Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel [Micah 6:1-2, a portion of the OT reading for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL, Year A].
The prophet Micah describes what biblical scholars call a covenant lawsuit. YHWH summons Israel to court. The mountains and hills serve as jury—ancient witnesses who’ve seen everything, who were there when the covenant was made, who can testify to what has transpired.
YHWH continues with a question: “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” [6:3]. Then YHWH recounts the saving history—the Exodus from Egypt, the leadership of Moses and Aaron and Miriam, the journey through the wilderness, the faithfulness YHWH has shown generation after generation.
This is a genuine question. YHWH seems bewildered. The relationship is fractured, and YHWH wants to know: What did I do wrong? How have I failed you? What has exhausted you about our covenant?
Israel has a chance to answer. The floor is theirs. YHWH has asked a relational question—the kind spouses ask each other after years of growing distance, the kind friends ask when something has gone terribly wrong and they can’t quite name it. It’s vulnerable. It opens the door to honest conversation about what has broken between them.
Israel doesn’t answer.
The people change the subject entirely.
The Price We’d Rather Pay
With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? [6:6-7].
YHWH asked about relationship. The people responded with religious economics.
YHWH says: “What have I done to weary you?”
The people say: “What sacrifice do you want? Name your price.”
YHWH, as plaintiff in this lawsuit, has every right to shout: “Objection—not responsive.” The people were asked a relational question. They’re answering a completely different one. But YHWH remains patient.
Israel’s escalation is telling. Burnt offerings. Year-old calves. Thousands of rams. Rivers of oil. My firstborn child. Each offer more extravagant than the last. While this may sound like anxiety spiraling into panic, it’s really just negotiation. It’s bargaining. The people want YHWH to name a figure so they can pay it and be done.
They’ve moved the discussion from covenant to commerce. From relationship to transaction. Debits and credits. Fair market value for divine favor.
We understand this move because we make it constantly. When God’s actual question makes us uncomfortable, we seek what lawyers call “a change of venue.” God summons us to covenant court—where the standards are relational, where faithfulness and presence and love are what matter. We file a motion to transfer the case to commercial arbitration—where the standards are transactional, where we can measure, calculate, fulfill obligations, and walk away square.
Why do we prefer transactional religion? Because it’s manageable.
If righteousness is expensive, we can control who has access. Wealth determines who can afford the best offerings. We can measure our comparative standing—I sacrificed more than you, therefore I’m more righteous. We can finish the obligation. Payment rendered, receipt received, account settled. And most importantly, we can maintain distance. I gave what was required. Don’t ask for more. Don’t press into my actual life.
We’re remarkably good at this kind of religion. Give a congregation a building project—a new roof, urgent repairs, capital improvements—and watch what happens. We know how to run campaigns, track pledges, celebrate milestones. There’s a finish line. We can see the results. It’s difficult, yes. Sacrificial, absolutely. But it’s doable because it’s transactional.
We’ve traded the “Rivers of Oil” for the rivers of data. All too often, we audit our faithfulness through spreadsheets, measuring success by the volume of our “outputs”—attendance figures, endowment growth, or the efficiency of our social media reach. Like a sophisticated commercial entity, we believe that if the data points are trending upward, the relationship must be intact. We want a religion we can audit, a God who can be satisfied with a clean balance sheet, because an audit doesn’t require us to look anyone in the eye.
Daily justice? Sustained kindness? Humble walking with God through years of uncertainty, through denominational fracture, through cultural upheaval? No clear metrics? No finish line? No ribbon-cutting ceremony? Relational faithfulness doesn’t photograph well for the church newsletter.
So, we keep offering God what we can control. Rivers of oil. Thousands of rams. Bigger budgets. Better programs. Impressive buildings. More sophisticated theology. Just tell us the price, God. Let us pay and be done.
What God Actually Requires
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [6:8].
The verb tense matters here. “He has told you.” Not “He is now revealing.” Not “here’s new information you lacked.” You already know this. This isn’t an information problem.
Justice. Kindness. Humble walking with God.
These requirements are terrifyingly simple and utterly accessible. Anyone can do justice—righteousness isn’t reserved for the wealthy. Kindness can’t be measured comparatively—love resists ranking systems. Humble walking with God is ongoing—there’s no moment when you’ve finished, no receipt that says “paid in full.” And relationship requires presence. You can’t maintain safe distance while walking humbly with someone.
This is why we try to domesticate God. We want God to fit our transactional categories. We want covenant relationship to work like a contract—clear terms, defined obligations, measurable outcomes, enforceable remedies.
God refuses domestication.
Covenant won’t stay in the box we’ve built for it. It keeps spilling over into our actual lives, our daily choices, our relationships with neighbors and strangers and enemies. It keeps asking whether we’re becoming people marked by justice and kindness. It keeps inviting us to walk humbly—which means admitting we don’t have all the answers, that our faction doesn’t have the monopoly on righteousness, that God’s ways exceed our capacity to control them.
The great irony: our attempt to manage the relationship through religious performance is itself the covenant breach. We’ve tried to substitute transaction for trust, sacrifice for faithfulness, religious achievement for humble presence.
The Unanswered Question
YHWH asked: “What have I done to you? In what have I wearied you?”
Israel never answered. We rarely do either.
I think we need to sit with that question longer. Have we mistaken our weariness with church, with institutions, with theological combat, with one another—for weariness with God? God hasn’t exhausted us. We’ve exhausted ourselves trying to manage a relationship that refuses management.
The mountains and hills bear witness. Like patient stones that have watched for centuries, they’ve seen us admire the wrong things, count the wrong contributions, mistake religious performance for covenant faithfulness. They heard God’s question. They heard our evasion. They know the difference.
Israel offered to give its firstborn—the ultimate sacrifice, the most precious gift, the absolute limit of what could be demanded. God said no. The covenant doesn’t work that way. You cannot purchase relationship. You cannot transact your way to walking humbly with God.
Ah, but the irony cuts deep: It is God, not Israel, who will give His Son. The sacrifice we offered in panic and negotiation, God will make in love and faithfulness. The price we tried to name, God will pay. The transaction we sought to control, God will complete—but not as transaction. As gift. As covenant love carried to its unbearable conclusion.
What God wants from us costs something money cannot buy: control. Justice, kindness, humility—these require us to relinquish our grip on the relationship, to stop bargaining and start walking, and to answer the question we’ve been avoiding.
“What have I done to weary you?”
The question remains. God is still asking. The covenant still holds. The mountains and hills are still listening.
How will we answer?
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