Thought for Today
Micah 6:6 "With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.
Almost inevitably, during Lent, all Christians will be called upon to hear and reflect on Jesus’ words about taking up the cross. Almost inevitably, during Lent, Christians will see a television news story covering a parade where someone is carrying a cross. We may even see a story about someone suspended on a cross. If you are like me, you find such stories unsettling and disturbing. We even talked about Mark’s version of Jesus’ challenge during worship last week.
Do you ever find yourself questioning what God wants from you? If you don’t, you should! Long ago, the prophet Micah asked that question. Micah wrote toward the end of the 8th century BCE (BC). Any way you understand time or calendars, that is a very long time ago. When Micah penned those verses above, almost every religion practiced some form of sacrificial worship. The Bible details a very vast and complicated system of sacrifices to atone for a panoply of sins. Burnt offerings of animals meeting rigid specifications, grains and oils offered to God to repair the damage we have caused in our relationship with our Creator.
I still remember the first time I read Micah’s answer to his own question. For me, Micah is the Old Testament version of Jesus’ words. Those of us ‘of a certain age’ remember the WWII-era poster showing a stern-faced Uncle Sam pointing his finger and the caption reading “Uncle Sam Wants You!” Maybe Christendom needs a recruiting poster emblazoned with “God Wants You!”
In my reading this morning in Daily Devotions with William Barclay, he comments on the Lukan passage and titles his musings “The Conditions of Service.” He lists them, in my words, as: (1) self-denial; (2) being prepared to face almost anything for loyalty to Jesus; (3) spending our God-given life in service to others. Specifics on how Christians are being called “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
In my sermon on the Markan passage last Sunday, I quoted from These Days, “One truth about God that Scripture makes clear is that God asks people to do difficult things. God does not pamper us with simple errands, pleasant to fulfil . . . The cross Jesus calls followers to bear is not the hardship that falls on us accidentally but something we take up intentionally.”
Why should it be so hard for us “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” How did we ever get to the point where our society focuses on self-fulfillment above self-denial? When I studied management theory, I learned “Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper.” (Wikipedia) The penultimate level on Maslow’s triangle is labeled “self-actualization.”
Who is right? Is fully realizing ‘self’ the final step toward reaching transcendence? Or, are we to strive “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Christians know the power of Jesus’ challenge to take up the cross, to lose our life, our obsession with ‘self’ for the sake of our faith in Jesus. “Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—” A gift God has given us to share with others.
Stay safe, lose life to find eternity with God, trust God,
Pastor Ray