Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, 22nd of December 2024.
Every year on the fourth Sunday of Advent we hear the Magnificat, Mary’s revolutionary song modelled on the song sung by Hannah, the mother of Samuel. I adore the Magnificat, but you have heard me speak about it numerous times already, and I also spoke about it at last Saturday’s Carols in the Park. So this year, on this Advent Sunday of Love, I want to focus instead on Micah, someone who does not seem to be all that loving.
The ‘prophet’ Micah did not like prophets. The Bible presents him as one of the ‘Twelve Minor Prophets’ but Micah would probably have argued against being identified that way. He had harsh words for ‘the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths … The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them’. (Micah 3:5-6) He was equally scathing of the rulers and the priests of his nation, proclaiming that: ‘Its rulers give judgement for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.”’ (Micah 3:11) Micah was certain that the Lord is only with those who do justice.
We hear from Micah today because his prophecy about a ruler who will come from the town of Bethlehem is quoted to King Herod by the chief priests and scribes of the people when the Magi arrive in Jerusalem, looking for the Messiah. (Matthew 3:1-6) For Christians, this is a prophecy of the birth of Jesus, but Micah spoke in the eighth century before Christ, and his words were addressed to his time long before they were interpreted by Jesus’ followers. At that time the northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital at Samaria, had fallen to the Assyrian Empire. Many of its people had been taken into exile, and the land had been resettled by immigrants from other parts of the Empire. (The Israelites who remained intermarried with these immigrants and became the Samaritans, and the gospels give us some insight into how they were thought of by the ‘real’ Jews in the time of Jesus.) The southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, still stood, but it was also under threat. To keep the Assyrians at bay the rulers of Judah paid them tribute, which they of course raised from their own people. As well, exiles from Israel had sought refuge in Jerusalem and other parts of Judah, leading to all the problems that we still see today when an impoverished nation just over the border becomes a place of refuge for those fleeing from destruction.
Micah does not approve of the ways his rulers were dealing with these problems: ‘Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance.’ (Micah 2:1-2) Therefore, Micah says, the Lord is threatening the same vengeance against Judah that Israel had already experienced: ‘Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights? Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, with tongues of deceit in their mouths. Therefore I have begun to strike you down, making you desolate because of your sins.’ (Micah 6:11-13) This should not be a surprise to the people of Judah; after all, ‘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?’ (Micah 6:8)
The northern kingdom has fallen; the southern kingdom is threatened; in both cases, says Micah, because the rulers and the wealthy are failing to worship the Lord as God wants to be worshipped, with justice, kindness, and humility. But Micah does not only proclaim judgement. He also offers hope. The day will come, says Micah, when the Lord will be the God of all the earth and:
He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. (Micah 4:3-4)
This is the context in which we hear today’s oracle of the one who is to rule in Israel, the one who ‘shall be great to the ends of the earth’ and ‘shall be the one of peace’. It is noticeable that this one will come not from Jerusalem, the city of David the king, but from the little clan of Bethlehem, whence came David the shepherd. We think of Bethlehem as the ‘city of David’ but that is because Luke describes it that way: ‘the city of David called Bethlehem’ (Luke 2:4) and so we often sing ‘to you in David’s town this day is born of David’s line.’ (TIS 299) For Micah’s community, though, it was Jerusalem that was the city of David, and Bethlehem was an unimportant backwater. Obviously the one who is to come from little Bethlehem will be vastly different from the warrior kings who oppress their people; he will come from the tiny town whose very name means ‘house of bread’ to feed his flock, and in his care no one shall be afraid.
We do not know exactly what situation Micah was thinking of when he made this prediction, but it is no surprise that the first Christians saw in Micah’s words a prophecy of Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah who does not look like a Messiah; the one who comes not as a military leader with a sword, but as a shepherd to care for and feed his people. In a few days we will celebrate his birth in that out-of-the-way town, to unimportant parents, laid in a manger because there was no place in the inn. The first Christians were following a man who showed strength through service, whose weapon was gentleness, who won the greatest victory by dying on a cross – of course they saw him in Micah’s challenge to the unjust rulers and greedy wealthy of his day.
We do not call Mary a prophet, but in the Magnificat she is at least as prophetic as Micah was, and along the same lines. She too looked forward to a world in which everyone has enough to eat, in which the lowly are lifted up and the powerful brought down from their thrones. In her own life she demonstrated that God chooses leaders from those the world considers unimportant, just as her son would do. It is interesting that we hear her song on the Sunday of Advent when we celebrate love, because just as it can be hard to see love in all Micah’s condemnations and warnings, it can sometimes be hard to see love in the scattering of the proud, the bringing down of the powerful, and the rich being sent away empty – especially when we are the rich. But as African American theologian Cornel West says, ‘justice is what love looks like in public’. When Micah and Mary prophecy justice, they are speaking of love.
It is not part of today’s reading, but there is never a bad time to hear again Micah’s words: ‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’ As we prepare to celebrate the coming of the one that we believe ‘shall be the one of peace’ let us remember how we are to live, and love, as his followers – justly, kindly, and humbly. Amen.
Rev Doc Geek 