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Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany Year A

  • Micah 6: 1-8

The Lord presents the case against the Lord’s people, summoning the “mountains and hills” and the “enduring foundations” as witnesses, in Micah’s vivid scene.  These people, the Lord accuses, owe their very existence to the Lord’s mighty acts of salvation, from their miraculous rescue from slavery up to and including the dramatic reversal of King Balak, from cursing God’s people to blessing them. The response (vv 3-5) begins feebly:  What do I have to show in my defense?  “Shall I come with burnt offerings…”  Even “thousands of rams and tens of thousands of rivers of oil?”  Then comes the unexpected answer:   All the Lord really wants in response is “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

  • Psalm 15

Who is prepared to enter the Lord’s holy place, the psalmist asks?  The person who “does justice,”  “speaks truth,” always keeps her promises, does not exploit people– comes the answer.  Whoever “does this/will never stumble.”

  • I Corinthians 1: 18-31

The scandal of the public humiliation and execution of Jesus is the inspiration for some of Paul’s’ most eloquent writings.  God’s “wisdom” is totally unlike human wisdom, which is made perfectly clear in the cross, Paul writes.  Therefore, those who have had the best preparation (in particular the Jews and the Greeks in Paul’s’ milieu) “stumble” over the paradox and scandal of the cross.  But to those who were “chosen,” even if their personal formation and identity were as originally Jew or Greek, “Christ is [now] the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  Just look at yourselves, Paul writes to the followers of Jesus in Corinth.  In the eyes of the world many of you were nothing or even less than nothing.  Yet, out of your “nothingness” God is making something new!  “God chose what is weak in the world… what is despised” to accomplish God’s work in the world.

  • Matthew 5: 1-12

Only Matthew and Luke provide a summary of Jesus’ teaching; each version is quite distinctive.  Luke focuses on those who are literally poor, hungry and hated for their discipleship, whereas Matthew  focuses on “the poor in spirit,”  “who mourn,” “the meek,” “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” “the merciful,” “the pure in heart,” “the peace makers.”  Accept the derision of those who mock you, Matthew writes.  Accept that humiliation,  Jesus said, believing that you will receive a quite different outcome.

Micah imagines the Lord looming over all creation, summoning it’s very foundations to witness the serious charges raised against the Lord’s people.  The response at least acknowledges that staggering quantities of sacrificial offering are useless against such overwhelming accusations.  Just when the situation seems dead-locked with no realistic resolution, the answer comes without fanfare or complications.  All the Lord wants/expects in response to all that has already been given to you is to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”  What a ‘simple’ solution to such complicated questions.  ‘Simple’ because it seems so obvious and feasible for any and all, yet anything but ‘simple’ in executing these behaviors in the ‘real’ world.  Yet, the biblical promise is:  do  not be deceived by such ‘simplicity’ nor underestimate it’s power to accomplish amazing things!  The psalmist echoes the same dynamic.  Can anyone be worthy to come into God’s presence?  The answer comes: Yes!  Anyone who “does justice.”  It is a serious mistake to reduce the summary of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew’s gospel to a code of ethics or even a ‘sermon’.  This summary is more like a dazzling revelation that at first disorients rather than enlightens; that turns everything upside down in order to get things right-side up!  Basic action, of which anyone is capable with or without any particular preparation and whatever their origins is the true and actual ‘secret’ to a rewarding life– mercy, peacemaking, “doing justice….”  

But the fact that gives this ‘teaching’ its authenticity is the cross,  The cross, Paul writes, illustrates and illuminates and embodies God’s “wisdom.”

“Standing before Christ on the Cross,” Jean-Luc Marion writes in Prolegomena to Charity, “I cannot pass without taking notice, because even passing by without taking notice constitutes a decision.  I must therefore decide for myself: no one else decides for me, and yet I decide for myself because I am confronted with the fact of Christ on the Cross.”  (p.120)  “…I must make my decision faced with Christ on the Cross–a crucial crisis in every sense-  because he reveals himself simply as the Son that he is to God.  God imposes and requires that I say with yes or no to his charity….” (p. 121)  “Charity cannot, from the sole fact that it appears publicly, fail to cause a scandal and arouse a crisis.”  The Cross “reveals itself, charity offers itself….”  “Charity alone is worthy of faith….” (p. 122)

The cross is the culmination of the story of Jesus for two essential reasons.  First, it is a deus ex machina of pure love.  It is so unexpected, inexplicable, revolutionary, complete that it re-sets the relationship between God and humankind and person to person.  Secondly, it is a complete reversal of conventional assumptions; it replaces one set of wishy-washy values with a totally opposite set of rock-solid values, which, ironically, is seen most clearly in the ‘humiliation’ of the cross.  “I must make my decision with Christ on the cross….”   Is it a defeat or is it a ‘triumph’?  Can it be dismissed?  Or must I take it seriously?  Does it finish the story?  Or does the irony of the cross open up creative, fresh new variations for myself and for all human relationships?

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