In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of theLord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever (Micah 4:1-5).
***
Rachel and her children live in the city, in a hotel. They share the room with Mr. Water Bug and Mr. Rat – but this is no tale from a children’s book with adorable animal characters. Rachel and her children live in a rat hole off the big street, and the building they stay in is a hotel in name only.
Rachel weeps for her children because she can’t protect their innocence, she can’t keep them safe; most days, she can’t even feed them. “If there was a place where you could sell part of your body,” she says, “where they buy an arm or somethin’ for a thousand dollars, I would do it. I would do it for my children. I would give my life if I could get a thousand dollars.”
“They laid him in a manger. Right?” she tells the man who wants to write her story, and she continues, “Listen to me. [I’m not sayin] that God forsaken us. I am confused about religion. I’m just sayin’ evil overrules the good. So many bad things goin’ on. (…) It’s not easy to believe. I don’t read the Bible no more ‘cause I don’t find no more hope in it. I don’t believe. But yet and still … I know these words. ‘Lie down in green pastures… leadeth me beside still waters… restores my soul… I shall not want.’ All that I want is somethin’ that’s my own. I got four kids. I need four plates, four glasses, and four spoons. Is that a lot?”[1]
No, Rachel, it’s not. It is a small dream, such a small dream of home. We’ve listened to a song, a song Micah the prophet sang; a beautiful song about days to come when entire nations stream to the mountain of God, flowing like rivers from all corners of the earth toward the house of God. They’re all coming, and it’s different from anything we’ve ever seen: They’re not coming with their armies to kill, rape, plunder, burn and destroy, like they have done so many times before. And they’re not coming because they have lost the final battle and must pay tribute now to the new rulers of the world who reside in Jerusalem. No, they come with joy and expectation; they want to learn God’s ways and study war no more. That is a big dream, Rachel, with room for the whole world in it, a big song with big music – and yet toward the end of the song, in the last verse, the big dream becomes small, small enough for you and me, Rachel, small enough for each and all of us:
They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. They shall all have somethin’ that’s their own, and no one shall make them afraid.
Rachel is sitting on the box spring she uses for a bed, with the Bible in her lap, and she sighs, “I know I’m poor. Don’t have no bank account, no money, or no job. Don’t have no nothin’. No foundation.” She reads from the psalm she almost knows by heart, words that echo the final words of Micah’s song, ‘I shall not fear…’, and she looks up and says, “I fear! A long, long time ago I didn’t fear. Didn’t fear for nothin’. I said God’s protectin’ me and would protect my children. Did he do it?” And after a moment she adds, “Yeah, I’m walkin’. I’m walkin’ in the wilderness. That’s what it is. I’m walkin’.”[2]
Rachel is confused about religion. But she’s not confused about what kind of religion all the nations might have who are streaming to Mount Zion in days to come. She’s not sitting on her box spring wondering if the prophet is declaring that the paths of all who seek justice and peace will eventually lead to Zion, or if somehow in the course of history believers of all religions will become worshipers of the Holy One of Israel, or if the nations in this song of great promise only represent those gentiles who have been baptized into the church of Jesus Christ. No, Rachel is confused about religion because everywhere she turns she sees evil overruling the good. She is struggling to survive at the bottom of these days when too many children have their little lights snuffed by violence and hopelessness. She is wandering on the shadow side of these days when nations beat their pick-up trucks into rocket launchers and their school lunch programs into fighter jets and their low-income apartments into luxury condos. Rachel is walkin’ in the wilderness of these days and she can’t find a well for a sip of hope.
We have listened to Micah’s song, with its steady beat of a hammer dancing on an anvil, clang, clang, clang, bright and clear as a bell, calling us to walk toward days to come when all will be well and all will be well. Rachel is walking in the wilderness and she can barely trust that there will be days to come, let alone days when the goodness of God overrules the power of evil. But perhaps she is still open to somebody walking with her in the name of God. Somebody who has heard and embraced the promise of God, the promise that undermines the present circumstance with flashes of hope; the promise that throws open the door for possibilities the managers of the status quo cannot imagine. Perhaps she is still open to somebody walking with her in the name of Jesus whose compassion moved him to enter and embody the hurt our power arrangements produce. All the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but some will choose to walk with Rachel.
Micah makes it quite clear that the extravagant promise of peace is God’s second act. Peace completes the judgment of the city built with violence and wrong, whose rulers give judgment for a bribe, whose priests teach for a price, and whose prophets cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths (see Micah 3:5-12). Like a prosecuter arguing his case in court, Micah lists the wrongdoings of the city leaders, point by point, but the promise that in days to come the city will be one of peace is not an argument but a bold assertion: it will be otherwise because God said so. The rest is left to the testimony of those whose feet have been pointed toward the promised future.
All the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God.
Rachel may not be able to give herself to the bold assertion that in days to come it will be otherwise, because that would be a step of hope, not of despair. But she may yet learn to trust those few who are walking with her in hope and expectation of the city of peace, and in the name of the God whose promise it is. We are walking, and we are giving testimony with our feet of a hope that is big enough for the whole world and for Rachel and her children.
The great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that “human faith is never final, never an arrival, but rather an endless pilgrimage, a being on the way.”[3]
“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind – these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell.”[4]
Clang, clang, clang – I don’t know what you’re hearing, but in my heart it’s a hammer dancing on an anvil, a burning song of audacious longing. I hear thousands of people from every corner of the earth on their way up to the mountain. I hear the sound of feet on the road, I hear chatter and laughter and music. They carry swords and spears and every weapon of war, and they all hear the clang, clang, clang of the hammer dancing on the anvil, pounding and beating the tools of war into tools of peace, forging a new economy – this is a city where the poor have a home and the children are safe, Rachel.
[1] Jonathan Kozol, Rachel And Her Children. Homeless Families in America (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988), 69-71
[2] Kozol, p. 71
[3] Moral Grandeur And Spiritual Audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Noonday Press, 1997), p. 245
[4] I Asked for Wonder. A Spiritual Anthology. Abraham Joshua Heschel, ed. Samuel H. Dresner (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 15