Humility

Micah was a poor shepherd who came from a family of shepherds. Now I say "a poor shepherd" and immediately want to qualify it because his was an agrarian society and so many worked the land, they were subsistence farmers. Of course they were "poor," though that term and language has very different meanings that it does for us today since in Micah's day there really wasn't a middle class.

Israel and the Middle East had been rearranged many times. If you look at a Bible map and can find Judah, that's where Micah lived. What is important to the times that Micah lived is that there was significant political struggle. Syria was the dominating power and there were frequent political skirmishes within the power structure. Smaller, weaker nations or regions, were subject to squabbles as people tried to sort out who was going to stay on top. These were the conditions under which Micah was living and preaching.

When you read, "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God," remember the political, cultural, and social circumstances of the time. These factors alone make 6:8 a radical statement. But just as radical is the particular message Micah was giving to Jews. They were not ready for the message he gave them. Essentially what they wanted to know was, Just tell us all the things God wants, so we can get on with life, so we don't have to change. But he doesn't tell them what they want to hear. Actually, what's remarkable about his answer/message is not so much what he says, but what strikes me is what he doesn't say: what he could have said-what you might expect him to say-but doesn't. First of all, he says, "walk humbly with your God." He doesn't say, "walk humbly with the God of Israel" or "walk humbly with the Lord." He doesn't say, "walk humbly with my God, the God of the Jews, the God of Abraham and Moses and Jacob, the God of our mothers and fathers." He doesn't say that. He says, "walk humbly with your God." That's remarkable, especially for Judaism, which at the time was struggling for an identity. Some might even suggest it was a really stupid thing to say, because he doesn't give them what they're looking for, what would support them in their growing faith. No, what he tells them is to walk humbly with your God.

Then he says, "walk humbly." That doesn't mean you should go proclaiming your God, don't go with piety and righteousness and trumpets blaring, announcing your God. "Walk humbly with your God." And he says, "walk with." Not walk behind. He doesn't say walk in front of. He doesn't say bow down to or stay away from because this God is so powerful. He says walk with your God. Again, remember the religious context as well as the political context at the time suggests anything but this message. You are supposed to pay homage to the political leaders. You are supposed to bow down to all the different deities. But along comes Micah, who says "walk humbly with your God." And there's more.

It's not my intent to enter into the ruckus about whether or not God exists. You can enter that argument and debate on your own and in many other places. The question for me isn't whether or not God exists, but what is the nature of your God. Consider this: We've all got gods. So tell me, what is the nature of your god? What I'm trying to do here is distinguish your God from your god(s). Let's try reframing this, for those who don't like the word god. Let's talk about idols instead. We don't use the word idols anymore, or idolatry. But someone has suggested that instead of using idols, instead of believing in idols, what we now have are addictions. Interesting. Some have suggested that the number one idol/addiction in Western culture is consumption, consumerism. It's built into our very way of life, which is capitalism. The nature of capitalism, the way we thrive in our economy is to consume. To buy, to eat. The more, the better. That, some people would suggest, is our idol, is our addiction, is our god.

Now I can't imagine anyone admitting, if I asked Is consumerism your idol or addiction, admitting that, Yes it is. So, then what is? What is it that you treat as the very ground of your being, that you accept unconditionally. And what is it that is the very core of your life, that accepts you unconditionally. All these are the things that have been used to describe the G-O-D word. And that's all it is, a word. You can call it what you want. But if it's not an idol, if it's not an addiction, what is your god? What is the ground of your being? What is the center of your life? What is it that you ultimately trust, day in and day out? Where is it that you place your faith? That's your God.

Micah also says you are to walk humbly with your God. The characterization of the relationship is one defined by humbleness. Humble-a word, the practice of humility, is not often heard among religious free thinkers, Unitarian Universalists. My experience has been that we are not a humble lot. Here's an example. In our hymnal, number 303, is one of my favorite hymns, written by the great Unitarian Universalist humanist minister Ken Patton:

We are the earth upright and proud,
in us the earth is knowing.
Its winds are music in our mouths,
in us its rivers flowing.

In us the earth is growing.
Nope, not a lot of humility there!
Yet, I'm struck with what can often feel like routine reminders of humility

It almost seems that in the very course of things we run up against things that remind us to be humble. One of the greatest stories that deals with this is the book of Job. God, and the Satan make a deal (the Sa·tán is the prosecutor-angel for God's court and only later did writers make him Satan). Actually they make a bet. Getting a little tired of God's boastfulness over the cosmos, the Satan says, You are so happy up there in heaven thinking that all your creatures love you and do everything just perfect. I'll bet I can find somebody that we can break. And God says, No way, no how; all my creatures are loyal. So they make a bet. They pick on Job, a real God loyalist. And they break him down systematically, chapter by chapter by chapter. They destroy his family, take away everything. He's covered with pox. Nobody wants anything to do with him. The man is scum. And God is up there saying to the Satan, See; see how good Job is. And finally Job can't stand it anymore, and he lets loose. I mean, he really curses God. Now, it would have been a really appropriate thing for God to say, Yeah, you're right. We've been playing a joke on you. You can have everything back. But he doesn't say that. What he says is, How dare you question Life? Where were you when the animals were created? Where were you when the earth was created? And he goes on. It's a great ending.

How dare you? Be humble. That's what he's saying-Be humble. Now if you don't like the Job story, there are a lot of other examples. Do you remember the movie "Little Big Man" with Dustin Hoffman. He plays about ten roles. One of the roles he plays is Chief Lodgeskins, the tribal elder who's a mystic/shamman. He's old, he's lived a good life, he's seen a lot. Just when we've grown to like him, Chief Lodgeskins says, "It's a good day to die. I've lived my life. I want to die." He says goodbye to everyone in the tribe and goes off to the mountaintop, to die. You are really convinced that this guy knows what he is doing. He goes up to the mountain and gets everything ready; he does his dance, does his chants, and he lays down. You think he's dead. It grows quite cloudy and starts to rain, and the camera focuses on his face. The drops are coming down and hitting him in the face, and he's twitching. Suddenly it begins to pour, and he sits up and says, "Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't." We are humbled in the face of life.

Every day we are humbled. I think of a story that Sylvia Boorstein tells. One of her last books has a great title, "That's Funny. You Don't Look Like a Buddhist." She is Jewish. One of the things she does is she leads Buddhist workshops for rabbis. She tells the story of when her father was dying in the hospital, and she goes into the hospital room where he was laying perfectly motionless. She has come prepared to do a Buddhist ritual of dying for her father. She gets out everything that she needs, and does the ritual. It sounds like it lasts maybe 35-40 minutes. Then she is done and getting ready to leave, and her father, just lying there says, "Are you done now? I really need to take a nap." We are humbled before the mysteries of life.

My last year of seminary we had to do clinical pastoral education, we were assigned hospital chaplaincy work. I was with a group of seven seminarians. One of them was a Jesuit priest, and he was working with this one particular patient who was severely depressed. Whenever he went to her room, he just couldn't get this woman to respond to anything he said. Finally one day he went in and spent 45 minutes with her and when he came back out he went to the nurses' station and said, "I think I've made a breakthrough. She didn't say anything, and she may have been motionless, but I have a sense that something shifted." And they said, "Yes, about an hour ago, she died." We are humbled before the mystery and the honesty of life.

It is said that President Theodore Roosevelt, who often went camping, and if it was a clear night, would, before he retired for the day, would come out and look up in the sky at all the stars, and he would find the constellation Pegasus. Right next to Pegasus was a patchwork of light. Then he would almost chant--imagine Theodore Roosevelt chanting: "There is the spiral galaxy Andromeda. It is as large as the Milky Way. It has hundreds of thousands of galaxies, over a billion suns." He would just stare into the sky. And then he would say, "I think I feel small enough now. It's time to go to bed." In the face of life and its mysteries and its honesties, we are humbled and we should feel small.

Micah says, "Walk humbly with your God." Amazing! Walk with your God. There is a tension there, between how to abide with the very center of our being, this awe-inspiring universe, or whatever it is that is your God, and yet feel as though we are, as many have suggested, co-creator with it. We have a co-responsibility for life around us, with that God. This is what 6:8 suggests. Walk humbly with your God. How do we do that? How do we keep that tension without going too far one way or the other? Here, I would suggest, is something that we don't do very well, as religious free thinkers. Maybe there is some guidance here in 6:8, for if we truly understand our co-responsibility-combined with being humble-we might appreciate the value of confession, actually verbalizing our humbleness, our humility.

In the hymnal is a confession: number 477:

Forgive us that often we forgive ourselves so easily and others so hardly;
Forgive us that we expect perfection from those to whom we show none;
Forgive us for repelling people by the way we set a good example;
Forgive us the folly of trying to improve a friend;
Forbid that we should use our little idea of goodness as a spear to wound those who are different;
Forbid that we should feel superior to others when we are only more shielded;
And may we encourage the secret struggle of every person.

Sharing or participating in this kind of a statement allows us to keep the tension in balance, to be able to walk with our God, to remain humble, yet to feel the power of being co-responsible, to be in co-responsibility, to be co-creator with our God. It helps to remind ourselves of who we are and where we are, giving ourselves perspective and context.

There is a dilemma here. The dilemma was spoken about, quite beautifully by the poet Rilke, "I live my life in growing orbits." Imagine that! "I live my life in growing orbits, which move out over this wondrous world. I am circling around God, around the ancient towers. I have been circling for a thousand years. And I still don't know if I am an eagle or a storm or a great song."

In telling the lessons of Micah 6:8, I have been reminding you of what you already know. None of this should be new to you. Rilke also reminds us of what we already know. We are an eagle, a storm, or a great song. Sometimes we are all three. The issue doesn't seem to me to be self-identification, of understanding who we are. The dilemma is different than that. It is the same dilemma that faced a man who was traveling through northern Vermont, and he was lost. He rolls into a town and he pulls over to ask a villager. He says, "I am lost. Can you help me?" The villager says, "Well, do you know where you are?" And the traveler says, "Yeah. I saw the name of the village when I came into town." And he aks, "Do you know where you are going?" And he said, "Yeah, I know the name of the town I am going to." The villager pauses for a minute and says, "You're not lost. You just need direction." Micah gives us direction. We know we're an eagle, a storm, or a great song. But where are we going with it? To whom are you accountable? For what? And how would we know?

Do justice. Love kindness. And keep faith with the promise of Life.

© the Rev. Fredric J. Muir
March 4, 2001

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