God's Via Positiva #11 | Say Amen to Humility

0:02 As we continue our series, Say Amen, it's easy for us to state the things that we are against. Like it's really easy. But what if in addition, we were a people who stated what we are for? We stated the things we are willing to shout amen to. This past Lent and all the way through Pentecost, we have said amen to mercy, to life, and we have even said amen to doubt. Today, we take a step back, we sit down, and we say amen to humility. Being humbled is thought to be brought back down to earth. For example, when I was a youth pastor in Long Beach, I was playing basketball with some middle schoolers. And one of them said, Werner, you're so hard to play against. I'm like, it's because I'm so good, right? No, it's because you're so sweaty.

0:55 I was definitely humbled that day. But what if humility moved us into ways that we can grow? So let us turn to the prophet Micah, starting at chapter 6. Friends, hear the word of the Lord. Hear what the Lord says. Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the case of the Lord, and your enduring foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against his people, and he will contend with Israel. Oh, my people, what I have done for you, and what have I wearied you? answer me for I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery and I sent before you Moses Aaron and Miriam oh my people remember now what King Balak of Moab devised and what Balaam son of Boor answered him and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord 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 of a year old?

2:17 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? But he has told you, immortal 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 this is the word of God for you the people of God thanks be to God This past weekend I was in California to celebrate my abuelita Mencha's 100th birthday. We had a huge celebration, a family reunion, but this was a quick trip for us. On Monday morning as we were leaving my parents' place and headed to LAX to the airport, my dad gives me a big hug and he says to me, be humble, siempre. Be humble, always. Now that wasn't a surprise to me. He says this to me almost every time we say goodbye from a trip. He has said this to me on big milestones like graduations and my ordination and sometimes just casually on the phone as we say goodbye. Throughout the years of him saying this to me, I've had different interpretations of what he means by this. Be humble always? Is this a caution or a warning? Is this an encouragement? When I'm not at my healthiest, I feel like my dad is accusing me of having a big ego. And usually when I feel this as an accusation, my ego is probably a little inflated at that time. And yet what I think my dad means is a reminder to not do things alone. That I can't do anything outside of doing things alongside God and outside and I can't do things outside of community. When I do things completely on my own, then my ego and

4:23 pride start to get in the way. Now pride isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like it's important to have pride in oneself. But pride can be dangerous. What I mean is there's a time when your pride is your main article of clothing in a way that makes you feel superior to others. There's a difference between feeling good and feeling better than others. That kind of pride leads to running for power. That kind of pride leads to forgetting about others. Yet humility keeps you, keeps me and check and helps me see others as children of God. So is my dad giving me a warning, a caution, or an encouragement when he reminds me to be humble? Sure, all the above. What I do know is that my dad's voice is in my head constantly whispering this commandment to me, and it begs me to say amen to humility. Now the passage that we just read holds a verse that many of us know by heart. One that you often hear us quote from the pulpit all the time, Micah 6.8. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. I feel like this verse does such a good job of defining what it means to live out the Christian life. When Jesus is asked by the teachers of the law, what is the most important commandment? Jesus responds by reciting the Hebrew scripture saying, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And then Jesus says, and the second is similar, to love your neighbor as yourself.

6:09 And the teacher that asked him this question in trying to trick him says, well then who is my neighbor? And Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. He tells the story of a man who is beaten, robbed, and left on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite, both religious leaders, walked by without hoping, but a Samaritan, someone considered an outsider and an enemy by many Jews at that time, stopped to care for the man. He bandages his wounds, takes him to safety, and pays for his care. It's interesting, in that parable, Jesus never answers the question, who is my neighbor? And in telling of this parable, Jesus essentially says, it doesn't matter who your neighbor is be a loving neighbor. So how do we love God? By loving our neighbor. And I think Micah 6 8 shows us how to be a neighbor by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

7:10 But why does this requirement, this description of Christian living come in the minor prophet of Micah. Some context for that time. Remember how I said that sometimes pride leads to power and forgetting about those on the margins? Well, the people of that time had a big dose of unhealthy pride. Their religious gatherings were filled with spectacles. They worshiped God with their lips, but they kept the marginalized downtrodden. They wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the classroom, but forgot to pay for a free lunch for those who couldn't afford it. Micah has been making this case against them in this writing because the religious leaders were satisfied with their own needs and the powerful were only hungry for more power. The prophet Amos has a similar case against God's people in Amos 5. Amos writes, I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

8:12 Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the melody of your harps, but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Singer John Foreman, in his song, Instead of a Show, paraphrases these words by singing, I hate all your show and pretense, the hypocrisy of your praise, the hypocrisy of your festivals. I hate all your show. Away with your noisy worship. Away with your noisy hymns. I stomp on my ears when you're singing them. I hate all your show. Instead, let there be a flood of justice, an endless procision of righteous living. Instead, let there be a flood of justice instead of a show. Micah is talking to a people who are dealing with very similar injustices and mistreatment of worship in that time later in verse 12 Micah says this about the people they're wealthy are full of violence and their inhabitants speak lies God in this passage is bringing up quite a case against the Israelites of worshiping without any righteousness and God ponders in poetic fashion what has gone wrong? So God reminds them of who God is. God reminds them that God is a God who saves, a God who delivers them out of bondage. Don't you remember Moses, God says, a God who hears and sees and acts on behalf of the oppressed. There is this case, and the people start to panic.

9:52 They say, my bad. What can we do to fix this? Shall we come with burnt offerings? Do you want 1,000 rams? Maybe rivers of oil? What about our firstborn? In short, the people don't get it. God has made a case against them, and the wealthy elites say, so how much do you want to make it right? Yes, there's this admission of guilt, but this offer to just pay off their debt actually reinforces their showy religiosity that Micah has already condemned. The typical reaction is to try to win God's favor by tallying up good deeds as if mercy has a price. What do we need to offer to make things right? Burn sacrifices, endless flocks of rams, maybe even our own children.

10:47 How do we balance the scales? But Micah refuses that logic. God cannot be bought. That's why we remind you at the call to give every week that giving isn't a way to pay God back. But giving is gratitude. It's not buying God's grace. Micah pushes back against the instinct to treat faith like a ledger of spiritual transactions and instead points to a way God has already made clear. God has told you, O mortal, what is good. The Torah has long outlined how God's people are meant to live. And Micah standing in the tradition of the prophets reminds them once again, what God wants isn't complicated rituals. It's something both simpler and more demanding. To act with justice.

11:43 To embrace mercy. To live in humility before God. living justly showing mercy and walking humbly aren't tasks we need to finish and then forget they are a lifelong commitment shaping both personal choices and communal systems Micah challenges us surface level gestures checking boxes or symbolic nods aren't enough hiring a diverse staff is good but it doesn't fulfill the call for racial justice Donating to disaster relief is good, but it doesn't let us off the hook for unsustainable habits that contribute to climate crisis. Donating to hunger initiatives are good, but it means little if we don't examine the consumer culture behind hunger.

12:37 Worshiping on Sunday is good. It's so good to worship with you all, but it doesn't make up for harboring bitterness during the work week. Instead of grand gestures like offerings of thousands of ram, Micah urges us to offer daily ordinary acts of love for each other and for the creation God cherishes. To walk humbly with God is to recognize our own capacity for pride and self-deception. Faith isn't a performance or a negotiation with God. It's a journey, a journey that reshapes how we live and who we are. So why is this the requirement? Wouldn't it be easy to simply be a good person? Why is the requirement to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly? Well, because those are the things that are at the very heart of who God is. God is a just God. God is a God of mercy.

13:36 God is a humble God who incarnated themselves in the person of Jesus and suffered death for the sake of redemption. So yes, if we are to love God, then we must strive for the same heart of God. This week, a Presbyterian colleague was in town, and he and another pastor in New York and I met for lunch. We talked soccer, family, and ministry, and then this passage in this sermon came up. And I told him that the temptation of this passage is for me to simply call out the religious right and Christian nationalism, because the parallels are right there. Showing you religious groups that neglect actual Christian living of justice, mercy, and a leader that is nothing short of humble is right there. As Micah says in verse 12, the wealthy are full of violence and their leaders speak lies. And while they fake worship with their hands raised, there is no justice there. And trust me, there are, there is a sermon there. And there are times for a prophetic sermon that shouts, I hate all your show and pretense, the hypocrisy of your praise, the hypocrisy of your festivals. I hate all your show.

14:54 Sometimes that is necessary. And you will hear those sermons from us from time to time, because in order to do justice and love mercy, there are ways to call out hatred and racism we see in our day. And I know that for some of you, it's really comforting to hear your preacher say that we're against the show, we're against the religious right movement, and I have some empathy for that. I really do. Yet this series is Say Amen. It's not a sermon series about what we are against, but it's about the things we say amen to. So what's the challenge when we say they're the ones that need to hear this? what if we what if we stopped wagging our finger to different groups and said amen to humility instead what if my dad whisper what if my dad is whispering in our ear be humble always this passage and my dad have me convinced that doing justice and loving mercy are in community with walking humbly with God. My dad says be humble always and I think I now understand what my dad means. He's not saying be humble as a sign of status. He's asking me to walk humbly because walking humbly is a movement. It's not a thing you are. So how can we say amen to this movement, this walking forward in humility. I think especially in wanting to clearly state what we are against, it's easy for us to think we have it all figured out and not want to grow in our understanding. And perhaps that's when we need to say amen to humility most, especially if our humility will lead us in doing justice and loving mercy better. Humility is a hard movement, especially when we are asked to grow in places where wounds may open up. I think about entering

17:01 into true anti-racism work. It requires a humility to say I don't know it all but I need to grow. In our 2024 Lenten devotional I had the privilege of writing the Good Friday reflection. That year I had been reading James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree, A book that doesn't just ask for your attention, it grabs you by the soul. In that reflection, I invited our community to consider how the crucifixion of Christ echoes through this country's history of racial violence, to hear the cries of crucify him alongside the haunting echoes of lynch him. Not long after that, I received a letter from one of our online members. She had read the devotional and felt compelled to visit her local library and check out this book. In her words, this book was a gut punch, a slap in the face, a wake-up call.

17:59 It took me weeks to finish. It was that hard. I could only manage a couple pages at a time. She then told me where she grew up, the world she had been taught to see, and how this book cracked it open. It wasn't easy, she wrote. She said, my wife kept asking, why are you reading this if it's so upsetting to you? I think the reason she kept reading this book was because she said amen to humility. She kept walking in that movement. She kept going not because it was comfortable, but because she knew that growth is often not comfortable. She walked that path slowly and painfully, page by page. And she ended her letter by saying that she vows to not become complacent in her retirement years.

18:54 Friends, the movement of humility hopes us get past the wagging of the finger of groups that we disagree with and positions us in a place to move forward in acts of justice. Walking humbly reminds us that what we do isn't just a checkbox of doing justice, but it's a lifestyle that connects our heart with the heart of God. So friends, in the words of my dad,