God's Judgment comes to All

Central Verse:

For lo, the LORD is coming out of his

Place,

And will come down and tread upon

The high places of the earth.

Then the mountains will melt under him

And the valleys will burst open,

Like wax near the fire,

Like waters poured down a steep

Place….

What is the transgression of Jacob?

Is it not Samaria?

And what is the high place of Judah?

Is it not Jerusalem?

Micah 1:3-4; 5b NRSV

Central Truth:

It is easy when we are in a place of privilege and power to believe nothing will happen to us, that we alone carry favor with God. We risk forgetting that although God loves us, and his love wins the day, God is also just and righteous demanding acts of service and justice be performed.

Food for Thought (questions about the text):

Theophany - a theophany is the experience of seeing God. In the biblical text this almost exclusively seen as God coming to the rescue of his people except here where Micah sees God coming, not to rescue his people, but to punish them.

What appears to be the transgressions of Israel (Samaria) and Judah (Jerusalem)?

Are there any modern day Israel's and Judah's? Does this text seem to imply individual piety or national piety?

Connections: (Time with our society)

It is easy to convince people of the status and privilege of American society. Even in these hard economic times we enjoy some privileges that others can't even dream of. One of the big issues plaguing American society right now is the national debt and the lack of jobs available for the middle class and poor.

In our society in recent times we have experience two vitriolic political movements around these issues. The first being the Tea Party movement and the second being the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both of these groups are unhappy with their place in American society and with the current political and geo-political systems in place. There are pros and cons of both movements, and I have no intention of endorsing either one, but one thing is agreed upon and that is that there is something wrong in our society today.

Many of our national politicians and civic leaders sacrifice the basic needs of the poorest in our society to provide more for the wealthiest. And with that we build up places in our society where the worst elements of humanity are celebrated. Wall street as a fount of greed, Washington DC where lying is a way of life. While our nation has prospered we have often neglected the poorest of our society and of the world. This begs the question, if we were to see God coming in the clouds would he be coming to lift us up or bring us low?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ortega: "Man Has No Nature"

"Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances; that means he has to make his own existence at every single moment. He is given the abstract possiblity of existing, but not the reality." Today unfortunatly I got very little opportunity to read but when I did I was able to read and excerpt from Ortega (of course dealing with existentialism). Ortega has a very nice writing style that is very understandable but also thought provoking. This quote I have above is the first two sentences of the selection. What struck me about these sentences is the reality of it. Man is the one that chooses his reality. That is he chooses who or what he is to be. Man is under the influence of countless things in his life, religion, politics, friends, and family, not to mention history in general but it is his/her choices that influences his/her reality. I am not saying that man creates his /her reality apart or separate from physical scientific reality. What I am saying is th
Read more

Theology vs. Scripture

I've been doing some thinking. I've been apart of and have been watching the discussion taking place on Locust and Honey on the General conference. I did post some statements but recently a relatively short discussion on homosexuality has surfaced. Now this is a hot button issue for pretty much everyone but there were a few issues I had with the various points that were given, as well as some thoughts on what is happening in the church right now around this issue. First off, I was struck by the insistence that the church needs to be open and affirming. I am not making any claims on whether this is right or wrong but the church has never in its history been an "open and affirming" organization. This is just a statement of fact, and I find it quite interesting that most people claim that the Methodist church needs to be open and affirming when I believe that John Wesley would not have been. Lest we forget John was known for kicking people out of his societies if
Read more

Stewardship Prayer

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-13 Central Verse: “…but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:14b-13 Central Truth: This is the second lesson in our stewardship series and it focuses on Prayer. This may seem like an odd verse to focus on prayer within our membership vows but we must take the time to begin to understand in the most basic elements what prayer is. Prayer is communication with God. With communication there are two important attributes to the conversation. The first is listening and the second is speaking. Most people would put speaking as the primary for conversation but it is just the opposite which is listening. When we speak about prayer in its most basic components we are talking about conversation. Most of the time it feels like we do all the talking. We fill up the silence of our lives with it. This relegates the ro
Read more