Quick Summary:

The setting is a courtroom and the issue is the collective amnesia of God’s chosen people. God laments that his people have forgotten their identity as children of the promise. The connection between worship life and real life, between sacred gatherings on Sabbath and holy behavior during the rest of the week have been lost; the ethic of community life has been set aside in favor of “me” and “mine.” God’s people have a bad case of amnesia.

The words from the end of this passage—verse 8—distill the whole Judeo-Christian ethic in one sentence:
GOD HAS TOLD YOU, O MORTAL, WHAT IS GOOD; AND WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF YOU BUT TO DO JUSTICE, & TO LOVE KINDNESS, & TO WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD?

These powerful words are made less powerful when we separate them from the prophet’s indictment, frame them, and hang them up on a wall, or make them a feature of our personal piety and leave it there, forgetting that they are calling a whole community to accountability.

When Jesus comes on the scene in Matthew’s gospel and starts to get people’s attention through his preaching and teaching and healing, he draws the clearest picture about the way things are in this domain he’d been sent to proclaim and to live. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he says. “Blessed are the meek the mournful the merciful… blessed are the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” God’s people, you see, had forgotten who they were…again. And Jesus had come to remind them. Today the words of Micah and Jesus remind us who we are.