples, early in this text, start “denomination bashing,” as they urge Jesus to condemn that rival exorcist who doesn’t do things exactly according to their ways, Jesus corrects them with a statement that I think speaks strongly to our PASSION for tolerance in the United Church of Christ, ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. The word “United” in our name speaks to our denomination’s strong commitment to not only welcome all who come to us from different faith paths but our belief in the importance of ecumenical work with other Christians – a connection we celebrate especially on this World Communion Sunday – AND to interfaith work, with people of Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and other faiths around the world.

We are so committed, in fact, to NOT judging others that the rest of this text is likely to make us uncomfortable, but I would argue that it helps to clarify the difference between openness and licentiousness, or reckless disregard for justice.  In other words, we are an Open & Affirming congregation – we are committed to welcoming the stranger – but we are also a Safe Church, which does everything we can to ensure the safety of our children here, including protecting them from strangers.  This text helps us to manage that tension. If we listen with compassion for those Jesus in the original Greek calls the mikros, his “little ones,” I think it sounds a lot different. 

This text contains good news for those who have experienced domestic violence, for instance – those who’ve lived through physical, sexual, or emotional abuse may feel a sanitized, Sunday School “gentle Jesus meek and mild” has little to say or do to help them.  They need Jesus to get good and angry on their behalf.  In my ministry, I’ve felt honored that so many domestic violence survivors have been willing to share their stories with me – and through them, I’ve learned a lot about how we in the church have failed to do justice for them, in many cases.  As Domestic Violence Awareness Month has just begun, maybe it’s good to start here, with one of those stories. 

I was just meeting a new couple to start planning their wedding, and the first question bride asked me was, “Do you think it’s wrong that I don’t want my dad to walk me down the aisle?”  And as we Socratic teachers are wont to do, I gently lobbed the question back to her: “Why don’t you tell me why that matters so much to you?”  And she started telling me her story:  Both bride and groom were both Christians, but not members of my church.  The bride said, because she was from a Christian family, her parents, grandparents, and home church pastor were forcing her to forgive her father – something she had vowed never to do – so that he could walk her down the aisle at her wedding.  She really wanted her stepfather to do that, but both her father’s parents and her mother had told her that wasn’t “fair” to her “real dad.”  Well, like many of you, I know Jesus taught us to forgive people – so I was inclined at first to think maybe she was being petty.  But fortunately I asked her to tell me more about what he had done that needed forgiving.

She told me that when she was about 8 or 9 years old, he started sneaking into her bedroom late at night to have sex with her.  And this sexual abuse didn’t end until she was 16, when she decided to report him – and he was arrested, and tried, and jailed.  I asked then what many of us with no experience with abuse will ask, “Why did you put up with it so long?”  That is so the wrong question, now I’ve come to understand– because in it is so much implied judgment.  But I knew right away from her face that I’d said the wrong thing.  So I tried again, “I’m so sorry.  That must have been horrible.  I can’t imagine what that must have been like for a little girl to go through.  What finally gave you the courage to turn him in?”  And the answer, one I’ve heard now, tragically, many times since, was, “I did it for my baby sister.  I found out he had started with her when she was 9.  It had been going on for 3 years and I didn’t even know, because she was afraid to talk about it too.” 

When the father was arrested and put on trial, his lawyer accused her (at 16) of being jealous of the attention her 12-year-old little sister was getting – and making up lies to get back at him.  And her mother, too, came to the father’s defense – attacking her own daughter’s character, which was easy to do since she had learned to ease the pain in high school with just enough substance abuse to get her in a little trouble.  Miraculously, though, justice was done – if you call it “justice” that he got a 5-year sentence, half of it off for good behavior.  The mother did decide to divorce him while he was in prison, and she remarried someone everyone agreed was a much better man.  I asked the bride how she had been able to forgive her mother after that betrayal, and she said, “Well, she didn’t know what she was doing.”  She forgave her, because she didn’t know what she was doing.  Sound familiar?  She said, “Mom really did want to believe I was lying, that we both were lying, because she was so afraid of what would happen to us if my dad went to jail – since she had never worked outside our home.  She knew if dad lost his job, we might lose our house.  The worst thing was we would lose our health insurance, which was a very big deal for us, since my youngest brother has cystic fibrosis.  She was just trying to protect us.  And the Bible, after all, tells us we should forgive people.”

I told her how much I admired her for forgiving her mom – and I said, because she asked, that I would pray with her and for her that someday she could forgive with her dad.  But I said that for her family to try to FORCE forgiveness on her, in the name of Jesus, after all she’d been through, was just plain wrong.  And like a gift from the Holy Spirit, I heard and understood this awful text for the first time.  And I opened my Bible and read it to her:  ⁴²“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

We talk sometimes in our churches, often in whispers, about broken families, or broken marriages, or even cutting off a family member for some offense.  And we assume there’s shame in that – after all, the text that immediately follows this one today is the prohibition to divorce.  But I think, taking that in context, this text about cutting of a part of the body to save the whole makes it clear that Jesus understood that sometimes – although it’s a painful last resort – sometimes for the sake of the whole family’s health, one member has to go.  Sometimes blind forgiveness can be dangerous.  As a nation, we may sever diplomatic ties or cut off our trade with a hostile nation, or even – when there’s no other option, go to war.  It always has to be a hard decision, but Jesus, here in Mark, makes it clear that we can and should sometimes make those breaks.  The test is the test it always comes down to for Jesus – “Is it the loving choice?”  “Is the little one, or the underdog, being protected?”  Like the “last resort” decision a doctor would make in amputating a human limb, we should never cut apart our human family lightly – certainly not for a petty reason like when the disciples get bent out of shape about their rival doing miracles better than they are able to do.

We are called first to love one another, but to do that, we have to manage this tension:  although we are called to salt the world with prophetic witness for justice, we are also called to make peace.  Christ so loved us, we remember, that he allowed his own body to be broken for us on the cross.  But he draws the line at allowing his little ones to be hurt, whether they are smaller people or gay or lesbian folks or minority groups or less powerful nations.   We are protected by God’s grace. Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.