Becoming Right Before God
What is good; and what does the Holy One require of us? Who may dwell in the holy place of the tabernacle and upon the holy hill? These are some of the questions that surround us as we hear the Hebrew Scriptures this Sunday: Micah 6:1-8 and Psalm 15. They bring up the matter of personal purity and communal righteousness.
From the prophet Micah comes a message in which the Lord seems to ask, “What am I missing? What have I ever done to wear you out? Have I not been good to you, providing good leadership, and saving acts on your behalf?’ The passage then shifts from God’s reminders and contentions to the people’s nervous inquiry on how to repair their irresponsible drift away from the Lord. The prophet’s words represent the people’s historical thinking about the appropriate repair:
“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 a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? (Micah 6:6-7)
These external acts are not to be the solution, as it turns out, for those who find themselves so far from God. Sacrifices from the context of their cultic tradition are not the answer. The prophet redirects them, helping them know that they must turn toward an internal holy disposition, such that their ways of acting are consistent with the heart of God. Holy acts must flow from within them as they interact with the world.
He has told you, O mortal, 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? (Micah 6:8)
Similarly, with the Psalm, we harvest the wisdom that our response to God in our actions within the community come from within us, from the root of a pure heart that God works within us.
1 Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? *
who may abide upon your holy hill?
2 Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, *
who speaks the truth from his heart. (Psalm 15:1-2)
Only God can redeem and purify us. It is ours to cooperate with the Spirit’s purifying grace. Consider also what comes through our Gospel reading, from Matthew’s list of the Beatitudes, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”. (Matthew 5:8) This verse drew special attention in the early centuries of the church. The purifying of the heart is what early theologians and solitaries of the desert saw as the action of meditative prayer, the prayer of the heart, and inner stillness. The Spirit works within you with sanctifying grace as you are brought into the right relationship with God. The result is doing what is right, speaking the truth, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.