Shepherd your people
by Neil Bergmann
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Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you (Micah 1:14).
The Old Testament prophets like Micah can be brutal in their honesty and scathing in their condemnation of the people of Israel. Particularly, Micah singles out injustice and inequity as sins that deserve God’s punishment and require repentance and forgiveness. Micah despairs at these sins, just as we can easily despair at a world that seems impossibly unjust and self-centred.
For our gospel-tuned ears, it can be difficult to understand how we should respond to these Israelite prophets. We believe that in the light of Jesus’ death and resurrection, God does not reward or punish us as we deserve; otherwise, we would all be condemned. Instead, we live as redeemed children of God, no longer dependent on our own goodness to be reconciled to our Father but totally dependent on Christ’s goodness. We should be confident in God’s promise of salvation, but it is too easy for us to become comfortable and passive in that salvation.
We all make choices about how we live. We can choose to live by human standards of what constitutes a good life – wealth, power and fame – or we can choose to live by God’s vision of a good life – generosity, service and humility. Prophets like Micah hold up a mirror that asks us to examine ourselves and our society and see what choices we are making. God loves us. Do our decisions show we are responding to that love by loving others? We often fall short.
Luckily, it is not up to us alone. Micah tells us the first step to a better life. We acknowledge that God is our Lord and our master, and we belong to his flock. We give up our own ideas about how to live and ask God, our great shepherd, to lead. Reading, listening, discussing and praying together are ways that God can lead us.
Our Lord and shepherd, speak to us through your word about how to truly live the good life you have planned for us. Help us always turn to you for the love, courage and wisdom we need to truly live out what you have planned for us. Amen.
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