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Micah 4:1-5 For Sunday December 21, 2014

This passage is a hope oracle. Within hope oracles the prophets describe God’s vision for the future. This is often referred to as the Prophetic Eschatological Vision. Amos is the first classical prophet to unveil the Prophetic Eschatological Vision (Amos 9:11-15). He reveals to us the trajectory toward the goal God is moving his people: a time of peace and harmony. There are four core elements in the PEV: 1. kingship—Davidic king as promised in 2 Sam 7 2. land – Canaan Genesis 12 3. Unity—Sinai Genesis 12 4. Environment -- Creation theology Gen 9

In this text, Micah describes God’s community as it will be. A vision of the future.

Read Micah 4:1-5

A. Seems out of place because Israel and the leaders are totally corrupt. Look where this oracle is placed This is in contrast to 3:9-12 (the imminent destruction for Jerusalem). Put 3:12 on screen. From plowed field to the highest mountain. When all is lost God has the power to transform the present wasteland into a place of worship. B. The text is almost verbatim in Isa 2:2-4 C. Who wrote it? 1. Micah, Isaiah, or someone else? 2. Perhaps is a hymn that Israel sung and the prophets quote the hymn. D. Contents: in the future when people hear God’s word they will come to Jerusalem to be taught. This initiative is taken by God through Israel. As a result other nations will come streaming to Jerusalem. God seeks us out rather than we seeking God (see 4:2b). 1. Micah's vision for the people 4:1-4 (a secure Jerusalem). The vision begins with a universal picture of all peoples and nations flowing to it. 2. The oracle is not about a new empire but the centrality of God’s word. a. This is a regularly occurring pilgrimage, (Ps 122:1-4). These pilgrims want not only to be taught the ways of the Lord but also to live them out “walk in his paths” which at its core involves a relationship with God. b. They come not as tourists for souvenirs and to “ooh and ahh” at the sights and then go back to their respective homes. They come not as archeologists to objectively study the lifestyle or as an ethnographer trying to better understand language patterns. But they come as immigrants expecting to inhabit a new world and to be instructed and to practice to learn new lifestyle, and invest in relationships. But then emigrate back to home land embodying this new world. 2

3. V. 3 these words are on a statue at the United Nations headquarters in New York. This statue was a gift from the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War in 1959. 4. V. 4 One of the distinctions between the “hymn” here in Micah and the one in Isaiah is that Micah adds a personal dimension to the vision. Not only is there a universal picture but also an individual dimension. Everyone will sit under his fig tree (1 Kgs 4:24-25; 2 Kgs 18:31; Isa 36:16). A symbol of peace and prosperity. So these nations will enjoy their own homes. They won’t stay in Jerusalem and become one blended family. 5. Strikingly absent in this vision is any mention of priests or prophets. 6. Yahweh is the sole judge 7. The power of this passage is in its total disparity with the present reality. 8. Micah holds up a vision of what God's people can become. A responsibility of God's leader. 9. Harold Shank included an interesting discussion of the vine and fig tree imagery. He states that these two items represent a modest economic dream rather than a vision of individual wealth. He cites Brueggemann’s work tracing this imagery. He puts this in the context of Micah’s land-grabbers; he was calling for a return to the equality of the earlier days of Solomon. 1 Kings 4:25 described the wealth of Solomon’s days with the statement that “every man lived in safety, under his own vine and fig tree.” 10. The discussion of the individual tree and vine. instead of times of war where people flee to fortified cities and towers, here people are out in the open living at peace with no threat of danger. they are exposed, but it does not matter because they are safe. 11. In verse 4, B. Waltke sees not only a metaphorical description of peace. He says, "by sitting under their own vines and fig trees they show that they have also disciplined their swollen appetites" (682). The consumerist needs being vanquished and everyone living a modest lifestyle with each having their food needs met and not desiring or needing to take the resources of another. Bruce Waltke's commentary on Micah in Volume 2 of The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary, edited by Thomas Edward McComiskey (this is a multi-author commentary on Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, and Habakkuk) E. After Micah quotes the hymn, he comments in 4:5. 1. Some like Fretheim interpret v. 5 to mean that important distinctions will still remain among these peoples, “even religious distinctions” p. 207). Fretheim sees v. 5 as statement of inclusiveness. Religious diversity and tolerance for all beliefs will reign. 2. More likely Micah is saying that Judah doesn’t practice what she sings. Micah emphasizes the pronoun “We.” We must walk . . . .

Reflections

It seems war, like poverty is always with us. 3

Is this only a vision for the future, a beautiful dream?

1. though war is still prominent, we witness pockets of peace. The Berlin Wall coming down, South Africa electing a black president. But Micah unlike Isaiah brings the hope of global peace down to the individual level: They all sit under their own vines and fig trees. 2. Micah’s vision of peace is both global and intensely individual. Micah envisions an existence where all persons have their own home where they can live safely, productively, and faithfully to God. 3. Verse 5 is an exhortation to Judah/Israel. God will bring about this vision. The issue is, do we want to be a part of it? Being a part of this vision is not a passive response but an active response. This vision implies a concrete response on our part. This is a vision that moves us to change the world in our own small way. The words to the children’s song say it well, (Jesus’ Bids Us Shine) “In this world of darkness we must shine. You in your small corner and I in mine.”

A. Centrality of God’s word. 1. N.T. Wright The Last Word (2005). Authority in the church. Many church leaders speak of the three-legged stool of authority: Scripture, church tradition, experience/reason. Or what about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Experience seems to trump Scripture these days. Wright changes the image to a bookshelf. Scripture, tradition, and experience are not like three different bookshelves, each of which can be ransacked for answers to key questions. Rather scripture is the bookshelf; tradition is the memory of what people in the house have read and understood (or perhaps misunderstood) from that shelf; and reason is the set of spectacles that people wear in order to make sense of what they read. . . . . Experience refers to the effect on readers of what they read, and/or the world-view the life experience, within which the reading takes place 101-102. Experience is the effect of the reading on the person. 2. Inhabiting the world of Scripture is not a retreat from reality but an entering into deeper reality. “And from this deeper reality, we gain a new perspective on the ordinary reality in which we live day by day.” 31 Whiteley B. We enjoy imagining the future. We love to envision what the perfect world would look like. Often these visions for a brighter tomorrow possess some common denominators: unity, freedom, peace, security, equality. 1. Verse 5 is an exhortation to Judah/Israel. God will bring about this vision. The issue is, do we want to be a part of it? Being a part of this vision is not a passive response but an active response. This vision implies a concrete response on our part. This is a vision that moves us to change the world in our own small way. The words to the children’s song say it well, “In this world of darkness we must shine. You in your small corner and I in mine.” (Jesus’ Bids Us Shine) 2. From a human perspective, the moments that least likely generate vision and hope are those in which we find ourselves in the pit of 4

despair, when we experience setback and loss, when we suffer. In those contexts humans do not have the resources to create within themselves a hope that can overcome. Oh, we can generate wishful thinking. We can manufacture positive thinking or possibility thinking. We can produce fantasies. But we can’t create genuine hope. 3. In Memphis in 1968, on the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech “I See the Promised Land.” In that speech he imagined God asking him this question, “Martin, if I allowed you to live in any time period of history that you would like, what period would you choose?” King answered, “I would want live in this present time.” But why this time? The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. King’s response was, “Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” King believed that it was in this period of darkness that people would be able to most clearly see God doing his mighty work.

Contemporary Visions/Dreams

Man of La Mancha Don Quixote

To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrong To love pure and chaste from afar To try when your arms are too weary To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest to follow that star No matter how hopeless no mater how far To fight for the right without question or pause

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” (1963) “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every Hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain and the cooked places will be made straight, ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’ This is our hope. . . . “I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” I have a dream that one day . . . little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” . . . “With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”