January 12, 2008 – Micah – Doom and Hope . . . Constancy
Micah is special to us at our school as we see every day the words painted on the cafeteria wall admonishing us to be loving, just and wise. Micah lived in the eighth century before Christ and so was a contemporary of Isaiah, Amos and Hosea, living during the reign of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. His message was felt keenly by rich landowners who amassed their wealth on the backs of the poor. He spoke loudly to the greed and control which can govern our lives if we do not keep our eye on what is truly important: the message sent to us by God, the life and person of Jesus.From the Zondervan ARCHEOLOGICAL STUDY BIBLE: As you read [Micah] be aware of the alternating oracles of doom and hope. Do you view such changes in perspective in this and other prophetic works as “mood swings” on the part of the author or as faithful representation of the messages given to the prophet by the God who is characterized by both “kindness and sternness” (see Romans 11:22)? (Page 1478)
God is just and also merciful. God measures and forgives. God has a plan and there is room for all of us in this plan.
God holds us to account but always with hope for our conversion, with openness to our repentance, and with forgiving love when we turn and return with the same constancy we are shown by him each day. Despite the apparent conflict between doom and hope, God is constant. It is we creatures who do not seem able to maintain fidelity to his love. We may as individuals maintain devotion to God, but as a human community we are not able to remain constant to our desire to please God. And to our erratic and unpredictable response to the Call of Intimate Union in the Body of Christ, God continues to offers only one thing: the constant, redemptive, healing, enduring love. It is to this love which the prophet Micah calls us. We are asked to look at the way in which we oppress friends, enemies, family members, strangers, every person in Christ’s Mystical Body. We are asked to look at the ways in which we amass or hoard wealth and in which we oppress ourselves and others: exclusive relationships, withheld love, repressed emotions, single-minded self-preservation, feigned lack of knowledge that there are areas in our lives we know need improving, irresponsibility for our own behavior. These are always in which we are like the rich against whom Micah rails. These are ways in which we give away our birthright as members of Christ’s Mystical Body.
How do we fit into this body? How do we reveal Christ to others each day? How do we prepare out interior temple to receive God? How do we repair and mend that which is broken? How do we heal others? How do we allow others to heal us?
We have been called to enter into a community which loves, a family which unites. We are called to be a people who reprove one another and who also heal one another. We are called to speak. We are called to listen. We are called to hear the story of doom . . . and convert it to one of hope. We are called to create honest, open relationships lacking in deceit, to display authentic emotions speaking from the heart, to act always with integrity working on ourselves more than we work on others.
There is much doom around us and we are called to be hope to that darkness; yet we need not do this alone. We have the constancy of God. We have the fidelity of the Creator, the hope of the Redeemer, and the love of the In-Dweller. It is in this way that those dark places we fear become places of hope for ourselves and for all. It is in this way that we become co-redeemers, co-lovers. It is in this way that we reach intimate union with Christ.
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