Who is a God Like Our God?

In the Name of the One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

As we wrap up our Lenten walk through Micah, it’s appropriate to recapitulate some ideas from previous weeks. God’s people—chosen and called by Him to bless the nations—had done an altogether dreadful job of it. They’d missed the mark—which, by the way, is the textbook definition of sin—and were so utterly puffed up in their pride that they couldn’t fathom a word of judgment against them; “Do not preach!” they say. Stop talking about judgment, it won’t be on us. Everything is fine, here. We aren’t oppressing the poor. We haven’t given ourselves over into idolatry. We haven’t rejected the one true God in favor of gods of our own devising. Stop saying all that judgmental stuff—live and let live—and after all, how can you judge us? God could never pronounce a word of judgment against us; we’re fine. Everything is fine.

Micah’s audience was delusional. It’s basic human nature to do everything we can to convince ourselves that everything is, indeed, fine. Even when that is manifestly not the case, even when the house is burning down around us, we can convince ourselves that nothing is wrong and that it’s all peachy keen. We can even, in our sinful nature, convince ourselves that everyone else is the problem; we’re fine, it’s those other people that are in the wrong. This is exactly what we’ve seen from the rulers, from the kings, to the tribal chiefs, to the judges, to the religious authorities over the past few weeks: delusion. The delusion that their sin isn’t really sin, in fact, it’s masquerading as virtue! The delusion that they are above reproach, simply because they’re the good Israelites that they just know themselves to be. The delusion that everything is fine.

But here comes Micah to disabuse them of such false notions. Micah’s message is simple: Things ARE NOT OKAY! You are NOT FINE. You have turned your back on the LORD GOD and foreign armies are coming for you. You have been selfish and idolatrous in your mistreatment of the poor, and thus have brought God’s righteous judgment upon the land. You have trampled on the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the supposed dregs of society. You have exalted yourselves at the expense of others, get ready to be humbled.

Micah is full of judgment—the prophet speaks beautiful words of hope as well—but the threat of God, the Creator and Ruler of the cosmos, executing His justice on these unjust earthly rulers is loud and clear. But everything is fine—right? No. The Lord will strike a grievous blow. Those who sinned against the poor and the weak are going to get their just deserts.

Woe is me! The prophet says. There isn’t a single good person to be found, echoing Psalm 14: “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God!’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.” As I pray through the Psalter every month—which, by the way, is a practice I cannot recommend enough—I enjoy reading Father Patrick Henry Reardon’s notes on each Psalm. Of Psalm 14 (which is Psalm 13 for him, as an Orthodox priest) he recalls that the “Fool” of the psalm is not to be understood as someone simple-minded, but that “Folly, in the Bible, is a thing intentionally chosen.” Thus, all have gone bad, they have foolishly turned from God and turned inward on their own delusions. They have turned away from loving their neighbor toward a self-serving, chimera of love that bears absolutely zero resemblance to the love God intends for His creatures.

Micah found no one righteous. Corruption abounded, even—perhaps especially—in the synagogue. The religious folk of the day, even they had turned away from God. The people had woven such an intricate tapestry of evil that even the best people couldn’t be trusted. But everything is fine. Right? No.

Dear friends, I hope that over the past few weeks of our Lenten journey, our ears haven’t been deaf to the Law spoken to us through the Word given to Micah. We are in a precarious time. We are in a time of social upheaval; we are seeing the ghastly results of broken systems everywhere. We are seeing the fruits of unchecked corruption, in the government, the corporate world and even—perhaps especially—the church. Yes folks, even the Church has been infected by the rampant consumerism and individualism that reigns in our age. We are called to be God’s peculiar people—living lives diametrically opposed to the world’s disordered idea of life, and yet here we are. It’s easy to point fingers at the Israelites of Micah’s time, but it’s a much harder pill to swallow when the mirror of the Law is being held up to our faces and we see the ugly truth: we are as guilty as those miserable wretches. We are as guilty of exalting ourselves at the expense of others. We are as guilty of building our own personal empires on the backs of others. We are just as guilty of concealing our sins and ignoring the call to repentance, choosing instead to brush it off “We’re not that bad. That preacher is talking about those other sinners in the pew over there, not us! Everything is fine—right?” Repent.

I hope that, as we are confronted with the Law, that we don’t look away. That we don’t choose to remain blind to the reality of sin. That we don’t continue the delusion that everything is okay—it isn’t, and it hasn’t been. But ultimately, it will be. God wins. God has already won; on Pascha—Easter—we will celebrate the victory of the Most Holy Trinity over sin, death, and the devil in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The prophet’s message doesn’t leave us without hope, God Himself does not leave us without hope—we are sinners, yes, and if we choose to continue in sin, foolishly and stubbornly turning away from God, we will rightly receive His judgment. The wages of sin is death; unending death. Pain, suffering, and separation from God—cut off from the source of life itself.

But who is a God like our God, forgiving sins and passing over wickedness? Who is a God like our God, who doesn’t keep His righteous anger forever because He delights in the steadfast love that He showed us by taking on our flesh in order to redeem our flesh. Who has again and again had compassion for you, sinful though you are, and who sent His Son to die for you? Friends, our God bled and died for you. He took His cross, bore the beatings, the mockery, the spitting, all to crush your sins under His nail-scarred feet, casting them out as though into the sea, washing you in the water and blood which flowed from His side! By His wounds you are healed. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed your sins from you. He, remembering His promises to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, made good on those promises.

Folks, make no mistake. Everything is not okay. We aren’t fine. We live in a broken world, and we are broken people, feeble and frail and constantly harassed by the assaults of the devil, our sinful flesh, our anxiety, the ever-present, darkly-looming knowledge that we are but weak flesh and blood, that our bodies will one day fail and, one day, we will die. The stress of daily life in a world that has nothing to offer but more stress and cause for worry. Things are not fine. They never have been, and on this side of eternity, they really never will be.

So fix your eyes on the Cross. Fix your eyes on the One who bled and died for you, Jesus Christ. Fix your eyes on Him whose grace is sufficient for you. Fix your eyes on the God who will give you the grace needed to get through every day of this troubled life, filling you with His Holy Spirit, bringing you to repentance and renewal every day, carrying you through this life and into the glorious future reality of resurrection.

Thanks be to God. Amen.