Here in the North East, it's no longer pitch dark at five in the afternoon. With each day, the light will remain longer and longer, until by mid-Summer, our evenings will be sunlit and warm, flower-scented and green. For now, morning and evening, we still are living mostly in the dark.
But, isn't that our lives, living mostly in the dark? Not able to see far enough into the future to know when a particular illness or stress or turmoil or family upset will end? When our days will become fully lit with joy and peace? And darkness not only hangs over our personal lives; darkness hangs over our country, and farther yet, over our world. We are a world shattered by the darkness of evil, sin, and death.
Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, was a prophet about whom we know nothing except that he came from the obscure village of Moresheth in the foothills of Judea, and thus was a man of the countryside, angered by dangers from within and without his country. Within his country, he saw and was angered by the rich who exploited the poor, fraudulent merchants, greedy judges, corrupt priests, and prophets who prophesied whatever men desired of them - for a price. From without, his country was threatened by many powerful nations, such as Assyria and Edom.
Micah sounds like us, as many of us are fearful of ISIS and other terrorist groups and even nations that want to destroy us, as well as concerned and angry about what happens within our country: the thievery, greed, and corruption in city, state, and national governments and corporations and even churches today. Yet even good and honest American citizens can be divided, some more concerned about the threats of war and terrorism, and others more concerned about fraud, greed, and corruption harming our poorest citizens.
Micah can teach us a lesson about clear-sightedness: he was concerned about all of it - the enemies of goodness attacking his nation from within, and the enemies of goodness who attacked his nation from without.
Micah mourns and rages, saying words we can say today.
From without, he saw the attacks of Assyria:
"Now fence yourself in Bat-garder! (Jerusalem)
They (the Assyrians) have laid siege against us!
With the rod they strike on the cheek
the ruler of Israel...."
From within, he saw especially the rich and the powerful who preyed upon the powerless:
"The faithful are gone from the earth,
among men, the upright are no more!
They all lie in wait to shed blood,
each one ensnares the other.
Their hands succeed at evil;
the prince makes demands,
the judge is had for a price,
the great man speaks as he pleases,
the best of them is like a brier,
the most upright like a thorn hedge." (Micah 7: 2-4.)
Micah warns the people that God's righteous wrath will fall upon the people because God Who is perfect goodness must always stand firm against evil: God says "Rather I will begin to strike you with devastation because of your sins."
Today's evils - in our country and everywhere else - are nothing new. Our race of human beings has committed such evils that they lie like a web of destruction over the nations; we have brought violence and death into the world, and no human being is innocent.
As nations, we have perpetrated wars and genocides, racism and sexism, have hated and feared peoples different from ourselves, have permitted the abuse of women and children, have condoned and profited from human trafficking. Yet each of us has also personally fallen into the darkness of sin. We all have done violence with our angry mouths, if not with our bodies. We all have lied. We all have disrupted our relationships. We all have neglected to do good works that we could have done. Because of all of us, the darkness of sin and death has come into the world. Truly, we all sit in a darkness that no rising sun can dispel.
Micah is quite clear about what God wants from all of us, about what will save us from our spiritual and physical enemies:
"You have been told, O man, what is good,
and what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8).
Yet God, our just God, is also our merciful God. God knows that all of us personally, as nations, and as a world, are so ensnared by sin, so blind to the whole truth, so unwilling to fall passionately in love with the good, that we are permanently estranged from goodness, from God. And we're too proud to admit this to ourselves! We've fallen into such a deep pit that we can't dig our way out. We are sitting in such darkness that we are blinded by the Light.
Our merciful God gave the angry, righteous, and grieving Micah a vision of the future: the time when the Light of God would return to the world which had estranged itself from Him. And so Micah prophesies:
"But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah,
too small to be among the clans of Judah,
From you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel....
He shall stand firm and shepherd his flock
by the strength of the Lord,
in the majestic name of the Lord his God....
his greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth;
he shall be peace."
Like a small shoot, unfurling leaves above the still-cold Spring earth, Jesus is born into the tiny city and clan of Bethlehem-Ephrathah, a place and people too insignificant to be among the Power-Players and Power-Brokers of his people. Jesus will passionately love the good, will heal, teach, and forgive sins, do it all humbly in the Name of his Father; Jesus will truly shepherd his flock instead of sell them out to the highest bidder. The living Jesus is both man and God, our merciful God reconciling us to Himself, our merciful God doing this because we cannot do this for ourselves.
By his death, by his wounds we are healed! But death cannot hold him. By his resurrection, we too will be raised from the dead.
Day by day, we are assailed by death. But day by day we are presented with opportunities to defeat death by the Light of goodness. As a nation, as a world, our only hope lies in loving the good, loving the good wherever we see it, among whatever people, race, or religion we see it. And if we can do the good, unite with all that is good and all who are good, we can humbly work together for the peace and good of our nation and our world.
If we Christians are so proud that we fail to see and acknowledge the good in Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Native faiths, even Muslims, we will remain in our own faith-tribes, much as the tribes of Israel remained separated until King David united them.
If we remain deep friends with only our own race or ethnic group or people of our own sexual orientation, if we only laugh at and deride others who are different, we will lose out on seeing the goodness and giftedness of others who have the same goal of healing and strengthening our land.
If we remain polarized as Democrats and Republicans to the extent that we can't recognize the true insights the other Party has to offer, our nation will remain dangerously divided, sitting in the darkness of sin and death.
God loves all who seek Him with a sincere heart. All. And we cannot be one nation until we acknowledge our real differences and yet unite our hands across our real differences to find our same identity of being children of God. Then we will be able to listen to each other. To work out good compromises. To move forward.
And Micah also exults "For you shall come forth for ME!"
Our God is a merciful, personal God. He sees the havoc in our personal lives - havoc brought about by our own sins and mistakes and by the sins and mistakes of others. God sees each of us sitting in darkness, waiting not only for the light to return with the return of Spring, but weeping and shuddering waiting for the Divine Light to return to our lives.
And so God asks each of us gently "Do you realize yet that the Light you are waiting for is Me? I am waiting for you to humbly admit your sins, mistakes, and inadequacies to yourself. I'm also waiting for you to realize that you have yet to recognize how astonishing you are, made in My image and likeness, capable of doing so much that is wonderful and new. If you let me in; if you open the heavy drapes and blinds shrouding your inner soul in darkness; if you allow the glorious rays of my Light to shine upon you - the Spring of your salvation will arrive. You will rest in Me, consoled by Me, strengthened by Me, energized to love what is good, do what is good, trusting that all will be well in your life. All will be well, at a time of My choosing."
If we open our hearts, souls, and lives to the Light of Christ, our outer world will still be shrouded in darkness - sin, sickness, death, wars and rumors of wars. But our inner life will be endless Summer, fresh and scented and green, a world of hope and trust and love. The Lord will bring us forth so our souls will live in the Light. In the Lord, there is no darkness.
During this coming Lent, we have another opportunity to raise our heads and see the Light of Christ, to get up from where we've been sitting in darkness and hear Christ say "Behold I want to do something new in you." To repent. To re-commit to doing good. To choose eternal Life over Death.