Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12
February 1, 2026
Earlier today, while most of us were still sleeping, Ukrainian families lined up in frigid
temperatures at hot meal distribution sites, a governmental hand-out begun amid the
rolling power shortages plaguing the country, a result of minus 22-degree temperatures and
four years of war.
Earlier this week, Israel and Gaza each derided the other for violations of their cease fire
agreement, with subsequent missiles landing in the strip and more deaths reported. All the
while, families waited for the Rafah border to open, so that the sick could seek medical
treatment in Egypt.
Throughout the past weeks within our nation, innocent persons have been killed and
protesters have flooded the streets, to mourn, to monitor, and to resist, not just in
Minnesota but even here in Maryland. Faith leaders across diverse traditions in our state
spoke collectively on Friday, naming how troubled they are by the rising levels of violence
and fear connected to immigration enforcement throughout the country, a pattern, they
state, that “demands our collective attention and response.” It is a sobering reality – to
watch threats against life, to feel in our bones a deepening chaos, to lament the absence of
peace, as well as mercy, and to wonder, “where is all this leading?
This is by no means the first era in history to face calamity. Our ancestors in faith witnessed
national destruction, religious persecution, and struggled to maintain hope in God’s future.
The prophet Micah spoke to a beleaguered nation, tottering toward disaster because
reckless leaders tossed aside impulses to justice and dismantled the connections of
communal care. Matthew’s gospel was directed to a small, persecuted Christian
community, who were trying to hear Jesus’s voice amid all kinds of external clamor, enticing
them toward a safer, easier route. Placing Micah’s words alongside Jesus’s teachings a core
message emerges: to love God is to lovingly care for each other. Such a life is neither easy
nor simple. It makes daily demands upon your habits and may land you in danger. And yet it
is the way of God, a way to life, a way to the goodness God gives us.
To love God is to lovingly care for one another. It is easy to say we love our neighbors, to be
polite when passing by, to imagine ourselves decent and courteous and respectful and
pretend that these postures fulfill the law of love. But scripture regularly points to a
sacrificial o\ering of ourselves to the most vulnerable around us. Think of the Samaritan
who notices the bleeding, broken body and crosses the boundaries of geography, religion,
ethnicity and personal safety to rescue someone left for dead. Think of the person who
showed up when you were most in need, most close to surrendering to life’s brutality, and
loved you across distance and di\erence. This is what it is to love God.
In our country, in our city, right now, are those who are scared, who carry in their bones the
vulnerability of their background, their skin color, their family configuration, who know
themselves at the mercy of a system ready to rob them of their humanity. It is into these
places that we, in faith and by the call of God, are to show up in love, to do justice, to act
with mercy, and to walk humbly beside.
It was to a group without status or protection that Jesus spoke nine blessings declaring
God’s favor; nine words of love into states that are experienced as devoid of love. Blessed
are you who are poor, who are meek, who mourn and su\er for my sake. Why on earth
would these spaces receive blessing? The simplest answer is because Jesus gives it. He
o\ers the compassion of his all-seeing eyes. Others might sco\ at the meek, ridicule the
pure in heart as naïve, or despise anyone who prioritizes God above what makes the world
go round, but Jesus blesses those caught in the world’s su\ering. He draws them close, to
dwell with him.
When I lived in South Africa, my primary place of service was a church-sponsored
preschool. The preschool originated as the first interracial preschool in the country, when
such integration was illegal. Decades later the school served families who had come into
Johannesburg from rural areas after the first democratic elections, families who lived
primarily in informal settlements across the city. Each morning children – 3, 4 & 5-year-old
children – arrived at the church basement, which was often cold and damp. South Africa
has 17 dialects, at least 10 were spoken in the city. The school had all the elements of any
preschool – morning circle, songs, alphabet, art time. These were ordinary routines and yet
somehow amid the ordinariness lived the kingdom, sparkling through. It showed in the
ways children would take care of each other, in the purity of small voices, in the earthliness
of sturdy toddler bodies, in the frank, honest love of caregivers, in the capacity of country
deeply scarred, yet daring to heal. You could feel its presence. You could nearly touch the
amazing grace that holds the world together. To this day, that damp, simple basement
space is the place where I most felt Jesus’s presence.
By blessing persons the world ignores or derides, Jesus issues a call to us to go and do
likewise. Jesus says, Come and be present: to persons acutely in need, in places where too
many weep, in situations crying out to be recalibrated into a right relationship for all. One
liberation theologian suggests all of us enter God’s kingdom with tears in our eyes because
it is only then, at the threshold of God’s restored creation, that we finally perceive the gap
between our brokenness and God’s blessedness, when we fully know the need inside of us
for God is met by God’s yearning for us. In these tough, demanding days, we are sustained
by a promise of blessing, and we are challenged to live that blessing for others. May it be
so.