Creekside Church Sermon of March 9, 2008 "Don't Lose the Imprint!" Micah 6:6-8 Matthew 5:13-14	Rev. David Bibbee
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Historically, the Brethren shunned titles. They considered it worldly and unbecoming to draw distinctions between fellow Christians. All were equal in the eyes of God. Leaders weren't distinguished from church members by title. It seemed best to them to address each other simply as, "brother" or "sister."

But there are people for whom rank and title are important. They let people know their degrees and pedigree. They want you to know they are SOMEBODY, and a title is one way to show it.

Titles are no big deal, except when titles are given without corresponding tasks. Before the NCAA stiffened rules on recruiting practices, there was an all-state basketball player who got a scholarship to a state university. It wasn't enough to cover all expenses. His family was poor and couldn't help, and the Athletic Department didn't have the funds, so he was given a job-Faculty Vehicle Superintendent. When asked what he did, he replied, "Not much. I just walk around the faculty parking lot once a day to make sure its still there." He flunked out after one semester and never returned.

A plan without a purpose, a title without a task is a road to nowhere. When you were baptized you received a new identity. You were given a title, and with the title came a task. Since then, being salt and light and leaven has been your work.

Jesus distilled the Law into the greatest commandment. "You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself." It's just that simple and just that hard, and there is a companion commandment in the little book of Micah that also captures the essence biblical religion.

Micah was a prophet during the eighth century B.C. Times were good. People enjoyed the high life. There was peace and prosperity. But Micah prophesized that the party was over. Before long the nation would crumble. God had "issues" with the people. They forgot the covenant God had made with them. They had forgotten his goodness and his saving acts in history. They lost touch with the ethical and spiritual dimensions at the heart of worshiping God. Worship focused on sacrifices for the atonement of their sin. There were sacrifices for everything-thanksgiving offerings, burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings. They believed the sacrifices pleased God and appeased his anger.

Micah asked, "How should I pay respect to the Lord? With burnt offerings and year old calves -- a thousand rams and rivers overflowing their banks with oil? What if I sacrifice my firstborn son? Will it please God and clean up my record? If you want to please God, do what you've been told. You know what God requires -- do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God."

The requirement was for their good and the good of everyone. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. The words are ancient and eternal -- so simple you can put them in a fortune cookie. Write it on a piece of paper and stick it in your pocket. Memorize it because it is binding. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. We can't amend it. We can't vote on it. No negotiating. No arguments. No fussing. No making a stink about it.

God calls us to do justice. We equate justice with the judicial system. Plaintiff and defendant. Judge and jury. Guilty or not guilty. It's society's way of addressing wrongs and keeping order. But the justice system isn't always just. Sometimes justice goes to the highest bidder. People are incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit. Blacks and whites commit the same crime, but blacks are jailed at a rate three to four times higher than whites.

God's justice isn't blindfolded Lady Justice who stands holding the balance scales. God's justice has a spiritual foundation. Justice is done when God's intention and our intention is one in the same. God intends a full life for everyone -- not like today where a handful of the super-rich have obscenely disproportionate control of the world's goods and resources while the poor masses pick over what's left. The Bible is biased in favor of the poor. Jesus was squarely on the side of widows, orphans, and outcasts. In God's economy every person has enough to live a full life, and no one has more than necessary. There is fairness, equity, and equality for every human being.

Years ago when Fiorella LaGuardia was the mayor of New York, he kept in touch with various city departments. He sometimes filled in for department heads that were sick. Once he was called to preside over Night Court. It was a bitter cold winter night when a trembling man was brought to him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. He pleaded, "I had to do it, your honor, my family is starving."

LaGuardia needed Solomon's wisdom. He didn't want to fine the poor man and put him in jail, but he couldn't dismiss the law, either. He put his face in his hands while the courtroom awaited his verdict. Looking up, he told the man, "I have to punish you. There are no exceptions to the law. You are fined ten dollars."

An audible gasp went through the courtroom. Then LaGuardia picked up his hat, pulled a ten dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it in. "Here's the ten dollars for your fine," he said. Then he looked over the courtroom and said, "Furthermore, I'm going to fine everyone in this room fifty cents for living in a city where a man has to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant." Applause broke out as people dug into their pockets. The surprised and smiling man left with $64.50."

This is a picture of shalom. It's a Hebrew word that describes life as God intends it. Shalom happens when society is governed by fairness, righteousness, and compassion for others, especially for those who have so little. Justice is more than being nice to them. It means helping put a roof over their heads, putting food on the table, and standing up for them.

When you change your clothes after church, check the label. Pull out the clothing label and see where they were made. At a blue jeans factory in China, workers live in cement factory dormitories making under a dollar an day. Meals and rent are deducted from their wages. In Vietnam children are chained to sewing machines without food or water making T-shirts destined for the United States. In Indian clothing factories young girls are often forced to work 90 hours a week at 18 center an hour. No overtime pay. They get two restroom breaks during the day. They share beds in single rooms that house twelve.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the problems and say there's nothing I can do. You can't close a sweatshop, but you can support the work of organizations that do. You've heard the expression, "Think globally. Act locally." We aren't responsible the world, we are responsible for what happens in our own backyard.

What does the Lord require of you? Awareness is a start, but only action gets it done.

We must also love kindness. You know what kindness is. In the past months there have been ample opportunities to show it to hurting people in our midst.

Theology students at a seminary were taking a final examination on the philosopher Immanuel Kant's Moral Imperative. The students were given two hours to write their philosophy with a ten-minute break in the middle. They wrote like a house on fire until the bell rang signaling the break. They went into the hallway were a man not in their class sat slumped over on the floor. The students were talking with each other and getting drinks of water. They returned to the classroom where they resumed writing about what it means to be a moral person.

Days later the tests were returned. Everyone flunked. The students thought they were being graded on their writing. They didn't know that in the hallway the professor was grading them on who approached the man and offered him a kind word.

We do not show kindness out of concern for what might happen if we don't. God isn't grading you to determine if you get his love or not. To show kindness for such reasons is worse than not acting at all. We show kindness and compassion to others because God desires it, and being Christian means wanting what God wants.

Have you seen anyone sitting on the floor, or the sidewalk lately? Have you been asked for a handout? Have you noticed someone at work visibly shaken for an unknown reason? What did you do? Did you ask yourself what God required? It's so simple to remember. DO justice. LOVE kindness.

And walk humbly with God. It was my senior year of college when I learned the meaning of humility. I was in Bogotá, Colombia for a January interim class. One day we were taken to one of the barrios that had sprung up around the city. The one we visited had literally been built on a garbage dump. Homes were made or corrugated roofing, cardboard -- whatever was available.

We were taken into a one-room house. The wallpaper was newspaper. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling. For furniture there were wooden crates. Fourteen people lived in a twelve by twelve room. We were greeting by a twenty-seven year old mother of six who could have passed for fifty-seven. Through an interpreter she said she was honored by our visit. She said that her family's life was hard, but that God was good and would provide for them.

There were only two sources of running water in a slum where over 3.000 people lived. The children wanted to show us where they went to get water. Carrying tin cans and whatever they could find to hold water, they led us a half mile up the base of a mountain. A little boy latched on to my finger and held it the whole way. He was maybe three. All he had to wear was a ragged pair of shorts. His stomach was distended from malnutrition.

The water source was a pipe and spigot. After they filled their containers, we walked back. The boy who held my finger needed both hands to carry his can of water. Halfway back, he tripped and fell, spilling the water. I can still see him sitting in the dirt, crying because he lost his water. I knew that from that moment on I would look at life in a different way. The things I thought I lacked were absolutely insignificant compared to the suffering of the people who lived in that terrible place.

I began to learn that walking humbly with God means walking slowly, deliberately, and attentively through life, getting myself out of first place. Walking humbly means sacrificing yourself to pay attention to and really listen to what others are saying. It means listening to something other than the chatter reverberating in your own head. It means tuning out the voices telling you to take what you want from life instead of listening to God's still, small voice of God that leads and guides.

Walk humbly, and remember that Jesus didn't seek equality with God. He emptied himself of himself and became a slave for our sakes. But in humbling yourself before God and the needs of others, don't forget that Micah says, "Walk humbly with your God." The God of all people is your God, too. God is your constant companion through the thick and thin and the highs and lows of life. Remember-you carry God's imprint on your life.

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