Text: Micah 6:6-15 and 7:1-7

Since it is Primary voting season, as I was spending time with the biblical text from the prophet Micah this week, I was also sitting down with my ballot and my voter guide to learn about candidates. Including judges, a role which doesn’t tend to be top of mind when considering elections, but as I learned from The Urbanist (a Seattle community-based progressive news website) is maybe more significant than I’d thought. 

The election committee for The Urbanist writes of the candidates for judge, “Washington’s Supreme Court is extremely important. While the US Supreme Court gets far more attention, the vast majority of prosecutions and lawsuits occur in state courts using state constitutions and state law.” (2026 Primary Election Endorsements). I was reminded by KUOW that the majority of the state supreme court is up for election this year and that these are the folks likely to decide whether the “millionaire’s tax” will stand.

Micah also has thoughts about judges! “Their hands,” he says, “are skilled at doing evil. Official and judge alike ask for a bribe; the powerful speak however they like; this is how they conspire.” Yikes! That makes me think pretty seriously about how I choose the people who have power in this state! 

I don’t think that anyone running for office takes bribes. But there have certainly been stories in recent history of corrupt spending among Washington elected officials. And I also was reminded of immigration lawyer Alexandra Lozana, who has taken thousands of dollars from people who believed her promises that she could ensure permanent documentation in the US. Yet she misrepresented their chances, made up stories about them in court documents, and left many people in a worse position than before they sought her help. (A huge WA immigration law firm rises and falls: The Seattle Times)

And this is to say nothing of high profile officials who are in the pocket of this federal administration. This feels like yet another instance of scripture feeling like it could have been written today. 

Micah 6:8, which I’m sure many of you quoted along as it was being read, is beloved and it is very well known, but we don’t usually read the verses around it that we heard today. We don’t usually see the context. Like so many of the prophets, it is spoken into a time of instability and conflict. These surrounding verses speak of the predicted consequences that will follow unjust and unlawful behavior.

Micah notes this bad behavior – including economic and financial shenanigans – not just by judges, who he does specifically call out, but which seems to be rampant:

“Are the treasures of wickedness still in the house of wickedness, while the shorted basket is denounced?  Can I approve of wicked scales and a bag of false weights in a city whose wealthy are full of violence and whose inhabitants speak falsehood with lying tongues in their mouths?”

That decrying of injustice is what immediately follows our beloved verses about doing justice, loving mercy/kindness and walking in humility with God.

Micah is noticing that as a few people act with sneakery and deception, that sneaky deceitful attitude spreads. It erodes trust in the whole system.  The last time I preached in this series, I talked about God’s vision for a community where people can trust each other to ask and receive, to lend and borrow, to share and re-distribute.  That vision is woven throughout the law that God gave to the people of Israel as they were liberated from enslavement. They seem to have forgotten it.

Micah describes not a community of sharing and mutuality but a community where each person fends for themself (or maybe their family?) and while there is no bloodshed, there are no weapons and this is not war, it is called violence by the prophet. The way he described it made me think of the Hunger Games: “Faithful ones have perished from the land,” he says, “there is no righteous one among humanity. All of them lie in wait for bloodshed; they hunt each other with nets.”

So I guess there is bloodshed. Although to be fair, I think Micah is being metaphorical. He sees people laying traps for each other to take advantage anywhere they can. And it’s insidious! It’s a slippery slope. When I start to think that if my neighbor is acting sneaky, if they’re putting themself first then me too! I have to look out for number one.

Even Micah, when he responds, almost appears to be sounding a self-protective note himself. He says, “But me! I will keep watch for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation.” I will wait. Just wait? Alone? Do nothing?

But we know better. Especially because we have that beloved verse! We already know. And that’s exactly what Micah has said: You already know what to do! You already know how you should act! You already know where you should turn for instruction. God has shown you, my people! God has shown you what is good. Do. It.

Yes. Wait on God’s salvation. But waiting does not have to be passive. While you wait, walk humbly. Love mercy. Do justice.

While it may be easy to retreat into self-protective mode and even more to I’ll-get-away-with-what-I-can mode, especially when it feels like the world – and the economy – are in crisis. But in an actual crisis that’s not what will save you anyway. I was recently reminded that the likelihood of survival in disaster and crisis is not what you know or how much stuff you have, it’s how well connected you are to your neighbors. As we wait on God, if we are walking in the way of humility and justice and love for our neighbor we are just being practical. 

Our beloved text begins, “God has shown you what is good.” When things heat up, and we’re in self-preservation mode. Or even in an election year when we’re thinking of what’s best for me and my own family, oInstagramur emotional lizard brain can start to dominate. 

But God has already shown us. When Micah proclaimed that to his people so long ago, he was referring to the Torah regulations, laws about caring for their neighbors, leaving enough for the stranger and the sojourner to glean, specifics about how to lend and borrow, sharing with mutuality, the cycle of a seven year reset.

God has shown us! We too already know that our economic well-being is tied up with each other and we have the great advantage of Jesus and the gospels. 

When I was creating the Evergreen Instagram account I needed to come up with a short and descriptive blurb for the profile. I came up with this: 

A family-sized church, worshiping in Kirkland, caring for each other and empowering each other to follow Jesus in our communities. 

The part about empowering each other to follow Jesus felt – and feels – really right to me. When I think about who we are as a church, most of us are not likely to do as Jesus did and turn over a table in temple or market place (but one or two of us might) or be out on the streets protesting (but many of us to that at least sometimes). But each of us has many opportunities for justice and mercy and lovingkindness in our every day lives, in the decisions we make in our families and community, in the choices we make on our ballots. For judges. 

As Micah has said, the powerful will speak however they like. People will continue to try to cheat and lie and oppress others to get ahead. We need communities of care and empowerment to be firm in claiming justice. We can be that. We are that. And there is power in that as well.

Every week we come together in worship and in study and while we are awaiting God’s presence and salvation in our midst, we are walking with each other and with Jesus. He has told us what is good and what is required of us. May we continue to do justice. To love kindness and mercy and to walk humbly with each other and with God.

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