“All this is for the crime of Jacob
and the sins of the house of Israel.
Who is responsible for the crime of Jacob?
Isn’t it Samaria?
Who is responsible for the shrines of Judah?
Isn’t it Jerusalem?” – Micah 1:5 (CEB)
Micah opens with God coming down, mountains melting like wax, valleys splitting open. Then he stops the terror to ask a question, and the question is the sharper thing.
Who is responsible? He does not answer foreign empires. He does not answer the culture, or the times, or the general drift of things. He names Samaria and Jerusalem. The two capital cities. The centers of worship and government.
Micah came from a farm town twenty-five miles out. He is a rural man telling the capital that the rot starts there, in the places that would describe themselves as the most religious in the country. It is a hard word to hear from anyone. It is harder coming from someone the capital would not have invited. Whose voice have you been ready to dismiss because of where they come from?
God, when something has gone wrong, keep me from blaming whatever is furthest away. Show me what starts at the center, including the part that starts in me. Amen.
A farm man from twenty-five miles out telling the capital the rot starts there. That's a hard word, and your prayer made it harder in the best way: "including the part that starts in me." I need that one before I point at anything else this week.