God's Requirements by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

Millions of students across the country are wrapping up another semester of school this week. They are getting final grades. Some are happy and some not so happy. I am able to go online to a website called Power School and see the requirements James and Rebecca had for each class. I can see if they turned in their assignments, if they were late in turning in those assignments, and what grade they got on each one. It is clear what the requirements were for each class. Sometimes when they get an assignment for a project they are given a rubric. I don’t remember being given a rubric when I was in school. But it is basically a list of the things they must do to fulfill an assignment, complete with the point totals that each portion of the rubric is worth. Again, it is really clear what is expected of them. A student who wants to do well, need only to pay close attention to the rubric, and work hard, and she will get a good grade on a project.

         Oh, if it were only so easy between us and God. What if, at the beginning of life, God would give us a list of requirements, including a rubric for each assignment, with step-by-step instructions for how to get a good grade with God? What if, at the beginning of each year with God, we knew that we would get points simply for participation? That means, if we show up, we get points. Wouldn’t that be great? Because we want to please God, don’t we? Just like a student wants to please a teacher, don’t we want to be in good standing with God?

Oh, they may not admit it, but every student deep down inside wants to be liked by the teacher. They want to get good grades. They want to be the star of the class. Some of them may goof off and act like they don’t care, but I don’t buy it. We all want to succeed deep inside.

And I think we all want to be seen favorably by God. We want God to look at us and say, “Hey, there is a good one. That one has it together. He is one of my favorites!”

    Now the truth is, God has no favorites. God loves us all unconditionally. We receive God’s grace every day. We don’t have to earn it. There are no checklists in heaven. All we are asked to do is love God. And because of God’s grace, we are loved.  We receive God’s grace every day.  No matter how many mistakes we make, no matter how much we screw up, God loves us. Like a patient and loving parent loves a child that messes up, God loves us.

But God has hopes for us. God desires some behaviors from us. God would prefer some choices over some others. That is what today’s scripture is all about.

The prophet Micah lived in the 8^th century BCE. This is before the fall of Jerusalem and before the Babylonians took over Samaria and Judah. Micah was a prophet and he did what prophets do. He told the people that they were not living right with God. He told them that they were headed down a wrong path. He said, “You are not living for God. You are worshipping idols. You are in trouble. Your land is going to be taken from you.” He saw that they were going to be invaded by a foreign army. God was going to let it happen because God was angry with them.

One day, Micah was trying to turn the people toward God and so he asked the question: “What does God require?” He gave a possible answer.

“Does God require religious rituals? Sacrifices of burnt offerings, rams, rivers of oil, or even our first born?”

Then he said, “No, that’s not it. God does not care about religious rituals. God does not care about burnt offerings.” Micah says, “God has told you what God requires. It is much more than religious ritual. God requires our whole lives. God says to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.”

These are the three things God wants from us: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.

This is my favorite scripture. It’s Pat Groves’ favorite too. You could live by this one alone and be in good shape with God.

I like to think of these three requirements as three points on a triangle. Let’s start with the last because I think it is the most important. At the top of the triangle we have the “up” relationship: our relationship with God.

1)     Walk humbly with God. This is the vertical relationship I mentioned last week. God not only requests, not only longs for, God requires that we walk with God. This means that we walk in sync with God. We live our lives in step with God. We can’t do this without regular communication. That communication is prayer. God wants us to pray. 

a.     Prayer is critical to the Christian life. In prayer we give our concerns to God. We open our hearts. We are vulnerable.

b.     In prayer we confess our sins. We let God know that we know when we have messed up. God already knows, but God wants to know that we know. God is always ready to forgive us, that is a given. But it helps cleanse our souls for us to say it to God. I messed up. And I’m sorry.

c.     In prayer we ask God for guidance and then we stop and listen. This is the part of prayer with which I think we fail the most. We fail to listen. We think prayer is about us talking, but it is really about us listening for God. It’s about asking God for guidance and then waiting.  God wants to speak to us, like a good friend. But we have to slow down and be quiet so God has space to speak.

d.     The last part of prayer is that God wants us to walk humbly. This means to walk carefully, with God as our constant companion. Life is too hard to go through alone. We need God. And so we point our attention up to God, and remember that we are walking with God. So the first requirement points us upward, up to God. 

2)    The second thing God requires is that we love kindness. This refers to our relationships in the community of faith.

a.     The Hebrew word translated kindness has to do with loyalty and faithfulness. We are to treat our brothers and sisters with loyalty and faithfulness.

b.     The Hebrew word for love means to be faithful to a covenant partner, as God is faithful to us.

c.     Micah is calling on the people to be faithful to one another in relationships. We are to treat one another the way God treats us: with love and respect. We should never turn our backs on one another. God never abandons us and so as God’s people in covenant we should never abandon one another.

d.     How does this play out in community? We care for one another. When someone is hurting, the community responds. When someone is sick we bring food and comfort. When someone is discouraged we offer encouragement. When someone is lost we offer hope. When someone’s house is in danger of being flooded you show up with sump pumps. (Some of you did that last week for Karen and Sharon – that is showing loving kindness.)

e.     I see you showing loving kindness every day to one another on Facebook. One of you offers a prayer concern, or just vents about a bad day, and others respond with an encouraging word. This is being the body of Christ for one another inside the community. These are the relationships “in” the community that God requires us to care for.

f.     So we nurture our relationship UP to God; and IN the community with one another. 

3)    Finally, God calls us to reach outside our comfort zones and “do justice.” This is the third point of the triangle, the one I call “out.”

a.     We are called to go out into the world and make a difference. The Hebrew word for justice, mispat, is something that people do. It is not enough “to wish for justice” or just complain when it is missing. Mispat “calls people to work for fairness and equality especially for the weak and the powerless who are exploited by others” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XII, p. 580).

b.     When you see someone who is being exploited or bullied, do you speak up for them? This is what God requires. We are put in these ethical dilemmas every day, at work, in the line at the grocery store, in our neighborhoods. We observe racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, and classism. But do we speak up? Or do we perpetuate injustice with our silence? You see, when we are silent, we are participating in the words and actions that demean another human being. God calls upon us to do better. God calls upon us to be leaders and to do justice.

c.     And what about our earth? Are we making personal choices as stewards of the earth to care for the environment? Global warming is a real problem. We are not taking care of the one planet God gave us for life. We all have a responsibility to shrink our carbon footprints, but how often do we think to ourselves, “It’s just too hard to recycle” or “I like my gas guzzling car”? God does not suggest that we do justice. God does not even ask that we do justice. God requires that we do justice. God made us stewards of this planet and we are not taking seriously the responsibility to care for our planet.

d.     The third point in the triangle is the “out.” We are required to get outside of our comfort zones and to do justice in the world.

What does God require? God requires us to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God. These three things are a formula for faithfulness. We are not students in a class with God, but if we were these might be the only three requirements of the class. I wonder if we would pass the class.

The reason Micah named these three requirements is because they give us a balanced picture of what it means to be a faithful disciple. We need three things. We need to look up to God. We need to lean in to our community as we support one another, and we need to look out to do justice in the world.  Lacking any of these three, we fail.

We cannot make it without our walk with God. We cannot make it without relationships with other people to sustain us. But if we only care about ourselves and those we love, then we fail because God calls us to care about the whole world. So until there is justice for all, we cannot rest.

         One of the core values of The Village is balance. I believe we need to balance the three points of this triangle in order to have a good life in God. So if you ever find yourself feeling off balance, think about the triangle and consider how you are doing with these three. This is what God requires: that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.