Micah chapter 6 verse 8 is in the top 5 of my favorite Scripture verses of all time. I daresay that it’s a perfect single verse of scripture—it’s timeless, instructive, direct. It is complete in and of itself memorable and punchy and so edgy. God and the prophet are fed up with faithlessness. They are sick of God’s people claiming that they don’t know what they’re supposed to do, wringing their hands about the great mystery of God’s expectations. Feigning ignorance. Or worse—God’s people know exactly what is required of them and they are trying to pull one over on God by saying one thing while doing another.

Well the Lord has a beef with you, says Micah. You’ve broken your side of your covenant with God. So rise and plead your case, you who call yourselves people of faith. The mountains and the earth will be the witnesses and you are called to account for yourselves.

God gives evidence first in this courtroom drama . God recites all the things God has done to uphold the covenant—that part where God said “I will be your God.” God delivered them from slavery. God gave them leaders. God saved them from people who wanted to curse them, like King Balak of Moab. God got them across the river Jordan. In other words, says God, I gave you: freedom, leadership, protection, and a way where there was no way. I gave you life and a future and provided what you need. Why, then, do you continue to be greedy? Why have you taken land and houses that weren’t yours? Why have you exploited the poor? Why do you let the vulnerable suffer? Why have you who have power used it for your own profit? And why have you, who claim to be religious leaders, made worship into an empty, hypocritical ritual? Answer me, says God.

I picture God’s people with some sweaty hands at this point, stammering as they climb into the witness box next. They’re chastened and now they want to make things right. How can we fix it, God? Can we make sacrifices for you? Can we bring you livestock or oil or make you new promises? Can we give you some of the stuff we’ve been hoarding, some of the things we got from our exploits?

Micah chapter 6 verse 8 is the reply, the judgment rendered in this covenant lawsuit for the failure of God’s people to treat each other justly. Micah says that God doesn’t want their things. Not fine oils or calves or rams. God does not want rituals if God’s people haven’t changed. God is not interested in a transaction from them and there is no way for them to “make it up” to God. God wants from them what God has always wanted from them. Faithful living. Micah lands the punch: God has told you, O mortal, what is good. What does the Lord require? For you to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

In seminary, we sometimes “mapped” scripture passages, really paying attention to the words and circling active verbs and repeated images in our Bibles so the shape of the text would leap off the page. Looking back at this favorite passage in my study Bible, with its tattered spine and pages stuffed with old bulletins, Micah 6:8 is so marked up that I can hardly read it. If you’re noting the words that are notable in this verse, almost every word gets circled. “He has told you!” Circle ‘told.’ Put a star in the margin. God has told you, people! The ‘already’ is implied by the exasperated prophet: God has already told you this!”

Then “O mortal.” With one letter and one word, God’s people are put in their place in this relationship: God is God and we are not. Our mortality has everything to do with the humility Micah is about to drop on God’s feckless children.

“What is good.” Circle ‘good.’ Put a star in the margin. We do not have to wonder what God envisions for us; we do not have to question what constitutes a faithful life of discipleship. God has told us what is good.

But Micah tells us again anyway what the Lord requires. It’s poetry and gut punch all at once: the Lord requires that we do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly. We get three juicy active verbs to circle: do, love, walk. And three perfect nouns that capture God’s will for all creation: justice, kindness, humility. Circles and stars everywhere on the text. What a stunning vision, then, now, always—a world in which we know what is the good. And in what we do, how we love, and the way we walk, we get to create more justice, kindness, and humility.

The world could use so much more of all three.

But a few weeks into this new year, I am most struck in this familiar verse by the humble walk bit. So many of us, myself included, pledge to do something new in these early months; we make resolutions, we promise to give up bad habits, we set ourselves up for new practices, and we try again. There’s a question for us here: how are we walking in the world? And what is it to walk humbly with our God?

Humility seems to be in short supply these days, while hubris is really having a moment. Bombast without knowledge sells; expertise receives derision; judgment devours curiosity. We see so few examples of people who publicly acknowledge that they don’t know something, and even fewer people acknowledging that they need to change in any way. We are growing more and more comfortable accepting as truth whatever is said loudest or most often, and so many speak untruths with such enviable confidence. It is perceived as weakness to seek counsel or advice; admitting mistakes leads to humiliation.

But humility isn’t humiliation. Our God is not seeking our debasement and shame. I think of the beautiful image in Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese:” “You do not have to walk on your knees / For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” Our culture seems to have forgotten the beauty and tenderness that come with humility—a way of engaging the world with open heart and mind, hoping to learn. Hoping to grow and to change, and for people of faith, hoping to draw closer to God. Humility is not degradation or dehumanization. On the contrary. Humility brings humans into deeper relationship with the divine. The prophet doesn’t stop this last phrase at “walk humbly,” but tells us to “walk humbly with our God.” Circle ‘with.’ Circle ‘our.’ Circle ‘God.’ Stars everywhere in the margins. The humble walk is along with the God who, in spite of our failures, has not forsaken us and still wants a relationship with us. The call to humility comes with the promise of presence for the walk.

Think for a minute about what happens when you walk with somebody. I know when I walk with a friend or a loved one it changes my whole outlook. Instead of being across from each other and possibly even opposed, we are moving in the same direction. People walking together naturally fall into step with each other; it’s really hard to walk with someone if you have different strides or if you keep a different pace. When we walk together, we are physically positioned to listen and learn. Our faces look forward to the same vantage point and our ears are close together. You cannot walk with your arms crossed, in a defensive or self-protective pose. Try it sometime. It is strange and awkward. When we walk, we’re keenly aware of the energy we’re using; maybe we’re even humbled and getting out of breath as we go, forced into a quiet that lets us hear someone else.

Our Lord was a walker. For most of his adult life, Jesus was on the move, walking from town to town, to the homes of those who invited him, from well to city gate to temple. From his humble birth to the most humiliating form of death, Jesus walked. He walked and listened and invited others to come on along. This was partly of necessity, because there weren’t many transportation options and Jesus never did settle down into a single place. But it also isn’t an accident that we follow a Lord who was always moving forward, toward his ultimate purpose—the death and resurrection that saved us. It is one of the great miracles of our faith that we have a Lord who was himself so humble that he invites us to come walk, too. Side by side with him.

If we look at the prophet’s words in Hebrew, there’s a wonderful nuance to this last requirement in Micah 6:8. The first two are verbs with objects. What does the Lord require? The Lord requires you to DO...do what? Justice. The Lord requires you to Love? Love what? Kindness. If the pattern held, this last one would be ‘what does the Lord require, but for you to walk.’ But in the Hebrew it isn’t. Instead, this phrase in Hebrew says that the Lord requires us to be humble, walking with God. English can’t quite get that, so it is translated as walk humbly. But the original emphasis was on choosing a posture of humility—humility as a way of being—as you stick with God for the journey of a lifetime.

This word for humility appears only one time in the entire Bible—a word that tells us how we’re supposed to position ourselves with our God. Not with arms crossed, ready to self-defend. Not to plead our case. Not negotiating or trying to sell God on the goodness of our rituals even as we accept lies for truth and exploit our fellows.

No. The Lord requires us to be humble. And to move. Be humble walking. In a world that settles for truthiness and so much arrogance, that derides vulnerability and transformation, let us instead boldly acknowledge that we have so much to learn. In the safety of God’s covenant, let us acknowledge that we have so much to change. May we put our ears close to the Word and go on the journey God has set before us, next to a Lord who invites even us to come on along. May we be humble walking. Amen.