10.You haven’t heard enough crying babies and snoring men this week 9.You want to sleep with strangers 8.You just can’t get any good organ music on your radio 7.You have nothing to eat for breakfast 6.You need an excuse for a Sunday morning drive 5.You need more guidance than the newspaper horoscope provides 4.You’re getting way too much sleep on Sunday morning 3.Why watch preachers on T.V. when front line seats are available free!? 2. Your children’s only religious practice is Trick or Treat 1.You’re sick of O.J.’s testimony and you want to hear the truth for a change
By members of the High School Sunday School class, Aubrey Barnes and Mandy Mahoney at Ottawa Presbyterian Church in Ottawa, Ohio. 1996. Christy Ramsey is to blame for the class activity.
Some of the Beatitudes are tough. How are those that mourn blessed? Or the persecuted? Sometimes we take a trip on the denial river and guess that the blessings are after the sadness…that the tragedies and heartbreaks of this life will bring greater goodness, and blessings in the future. A heavenly insurance check to pay us back for the disaster in our life. For some, this brings comfort in sorrow, but for many, it is a cruel dismissal of the pain and discount of the sorrow they are suffering.
This confusion is only made worse by the alternative translation for the theological challenges of our day replacing “blessed are” with “happy are”. We strongly suspect we are not blessed in these situations, but we are sure we are not “happy”.
One of the top salespeople in an office I worked in, Elliot, was constantly on the phone with customers. Every conversation, several times, I would hear him repeat his signature phrase, “You’re good. You’re good.” Often, he was on the phone because there as a hiccup, a mistake, or a downright disaster. But Elliot was there, telling them, “You’re good.” He didn’t mean the situation was good, or that the customer was a good person, but that the situation was contained and controlled, and, most importantly, he was with them so it was going to turn out okay.
Blessed, Happy can mean a good place, not a place without sorrows and strife, but a place where God was too along with sorrows and strife. “Good with God are the poor” You are right where you are supposed to be and God is right there as well. You are in God’s care and You’re good to being there.
How can we get into God’s place, where we’re good to be. We want to buy a shortcut or get a good price on God’s favor. Micah rejects this transactional mindset by exaggerating what price God requires. Not just a container of precious oil but rivers of it. Not just one ram which one could spare from a herd but a thousand rams, more than anyone would be able to sacrifice. It is never enough. Humbling huh? Focusing on the quick fix price instead of the long term problem is not an option.
What are we do to then?
Exactly.
Micah wants us to realize we can’t buy God’s favor with gifts or rituals. The only thing is to live in a relationship with one another in mercy, mourning, righteousness, mercy, peacefulness, and solidarity amidst persecution. And God says we are blessed, happy, or maybe even “You’re Good.”
Micah tells us how we are good with God.
Do Justice
It isn’t rules and lawbooks, and certainly not about revenge. Doing justice is being right with one another. Fitting. Where folks have what they need to live. Mother Seton taught that we should “live simply so others may simply live”
As we get more people on this planet who look to be great consumers like we Americans, this would be good to reflect on. Living simply as a matter of justice so that others may simply live is much closer to Micah’s mind than calling other God’s children “illegals”, so we don’t have to consider them as people we are connected to by God’s justice, but God’s desire that we live and do what is right for all the folks.
Love Kindness
The Rev. Mr. Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood tells us “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
The word Hasid is way to hard to translate, even using two words. Loving-kindness. It is love in a relationship that helps and binds us to another person. A good marriage of partners helping one another. I think a good support group or counseling or true old friends. Where folks are accepted, loved, heard, and encouraged just as they are.
Maybe the Reverend Fred was thinking of Micah’s world when he said: “Imagine what our neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”
Walk Humbly
I got a medal for humility…the first time I wore it they took it away. We believe that pride, like wearing a medal, is the opposite of humility. But the word in Micah 6:8 for the kind of walk we are to have with God is not a walk of shame.
My son Robert has a good kind and faithful way about him. Where most children yearn for the independence of walking free of the hands of a parent from an early age. Robert held our hand almost into middle school. Sometimes it was just palm-to-palm touching. We told him he didn’t have to; thinking he would be relieved of the limitations and emboldened by our trust, but he said, “I like touching your hand…because I can feel your speed.” He wanted to walk with us and touching helped him feel our speed so he could stay beside us.
Humble is not just finding the lowest place in the hierarchy of privilege and obligation. Humble is also an acknowledgment that we are not all things all by ourselves. Humble is being mindful of others, of our place in the larger web of relationships.
The word translated as “humbly” in Micah 6:8 could also be rendered as carefully or mindfully. Walk with the awareness that you are with God. Walk mindfully with care with God. Put out your hand so you can feel his speed.
Today, most Christian churches are celebrating Pentecost, the last major Christian holiday that hasn’t been discovered by the advertising and sales agencies. At Advent and Christmas, we celebrate Jesus Christ coming into the world, at Pentecost we celebrate Jesus Christ going out into all the world. Listen to this description of events at the first Pentecost recorded in Acts 2:1-13. This the story of the day the worldwide Christian church was born.
This speaking in foreign languages or ”in tongues” as the King James and Revised Standard versions translate this section is not a ”heavenly” tongue that is understandable only by those given the gift of interpretation. It is a gift that allows me to hear someone and understand another pers0n and enables that person to hear and understand me no matter what language we speak. It is like having an instantaneous translator whispering the translation into your ears.
Due to this new understanding, all were amazed and confused saying to one another, ”What does this mean?”. 0ur reading from Acts 2 tells us about a new, amazing thing that happened, the gift of the spirit and the birth of the Christian church. What happened? Does this describe it? ”Behold, they are one people and one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them.” I think that is a very good summary of what happened that Pentecost.
The only problem is that this quote is not about the Pentecost experience in Acts. It is not even in the New Testament! It is in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 11, in the story of the tower of Babel. God says this to himself right before he confuses the one language of humankind into many tongues and separates humans into different peoples.
Pentecost is the reversal of Babel. Where at Babel humankind was separated by language, at Pentecost all were united by language. Pentecost brought down the barriers of different language erected by Babel in Genesis Chapter 11. At Babel, the Bible tell us that human language was confused and humans were divided. Here, in the New Testament, all humanity is united with one language. They can understand one another no matter what their nation is, no matter what their language is.
In Acts 2 all the people HEAR. This is usually the proof text for glossolalia, speaking in tongues, but the emphasis here is not on speaking but on HEARING. This not a new kind of babbling but is Babel in reverse! Now all understand, hear each other. The Spirit of God, the master builder laid the foundation of the church against the rubble of Babel. While human selfish, power-hungry efforts to build leads to confusion, God’s sacrificing, power-giving efforts to build leads to hearing, to understanding. The birth of the church occurs in the context of listening to one another. As Christians our birthright is listening and hearing each other.
Pentecost is God’s vision for the church, united together. Not that everyone exactly alike, but that all different types, races, nationalities, political and economic beliefs, are united by God’s Spirit understanding one another as well as if they all were our own brothers and sisters.
On Pentecost there came the newness promised by Jesus that replaced the old way of relating of to God. Following Jesus as a disciple had ended but had given birth to the church. The loss of the personal relationship as Jesus’ disciple was real. Yet only by this loss, was the possibility of the good that is the church able to become real.
When we choose the spirit, we lose the other choices. We must put aside our pride and individual distinctions. I becomes we. We say good-bye to rivalry, to power-plays, to privileges we get because of our economic status, our race, our nationally, or our sex. We lose much, so we can gain the fruits of the Spirit.
I think this is why people were afraid of the change that happened during that first Christian Pentecost. The newness was so overwhelming they couldn’t accept it, they mocked it as the drunken result of new wine, and they refused to believe such a thing could happen by being confused and perplexed. For they were losing something, they were losing their identity as Parthians, Medinan, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Asians, Egyptians, Libyan, and even Jews, becoming united as new members citizens of Christ’s land, Christians. The gain was great and good, but the loss is still real.
I like to think the song ”We Are the World” captures a piece of the Pentecost spirit, the spirit of all humankind joined together. There are some that laugh and mock that idea. They jeer at the efforts of others in advancing God’s will that all people live together in one big family, all different, but all caring for one another and understanding each individual. In the first century, they say they were filled with new wine, drunk. Such a vision of peace was possible to only to one drunk. Today they might insist that pea -c· e is possible only if the ”other guy” changes first or that peace among all people is the responsibility of someone else, government, the church, or even rock and roll stars. Friends, there is no other guy, we are the world, we are the children of God who have been called since Pentecost almost two thousand years ago to live together as one people.
The World must come together as one. This is the promise offered by Jesus Christ to all those who repent and are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin into God’s great big family. Make the change, let us realize that a change can only come in this world when we all stand together as one faithful people having taken the name of Jesus Christ.
We Are The World
Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie
There comes a time when we heed a certain call When the world must come together as one There are people dying And it’s time to lend a hand to life The greatest gift of all
We can’t go on pretending day by day That someone, somewhere will soon make a change We are all a part of God’s great big family And the truth, you know, Love is all we need
Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares And their lives will be stronger and free As God has shown us by turning stones to bread So we all must lend a helping hand
When you’re down and out, there seems no hope at all But if you just believe there’s no way we can fall Let us realize that a change can only come When we stand together as one
CHORUS
We are the world, we are the children We are the ones who make a brighter day So let’s start givingThere’s a choice we’re making We’re saving our own livesIt’s true we’ll make a better day Just you and me
Christy Ramsey
