Faith Formation: Micah

The first formal Bible Study I led on internship in Lasalle-Peru, Illinois, St. John's Lutheran Church, read through the prophet Micah. I still have all the notes used in preparing for the weekly Bible Study. In a Bible of mine from that time margin notes, highlights, and cross references pepper the nine pages of the prophet's words. The year before I had a course in seminary on the prophets. I still have the twelve page paper I wrote for the course on Micah 5:1-4. "But you, Bethlehem Ephratha, little to be in the clans of Judah. From you shall come forth from me to be a ruler in Israel. And his origin is from ancient times, from of old." I do not know why I saved these things for all these years, but I did. Micah has, for some reason, a special place in my faith, memory, and education. So, I am revisiting this somewhat obscure prophet. I am rereading my notes. I am rereading some of the sources I first read: James May's commentary and Hans Walter Wolff's reflection on Micah. More significantly I am reconsidering Micah for this time in which we live, with a lifetime of devotion to the story of God in my mind and heart.

Micah may seem an unusual Biblical text to attract such attention. Micah is one of the 12 minor prophets contrasted with the three majors: Isaiah's 66 chapters, Jeremiah's 52 along with Lamentations 5, and Ezekiel's 48 chapters. Micah comes in 7 chapters. In the typical Sunday readings from the Revised Common Lectionary the church turns to Micah only 3 times: 3:5-12 one cycle around the beginning of November, 5:2-5a during one year in Advent, and 6:1-8 one year during the season of Epiphany. In other respects Micah is by no means minor. Briefly consider four elements of this brief witness of the prophet.

First, Micah is the only prophet remembered and quoted by another biblical prophet. During the trial of Jeremiah who served God 100 years after the time of Micah some of the elders of the people defended Jeremiah by saying, "Micah of Moresheth, who prophesied during the days of King Hezekiah of Judah, said to all the people, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts...'" Judges 17-18 tells a story of a man named Micah, but he was not Micah of Moresheth. There were a number of people named Micah in 1 Chronicles which merely indicates that the name was not that uncommon. Another Micah, father of Abdon who was a a secretary and servant of the king, was mentioned during the reign of Josiah in 2 Chronicles 24:20, but again this was not the prophet.

Second, the poem in Micah 4, "In days to come the mountain of the LORD's temple shall be established as the highest of the mountains ... they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks..." is also found in Isaiah 2. Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries though its unclear which composed the poem or whether the poem was a song they both knew which was included in the collection of their sayings. The prophet Joel recorded a reversal of the key words calling for the beating of plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears for a crisis in his own time and situation.

Third, the church heard in Micah 5 a prophecy of Jesus birth in Bethlehem. From Bethlehem a ruler whose origin was ancient would arise. Mention is made of a woman whose labor birthed the ruler. He would be as a shepherd of the people and a man of peace. The Gospel of Matthew quotes the passage and Luke situates Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.

Fourth, perhaps Micah's most memorable words come in Micah 6 in response to "what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." Those words have echoed down through the centuries even to our age. On January 22, 1977 at his inauguration President Jimmy Carter said, "Here before me is the Bible used in the inauguration of our first President , in 1789, and I have just taken the oath of office on the Bible my mother gave me just a few years ago, opened to a timeless admonition from the ancient prophet Micah: 'He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Toward the end of his address he returned to Micah. "Within us, the people of the United States, there is a serious and purposeful rekindling of confidence. And I join in the hope that when my time as your President has ended, people might say this about our Nation: - that we had remembered the words of Micah and renewed our search for humility, mercy, and justice; ..."

There is of course more to Micah's words and the context in which he spoke them which also make him relevant to the world in which we live. It is complicated because so much readily understood by those who first heard him needs to be deciphered for our ears. The issues he spoke to involved justice and the vulnerable of society, the corrupting power of wealth and the division between rural experiences and the perception of leaders who lived in Jerusalem. I will do my best to sift through the texts and the times that were for the times that are.

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.

Pastor Tim Bauer