“Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel.
Should you not embrace justice, you who hate good and
love evil;
who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their
bones…
who eat my people’s flesh, strip off their skin and break
their bones in pieces;
who chop them up like meat for the pan, like flesh for
the pot?”
“As for the prophets who lead my people astray,
they proclaim ‘peace’ if they have something to eat,
but prepare to wage war against anyone who refuses to
feed them.
Therefore night will come over you, without visions, and
darkness, without divination.
The sun will set for the prophets, and the day will go
dark for them“
Hear this, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel,
who despise justice and distort all that is right;
who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with
wickedness.
Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a
price,
and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they look for the Lord’s support and say, “Is not the
Lord among us?
No disaster will come upon us.”
Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a
field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,
the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.
Selections
from Micah 3
________________________________________
Prophets do not foretell an unalterable future
They simply tell it like it is
And suggest, rightly
What the outcome will be if a person, a party, a nation
Keep doing what they are doing
And it is clear
There are consequences
Specifically, there are consequences when leaders behave
poorly
We have seen it throughout history
Those mighty ones who have lost their way
Who have abused power
Who have dominated and controlled
Who have hated those different from them
Who have in fear sought to control, minimize, and even
eradicate
Those they do not like or understand
Mao Zedong
Hitler
Stalin
Mussolini
The Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot)
For brief moments in history, they flourished
They controlled
They destroyed
And then they were destroyed
And became a foul footnote in history
In every case the leaders despised justice
and distorted all that is right; calling good evil and
evil good
they build their power wickedness, with hate, fear, and
lies
Those responsible for justice abandoned justice for power
and the imposition of injustice on those considered “less”
And the prophets (preachers) said what the leaders wanted
them to say
and what many of the people wanted them to say
to keep the money coming in
to keep the pews full
to keep the illusion of influence
All while insisting they are on God’s side
That their agenda is righteous
“Is not the Lord among us!”
No. They/He/She is
not
The end of this path is destruction
Not God-caused destruction, human-caused destruction
It is not that after destruction God will not work with
those who are willing
To resurrect and rebuild
But this path leads to nowhere good
We can change
We can repent
We can stop grabbing power
We can stop lying
We can stop dispensing injustice in exchange for
political power
We can stop oppressing
We can stop pretending we love God by putting the 10 commandments
in school
And replacing qualified mental health professionals with
unqualified “chaplains”
We can stop insisting that “In God We Trust”
When it is clear we trust human strongmen (or women),
guns, and political power
Not God
We can stop abandoning the poor
And enriching the rich
Stop throwing away our children to gun violence
Stop seeking to eradicate people who are LGBTQI+
We can stop
Will we?
Or will we be like Israel, which ended up in exile
Like Nazi Germany
Stalinist Russia?
It is our choice
We can choose justice or political power
We can choose generosity or accumulation
We can choose to welcome and affirm
Or we can choose to deny and exclude
We can choose the truth or the lie
We can choose to love or to hate
We can choose to dominate or choose to serve
Our choice
How will we choose
Whatever we choose
Let us not pretend that this foul game now being played
out
By people we need to name, in places we need not name
(although we could)
Has anything to do with God
