Back in the fall, I decided to hone up on the Spanish I learned in high school and college, and I started using the free online language program Duolingo. It was enjoyable and helpful for a few months, but I came to realize that something crucial was missing in how I was learning. I couldn’t effectively practice conversational skills. No matter how much vocabulary and grammar rules I practiced, it was no compensation for the lack of conversational practice.
So, this past week, I began the Pimsleur online language learning program. Dr. Paul Pimsleur, for whom the program is named, was a scholar of applied linguistics who developed a method of learning based on scientific research of how the brain most effectively absorbs a new language.
The method has several core principles, and two of them stand out. One is the principle of anticipation. Learners in the Pimsleur program don’t just repeat phrases verbatim. They are prompted in their native language to render an appropriate response in the foreign language. Learners must engage with the prompt and think about what comes next. The other notable principle is that of “organic learning,” which happens in contextual conversation and dialogue. The speaker and the listener must engage with one another. The tone of the speaker’s voice, the rhythm of speech, and pronunciation are essential. Of course, these principles, however, scientific they may be, simply reinforce what we all know. To become fluent in another language, you must immerse yourself in conversation.
And a conversation is exactly what we find in today’s words from the prophet Micah. If you ask me, the most striking thing about this excerpt from the Book of Micah is not that God has a bone to pick with his children. It’s not that God’s children have lost their way and are more focused on ritual than ethical behavior. It’s not that God is calling the people back to simple principles of acting justly, kindly, and humbly. The most striking feature of Micah’s words is that when God states his contention with the people, God doesn’t just lecture them. God doesn’t simply scold them or tell them what they have done wrong. God invites them into conversation. God asks them to engage.
Did you notice that? Did you notice the quotations marks in the passage? Did you catch the multiple voices in dialogue with one another? It’s rather easy to miss when reading the text or hearing it read by one reader. For this passage to come alive, we need multiple voices. We need to hear the verbal exchange between God and people.
This passage opens with the prophet announcing God’s words, and then we hear God’s words. We shift from the prophet’s voice to God’s voice. God lays out a case against the people, for they have forgotten how to live justly. There are wide chasms between rich and poor. But above all, the people have forgotten how to live as a grateful people.
God lays out his contention with them but notice how God does it. God doesn’t talk at the people. God talks with them. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” God affectionately addresses the people as his own and then demands an answer. God wants the people to engage. God wants to be in relationship with the people, however apathetic and stubborn they may be.
Although God prompts the people with a question and then offers the answer himself, it’s as if God is longing for the people to supply the answer instead. God desires for the people to be as passionate with him as he is passionate with them. God yearns for the people to respond. Yes, God, we realize now what we’ve forgotten. Now, we remember by responding with what you’ve done for us. You brought us from slavery into freedom, from death into life. You sent us leaders like Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. You saved us from the curse of Balak. In all things, you’ve always looked out for us. You’ve never forsaken us.
But as we know, the people don’t respond in that way, because they don’t really know how to respond. God must provide the answer for the people. God must remind the people of what he’s done for them, because the people have forgotten how to be grateful, how to care, and how to engage. We, too, can so easily forget how to be in conversation with God.
And when the people finally do respond to God’s plea, they make a rather strange reply. Either the people are desperate to earn God’s favor, or they are speaking in hyperbole. Shall they bring young calves, or thousands of rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil, or sacrifice even their first-born children? The people have entirely missed the point. Don’t we miss the point?
The answer, it turns out, is rather simple but apparently hard to implement: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. God doesn’t demand our desperate offerings to be appeased. God is interested, first and foremost, in a relationship with us. When God speaks, God asks us to respond, not with things but with ourselves.
It's as if God is teaching the people of ages past and also teaching us how to speak his language. It’s easy to think that we only need to add some fancy words to our vocabulary or to repeat our regular rituals until God is appeased. It’s easy to imagine that our conversation with God is either God talking at us and ordering us to do things, or our talking to God and asking him to do things for us.
But God’s language is far deeper. To learn God’s language, we must let God prompt us so that we can respond. When our actions have strayed far from the mind of Christ, it’s time to listen to God’s grievance with us, and then to remember how to be thankful.
God is quite deliberate in how he teaches us, even though he has been quite explicit in teaching us through his Son Jesus Christ. God also knows that for us to speak his language more fluently, we need to practice. We need God to invite us into conversation. We need for God to remind us repeatedly that he has never given up on us. When we have grieved his heart, he hasn’t canceled us or silenced us. Time and again, God has shown his unending compassion and mercy by asking us to speak with him. Every day of our lives, God is helping us to learn his language, because God knows that we can.
Could it be that the most chilling sin against God is that of apathy? Does anything break God’s heart more than our unwillingness to be in conversation with him? What is more appalling than for God to speak to us, hoping for an answer, and to hear nothing but indifferent silence? Isn’t it grievous to be offered God’s gifts, whether in Word or Sacrament, and to refuse them?
The God before whom we come this day knows nothing of apathy. This is a God who cares enough about us to contend with us, to hash it out, however uncomfortable it may be. This is a God who never looks away, even when we offend him yet again. This a God who will not force goodness upon us but, instead, invites us into it by learning how to speak his language.
Today, something has brought you here. Perhaps it was a sense of obligation or duty. Perhaps you were stirred by a longing to praise God. Perhaps someone made you come. It matters not why. You are here, but now God asks something more of you. God asks for more than your presence in the pew. God asks for more than your money in the collection plate. God has laid out his case against us where we have fallen short of the demands of Christian discipleship. God has laid bare to us the ways in which we have been apathetic and turned a blind eye to injustice. God is asking us to speak. Answer me! In what have I wearied you?
Now, here before God’s altar, make your answer, not with mere lip service but with your whole selves, souls, and bodies. It’s time to remember all that God has done for us, all the times he has forgiven our laziness and pride, all the times he has been with us in our sorrow, all the times he has brought us from death into life. Don’t be silent. Don’t ignore God’s summons. Respond to God’s prompt. Learn God’s language. Accept God’s gift, and then you will learn how to live.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 29, 2023