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

Micah opens not in a sanctuary, not in a palace, but in a courtroom that stretches as wide as creation itself.

Mountains are summoned.

Hills are called to attention.

The very foundations of the earth are asked to listen in.

This is not because God needs witnesses.

It is because what is at stake is so fundamental that the whole cosmos must hear it.

God has a controversy with God’s people.

That word “controversy” is legal language.

A lawsuit.

A covenant dispute.

But unlike most courtrooms, this one begins not with accusation, but with a question.

A wounded question.

“O my people, what have I done to you?

In what have I wearied you?

Answer me.” Micah 6:3

This is not the voice of a distant tyrant.

It is the voice of a God who has entered into relationship and is now asking what went wrong.

God does not begin by listing Israel’s sins.

Instead, God appeals to memory.

Remember Egypt.

Remember Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Remember Balaam and Balak.

Remember the journey from Shittim to Gilgal.

Remember who I have been to you.

In Micah, memory is not nostalgia. Memory is moral resistance.

To remember is to refuse the convenient amnesia that allows injustice to repeat itself. God reminds Israel of a liberation story because forgetting that story always leads to cruelty.

When people forget that they were once enslaved, they begin to build systems that enslave others.

That is as true now as it was in the eighth century BCE.

Micah’s audience was deeply religious.

Sacrifices were offered.

Worship continued.

The temple economy functioned.

But beneath all that religious activity, something had gone terribly wrong.

The powerful were secure.

The vulnerable were expendable.

Justice had become transactional, something to be managed rather than embodied.

So, when the people finally speak, they ask the wrong question.

“With what shall I come before the Lord?” Micah 6:6

What offering will fix this?

What sacrifice will make this go away?

Burnt offerings?

Thousands of rams?

Rivers of oil?

Even my firstborn child?

Micah is merciless here.

He exposes the absurdity of trying to buy off God while refusing to change how we live with one another.

And then comes the line so familiar it risks becoming background noise:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good.” Micah 6:8

Not what is impressive.

Not what is costly in appearance.

What is good.

“And what does the Lord require of you?

To do justice.

To love kindness.

To walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

Not believe justice.

Do justice.

Not admire kindness.

Love kindness.

Not perform humility.

Walk humbly.

These are not abstract virtues.

They are practices.

Ways of living that take shape in public life, in policy, in how power is exercised, in who is protected and who is sacrificed for the sake of someone else’s comfort.

Which brings us, unavoidably, to the present moment.

On January 14, the current administration announced a halt on issuing immigrant visas from more than 75 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, along with 10 countries in Eastern Europe.

The justification offered was economic: these immigrants, we were told, pose a “high risk” of reliance on public assistance.

That claim is demonstrably false.

The vast majority of immigrants have been legally barred from cash welfare since 1996.

Those who do qualify for programs like SNAP or Medicaid use them at significantly lower rates than non-immigrants.

Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are net contributors to the economy through their taxes, especially to programs from which they themselves are excluded.

So, if this policy is not about economic reality, what is it about?

The president has told us, in his own words.

He has spoken of immigrants “poisoning the nation’s blood.”

He has contrasted the “nice people” of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark with people from what he has called “filthy, dirty, disgusting” countries like Somalia.

The administration’s own Department of Homeland Security posted an image imagining “America after 100 million deportations,” celebrating “the peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

This is not dog-whistle politics.

It is explicit racial ideology.

The purpose of these policies is to whiten the nation.

Period.

Immigration is being criminalized not because of illegality, but because of identity. People who entered legally with visas.

People who used government-approved systems like CBP One.

People renewing Temporary Protected Status.

People asking for asylum, as international law allows.

People attending their immigration hearings as required.

Some have been arrested in courthouses.

Some during routine check-ins.

Some even during their naturalization ceremonies, minutes before becoming citizens.

This is not about law and order.

It is about exclusion.

And to accomplish it, due process itself is being dismantled.

Detention has been massively expanded.

Immigration courts have been bypassed.

Judges have been fired for issuing decisions the administration dislikes.

Unqualified “deportation judges” have been installed.

Funding for legal representation has been slashed, even for children and people with mental health disabilities.

Citizenship itself is being threatened, with plans announced to pursue denaturalization on a scale not seen in modern history.

There are roughly 11 million undocumented people in this country, about 3 percent of the population.

To find and deport all of them would require the routine violation of civil liberties for millions more, citizens and non-citizens alike.

Is it worth it?

Micah would say that is the wrong question.

The question is not what we can get away with.

The question is what the Lord requires.

To do justice means more than enforcing rules.

It means asking whether the rules themselves are just.

Justice in Scripture is not blind to power.

It pays attention to who benefits and who bears the cost.

A system that destabilizes families, criminalizes survival, and targets people based on race is not just, no matter how many statutes are cited in its defense.

To love kindness means more than feeling sympathy.

The Hebrew word hesed means steadfast love, covenant loyalty, solidarity.

It means refusing to treat human beings as disposable.

It means recognizing immigrants not as problems to be solved but as neighbors, coworkers, caregivers, harvesters, nurses, students, and friends.

New arrivals fill labor shortages.

They inject money into local economies.

They shore up Social Security.

They keep communities alive, including here in Maine.

To walk humbly with God means remembering who we are and who we are not.

We are not the arbiters of human worth.

We are not the authors of grace.

We are not saved by our borders.

Humility begins with the recognition that the God who liberated slaves from Egypt, who used outsiders like Balaam to bless the people, who crossed boundaries again and again, does not belong to any nation.

This is an Epiphany text because Epiphany is about revelation.

About light exposing truth.

And the light of Micah exposes the lie that cruelty can be baptized as prudence, that racism can be disguised as policy, that faith can be reduced to ritual while injustice thrives.

Micah does not tell the people to stop worshiping.

He tells them to stop pretending that worship can substitute for justice.

The danger for us is not that we will offer rivers of oil or thousands of rams.

The danger is that we will write checks, pass resolutions, say the right prayers, and leave intact systems that destroy lives.

God does not want a specific offering.

God wants a specific kind of people.

People who remember their own liberation stories.

People who refuse to trade human dignity for political gain.

People who understand that how we treat the stranger reveals how seriously we take our covenant with God.

Micah ends without resolution.

There is no verdict pronounced.

The case is left open, hanging in the air, awaiting a response not in words but in lives.

The mountains are still listening.

The foundations of the earth are still paying attention.

What does the Lord require of us, here, now, in this moment?

Not silence.

Not compliance.

Not fear.

But justice done.

Kindness loved.

And a humble walk with the God who hears the cries of the vulnerable and still, relentlessly, calls God’s people to be better than their worst instincts.

May we have ears to hear—and the courage to act. Amen.