What is Good

At the center of worship today is…worship. Yes, that may sound redundant and even unhelpful, but bear with me. Micah 6:1-8 is about worship. Now, we can get caught up in the final three verses of this passage, which, to be fair, are profound and worth deep exploration. But as worship planners, it’s important for us to take note of the first five verses as well. Creation bears witness as God pleads a case against God’s people and demands answers about why they have turned away from God. For those of us whose worship planning happens in the context of a particular space week to week, this opening is especially important to note, because, when we get to verses six through eight, we find out that the fruit of what we do outside the walls of the worship space matters more than what happens in the worship space. God pleads a case before creation because the fruit of our worship is found in how we relate to God, self, neighbor, and creation, not just before the actions we take inside the walls of our local church. So, worship planners, how are we connecting the actions we take in worship to our lives in the world?

Then, our pericope crescendos through the final verses, ending in a question: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Notice that this is not really an open-ended question, nor is it a pronouncement. There are really only two answers here: God requires nothing more, or God requires something more. If our answer is the latter, then we’ve missed the point. If our answer is the former, then are our lives reflecting the requirements God places on us? So, this is a discerning question, a question that, if we let it, guides us to assess whether our worship aligns with who God is and who God calls us to be. What would it look like to ask this question in worship? Perhaps you could include a guided meditation around this question as a response to the sermon. Perhaps you center your prayer of confession around all the ways we may not have been doing justice, loving kindness, and living humbly with God. Or maybe you introduce the scripture in numerous ways throughout the service so that the question repeats again and again before it gets unpacked in the sermon. For instance, there are a number of musical settings of Micah 6:6-8, including the choral anthems “Offertory” by John Ness Beck, “What Does the Lord Require of You?” by Mark Miller, and hymn settings like “What Does the Lord Require?” (United Methodist Hymnal 441) and “What Does the Lord Require of You?” (The Faith We Sing 2174). Using one or more of these settings in addition to reading the scripture and referencing the scripture in prayers can help prepare the congregation to receive and participate in deep reflection on what Micah 6:1-8 may mean for how they worship as a corporate body and with their lives.