Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
I like benches. I know some people like phone booths, or toll booths, or fractional train platforms, but I really like benches. I also really like trail cairns, but that is for a different reflection. Anyway, let's get back to benches. I like their intimacy. I like that they force those who share them to share the same perspective. I like they are often placed in beautiful or serene places.
What I found in college though, was a set of three benches set up outside one of the dorms in such a way that all I could envision was an intervention. I could see 5 friends sitting across from the one as they shared their concerns about partying habits, an unhealthy relationship, or a proclivity for dishonesty. It was these benches that came to mind as I read Micah today. As we read the words from the prophet we see God calling an intervention for Israel.
So who does God call to bear witness and support this intervention? God calls forth creation. Throughout the Old Testament creation's faithfulness to God's will is often set in opposition to Israel's infidelity. The sun faithfully rises every day, even providing light to the just and unjust alike. The mountains stand tall and when the rains fall they do not withhold their refreshments from the crops of the poor or the outcast. Creation is ever faithful to God's commands, or as we would call them the laws of nature, while Israel's infidelity abounds. Furthermore, creation continues to support Israel in her infidelity as well as her faithfulness. So God calls up the very hills that shelter Israel, the very mountains that hold up Jerusalem in order to call forth the intervention.
Micah's words further called to mind an intervention when one considers the purpose of these words. We are reading the conviction of Israel in sacred Jewish texts. Why? Because this is not a call that is meant to shame but to convert. This is not meant to cut Israel down but to remind Israel of her dignity and call. This is not the crushing despair of one caught in a perpetual cycle of failure. Rather this is the corrective love that calls us to reprioritize and to make real and lasting changes. This is the merciful love of a God who has never given up on us. This is the intervention of friends who think we are worth having uncomfortable conversations with. This is the reminder that no matter how uncomfortable it is to face our failings in the face of God's overwhelming love and fidelity. No matter how much guilt we experience or how much we wish to squirm on our singular bench as the Lord and all of creation sits across from us, we are never a lost cause.
Cheap friends accept platitudes, but those who truly love us step into true discomfort to reach us and no one has shown that more than the one who stepped from the throne over all of creation to take flesh and become one of us.
- Spencer Hargadon