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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Old Testament Reading: Micah 5:2-5a
Old Testament Reading: Micah 5:2-5a
2But
you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are
one of the little clans of Judah,
from you
shall come forth for me
one who
is to rule in Israel,
whose
origin is from of old,
from
ancient days.
3Therefore
he shall give them up until the time
when she
who is in labor has brought forth;
then the
rest of his kindred shall return
to the
people of Israel.
4And he
shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the
majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they
shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the
ends of the earth;
and he
shall be the one of peace.
Sermon: "Prophets of Promise: Micah"
Everyone
loves an underdog. Especially us Aggies.
This
year in the Southeastern Conference was The Year of the Underdog. When Texas A&M joined the SEC, we were
scoffed at as being a petulant child wanting to play with the big kids. To be honest, I didn’t expect us to do very
well. But that’s the great thing about
underdogs: they never do what’s expected.
We
reached ten wins for the first time in over twelve years. We stunned everyone (including ourselves) by
beating the then-number-one team Alabama.
And we broke Heisman history by having one of our freshmen, Johnny
Manziel, win that great honor. It has
been our year. But the real joy of it,
the glory of it, is in shattering all of those limited expectations, even our
own.
Now, it
might be a tad presumptuous for me to say that God’s favorite colors are maroon
and white, that God’s favorite place is College Station, Texas and that on that
much-needed seventh day of rest, God sat down in front of a game of A&M
football. Unfortunately, I cannot with
all certainty say that God is an Aggie fan.
But I can say that God is a fan of the underdog!
We see
this everywhere in scripture: in God speaking through servant girls and tired
wanderers, in God calling shepherd boys to be kings and teenagers to be
prophets. In God choosing to be born to
a young, brave mother and a dad who worked manual labor to make ends meet. God’s appreciation for the underdog is clear
in the words of the prophet Micah we read this morning:
But you, O Bethlehem of
Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans
of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to rule in Israel.
To
understand these words, we need to know a bit more about what this Micah
character was all about. He was a
prophet after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, when the
leaders of Judah were bribing those angry Assyrians to stay out by taxing the
poorest of the poor. As the poor were
getting poorer, in flooded refugees from the north and from other
Assyrian-controlled territories.
Landowners sensed a fiscal cliff, er, economic crisis looming and so
they lowered the wages of those who worked on their lands while, at the same
time, expanding their territories. So,
the rich were getting richer. And Micah
called them out. Many false prophets
were arising to speak words of validation and prosperity to the wealthy – at a
hefty price tag, of course. Here’s what
Micah said to them:
“Thus says the Lord concerning
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;
the seers shall be
disgraced, and the diviners put to shame.”
He then
spoke an oracle of the destruction that the greedy would bring upon
themselves. He called them to change
their oppressing ways. I think we may
have heard those words before….
“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
then promised a ruler who would usher in a new reign over the whole world. Now, the religious leaders and wealthy elite
might not have enjoyed all that “love kindness” babble, but at the mention of a
mighty new leader, their ears pricked up with anticipation.
He began
by telling them that this leader would come from Bethlehem, that tiny one-camel
town that was so easily overlooked. But
the name did ring a bell…wait, a minute!
Wasn’t Bethlehem the hometown of David, that great and glorious king of
old??
Oh,
those leaders began to get excited. Then
Micah continued, saying that this great ruler’s origin was from the good ol’
glory days of their people. They were
practically drooling with anticipation…he had to be talking about one at least
as great as King David! Micah then said
that this ruler would, “feed his flock in the strength of the Lord.” Hey, that sure sounded like a shepherd to
them, and what was David’s childhood role?
A shepherd!
But then
Micah said something they did not expect: he said that this ruler “shall be
great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”
The
rulers shook their heads, thinking surely Micah was mistaken. Peace?
What kind of a ruler could this be?
They were expecting a military King, someone like David, to silence the
Assyrians once and for all.
But
Micah was very careful about his speech.
In all
of his allusion to David with Bethlehem, ancient lines and shepherds, he never
once used the word “King.” This shepherd
was never to stop being a shepherd. And
he never promised that this new leader would himself defeat the Assyrians. He later spoke of others rising up to do
that, but not this mysterious leader.
The more
those wealthy leaders got to thinking about it, this “so-called” ruler sounded
more like the people they were oppressing: a poor, rural, manual laborer, than
the people doing the oppressing, them.
More like a peacemaker than a skilled fighter. More like a compassionate shepherd than a
ruthless king. In other words, an
underdog.
We know
that great leader, that shepherd of the sheep, to be our Lord Jesus Christ, who
was the epitome of the underdog. While
the Messiah was expected to enter the world as a mighty warrior leader who
would forever secure Israel’s place in history, he instead came as a humble
servant who questioned the status quo at every turn and brought good news not
just to the Jewish people, but to the entire world.
His mom said it best in our gospel
reading this morning,
"God
has shown strength with his arm;
he
has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty."
This
sort of savior might sound a bit harsh- like the caustic words of the prophet
did. Sending the rich away empty doesn't sound very festive for Christmas,
y'all. But perhaps Mary, like Micah, is reminding us that we have to actually
recognize our need for God, a need that runs deeper than the need for money,
acceptance or status, and change our lives and world to make room for that
God. Once we acknowledge our need, and
throw out those things no longer need: pride, cynicism, bitterness, and
materialism, and make room, God comes. God always comes.
When God
breaks into this world –and now, more than ever, we need to cling to the truth
that God does – it does not seem to happen with trumpets blaring and heavenly
armies descending, with sweeping overthrows and violent shows of might.
It
happens instead in the unexpected, easily overlooked ways of the underdog: in
the subtle, peacemaking act of sitting alongside those we disagree with and
listening to them, not to change their opinions, but to let them know that
their voice matters.
In the
quiet, unpublicized effort of silencing our self-obsession long enough to think
of what another is going through and how we might support them.
In the
everyday, ordinary commitment to doing more than is necessary to love kindness,
more than is comfortable to do justice, more than is easy to walk humbly with
our God.
A
shepherd is coming to tend us in the ways of peace.
A King
unlike any we have ever known is coming to usher in the possibility of
shalom.
A child
is coming to show us the way of joyful humility.
He will
not be what we are expecting. But he
will be exactly what we need. Amen.
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