Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from January 30, 2005

“Percentage Living”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Micah 6:1-8

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

There are Sundays where it seems particularly appropriate, even necessary, to acknowledge the context in which we worship.  What is in the back of our minds as we get together to give glory to God; as we preach and pray and listen to one another?

Today, the Iraqi people have voted, and we pray for the safety of Iraqis and of Americans and other foreigners alike.  I hold my breath at the violence that this time has brought.  I am also awed by the determination of so many Iraqis to act on their right to vote, and to celebrate this day, even if their lives are threatened.

The world, while watching the events in Iraq and the Middle East, is still recovering from the greatest devastation in recent human history from a tsunami in South East Asia.  While we are still unable to grasp the extent of the catastrophe, we also feel that the whole human family has moved a little closer together in an effort to help.

Locally, it’s not just our context but our focus today that we celebrate today our partnership with community organizations that help people in need.  To our guests from these organizations I say, ‘Thank you!’ We feel that in this mutual partnership you lend hands and feet to our motivation for mission.  You make it happen.  We hope that you feel supported in your work and that, together, we can make a difference.  After worship, we look forward to getting together in the Parish Hall and learning more about one another.

As a congregation, we are in transition time or interim time.  It is one of the gifts of such a time that we can affirm again who we are as a congregation, and also think and discuss very intentionally what the mission of the church of Jesus Christ in this time and place may be. 

Into this context and more, we  hear words from the prophet Micah that are familiar to many,  and may consider them a favorite:  “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

I would like to do three things this morning.  First, I want to speak a little bit about the setting in which this familiar verse is placed.  Second, I’d like to think about  this verse as a biblical reference for what is the mission of the church—and I say the word mission in a double meaning here:  “mission” as in Missions Committee and “mission” as in Mission Statement.  So, you help me define which one of the two we are talking about at any given time.  Third, I want to refer to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that Marycia read, and his notion of the foolishness of the cross.  I want to make a case that the mission of the church, in all its settings, always has a counter-cultural edge to it.  That is true as much for a new church start anywhere as it is for the “religious establishment” and I think you can think of Congregationalism in New England part of the religious establishment.  The message of Jesus Christ, more often than not, defies what the predominant messages in society want us to think and believe.

Micah 6 puts God and God’s people on opposite sites in a courtroom—think of this as a biblical version of Court TV.  The judges are the hills and the mountains, for they have been around long enough to have witnessed all of what humans have done since God entered with them in a covenant.  Remember Noah, or, as the story is told in our church, Mr. and Mrs. Noah?

In the people vs. God, the people feel that God has punished Israel too much, that there is injustice in the harm that God has allowed  to happen, or even brought upon the Israelites.  

The people’s complaint resonates with what some have said after the tsunami. Did God do this?  Or how could God even allow it to happen?  Is that a just God?  Give me just a minute before I give you my personal perspective.

God takes quite the opposite stance, saying ‘O my people, what have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you?”  If you hear a certain amount of exasperation in God’s voice, that is probably right.  He says, “Answer me!  For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery;     and I sent before you Moses,  Aaron, and Miriam.  O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,  what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

In other words, God recounts the history of God’s saving grace to Israel:

·         the freedom from Egyptian captivity,

·         the journey to the promised land with Moses and Aaron and Miriam as leaders

·         Balak is a reference to a king who hired someone, Balaam, to curse Israel, but the curse was turned into a blessing, the saving grace of God at work

·         what occurred from Shittim to Gilgal is a reference to the crossing of the river Jordan for the entry into the promised land.  (This is why we all have study Bibles and commentaries so we can look that up.)

God says to God’s people, “If you just remembered my saving grace at all times, you would not always defy me in your actions.  Instead, you would follow my commandments and you would live up to the covenant.”  Then the people talk back and they have the same exasperation in their voice, “What could we possibly do to get it right, God?  What sacrifices could we bring, what burnt offerings, what rituals could possibly be enough to make up for our transgressions?”  They, too, speak with great exaggeration it sounds cynical almost, “Should we sacrifice not one but a thousand animals, with ten thousand rivers of oil?  Should we even sacrifice our firstborn?”  What  a horrible thought—a reminder of the story of Abraham and Isaac, a sacrifice that God did not allow to happen.

God answers:  “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  The answer is:  How we can live as God’s people is not just about ritual and burnt offerings and piety, but is ultimately about how we live our lives.  What do we do about our faith?  How do we act in the world?  How do we act toward others?  I call the sermon “Percentage Living.”  Let me ask you, “What percentage of the decisions you make in your day-to-day living happen as a response to God’s saving grace?”  That may be a little hard to quantify, but try.

I promised you an answer, at least an attempt, to the Tsunami question.  In Micah, there is a question about God’s justice.  If the people of God continually violate the covenant, then God is justified in punishing them.  That is the argument of the prophet.  Note that this is prior to God fulfilling our end of the covenant on our behalf in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So do I believe that God makes a Tsunami happen?  No.  I also don’t believe that God acts by not preventing the tsunami.  If anything, I believe that God interacts with the events of the world through the Holy Spirit; in other words, God helps us respond to events like that by sending the Holy Spirit. 

Micah lays out what God’s people should do.  I’m biased—I think one of the most important places where the work of God is done is in the church and in its extensions.  So for me, Micah 6:8 is a mission statement for the church.

Do justice.  This happens in the realm of the whole world and it is very much an act, an action—a verb, not an abstract concept, not some aloof noun that scholars define.  Justice is the work to meet people’s basic needs.  Justice is the sharing of resources so that everybody truly has a standard of living and nobody has a substandard or no standard at all.  Think about it:  The basic statement that we are all equal before God is an immediate and urgent call to action, because the inequalities among different parts of the human family are so obvious.

I promised you I would show that all the missions of the church is counter-cultural.  How is this counter-cultural?  Paul writes that what is the power of God to some is foolishness to others.  He uses the Greek word “skandalon”.  Now, it’s no accident that “skandalon” sounds a lot like “scandal” and “scandalous”.  Indeed, the call of the Gospel can be scandalous to the mainstream of society.  Sometimes, we are tempted to believe that the great inequalities of living standards, of human rights, of civil liberties, of first world, second world and all the other worlds, are just a given.  From a faith perspective, we have to defy that.

Some of you have said to me, the German, that Americans might do well to learn more foreign languages and should be more encouraged to look beyond this vast and beautiful country to the rest of the world. This makes me glad that we at Mystic have a partnership with a Korean congregation, and that some of our youth and adults have been able to go there in the past and some will go there again.  Maybe, sometime, we will have a partnership with a German congregation.  Maybe we can consider youth trips across the borders into our neighboring countries.  We are off to a good start!

Love kindness!  This happens in the realm of our community.  “Love mercy” is another common translation of the same word.  We hope to actively reach out to those who have needs in our community, and we partner with you, the organizations that respond to those needs, and we aim to express our sincere welcome to those who find themselves on the outside of church life, those who have experienced churches and religion in a way that told them they don’t belong.  We would like for them to think that they can belong here. Does that welcome need advertising?  Does the church need advertising?  One can have different opinions about that.  But remember that the red and black banner that says, “God is still speaking”, and the ads that say, “You are welcome here” are not directed at people who are already going to church.  The UCC has not produced a campaign to make one church look better than the next.  The UCC has produced a campaign that wants to tell those who think that there is no place for them in the church:  “Give us a try.”

How is a focus on community, on kindness and mercy, counter-cultural?  Society, in its commercial messages and its ads on TV, wants us to believe that we should aim to be completely autonomous, and that each of us should be, as much as possible, in control of ourselves.  We can now order on the internet.  We don’t need to go to the store.  In instant messages and chat-rooms, we can take on any identity we want.

We are in control.  We can control the climate in the passenger seat of our car separate from the climate in the driver’s seat.  We can control the firmness of our half of the mattress.  We can control the melody with which a phone rings depending on who is calling, thereby controlling who we want to talk to.  Given enough money, we can control what we look like through elective plastic surgery.  That used to be up to God.

Faith comes in when we realize there are things outside of our control.  Church comes in when we find that we live fuller, better lives when we live them in community.  That is why we are a congregation, and this is why we have parish care, and missions, and women’s fellowship, and adult education.

Let me make another quick point about community.  One of the great things about this country, maybe the greatest in my view, is people’s willingness to give of their time and resources for the well-being of the community.  In no other country that I know have I encountered the same motivation for volunteerism and philanthropy than in America.  To me, that may just be the most important lesson America is teaching at least those other parts of the world that I know.

Finally, walk humbly with your God.  Humility is counter-cultural.  TV ads want us to believe that buying goods gives meaning to our lives.  Consumerism becomes ethics.  There is an ad that promises those with bad credit, who can’t get any loan anywhere, “the car that they deserve.”  There are ads for computers that offer you a deeper, more meaningful life.  Let me say this, “I like expensive things.”  There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying and owning expensive goods.  It is morally neutral.  But what we own doesn’t give meaning to our lives.  What we possess doesn’t give us a reason to get up in the morning.  What gives meaning to our lives and why we get up in the morning is our relationships—our relationships with God, with one another, loved ones and strangers, and our relationship with ourselves.

Do justice in the whole world.  Love kindness as you interact with the people in your community.  Walk humbly with your God, the one who created you, and all the world.  That is our mission, counter-cultural, scandalous, biblical, and very much Mystic Congregational Church. 

Thanks be to God! Amen.