I have a confession to make: I’ve always been a people pleaser.
Ever since I was a young boy, I had a fundamental desire to make sure that the people around me approved of me and affirmed me- I was the kid that would stay in at recess to help the teacher staple papers or stay after church cleaning up left behind trash from the pews just to make sure my pastor saw and affirmed me.
The desire to be a people pleaser was one part altruistic- wanting to do good because I truly believed it was the right and fulfilling thing to do- and the other part was acting out of a deeper, inner need to be loved. I was working from the belief that somehow; love could be earned if I made people happy and did enough good things.
Over time, that desire to be loved because of my actions became more and more performative- especially in regards to my faith. I believed that if I was in church enough, prayed and read my Bible enough, sang enough hymns, and gave enough in the offering, that I could keep God happy and in turn, be assured of God’s love.
The desire to be loved is a fundamental human need- perhaps, the most fundamental need.
Without a sense that we are loved, we will begin to whiter and wallow in depression and despair, or else, we will burn ourselves out through endless performing, people pleasing, and religious acts of self-righteousness.
What I’ve learned over the years, and what is at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus is this: love isn’t earned, love can’t be gained, and you can never be more or less loved than you are right now.
Love is the very definition and essence of God, according to Scripture, and love is the most fundamental state of reality.
1 John 4:7-8 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
You exist in love, and you and I are fundamentally loved. No amount of effort we can exhort can change that reality- especially in relation to God.
And yet.
So many of us know this to be true at a cognitive level but have never let that truth become real in our lived experience.
Does anybody know what I am talking about?
It’s easy to say, “we are loved and should feel loved.” But how do we make that a reality in our lives?
How do we experience a sense of belovedness and a sense of fulfillment in our lives?
Should we stop seeking to do good to others? Should we not consider seek to align our lives with God’s will? Should we just believe we’re loved- is that truly enough?
The subversive answer to this question is found in our reading from the Prophet Micah this morning, who reveals to us both what God desires from us and the key to living a life where we experience, viscerally a sense of love.
In the beginning of Micah 8, God speaks to the people of Israel
“Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.
“Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation;
listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the Lord has a case against his people;
he is lodging a charge against Israel.
“My people, what have I done to you?
How have I burdened you? Answer me.
I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.
My people, remember
what Balak king of Moab plotted
and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.”
In this passage, God speaks to the people of Israel, reminding them of all the evidence of God’s love for them- I have delivered you from slavery, I have raised up mighty leaders to guide you, I have protected you- and yet you still turn away from me.
You still seek out other gods to find love, to find purpose.
If you know the story of the Hebrew Bible, you know that from the beginning, God lets the people of Israel know that God loves them and has a plan for them.
And the rest of the story of the Hebrew Bible is Israel, at times, walking in knowledge of God’s love which in turn, makes them a people who are generous, gracious, and loving towards others.
Then there are moments where Israel seems to forget that they are beloved, and they respond in one of two ways: over-performing, becoming hyper-religious and seeking to prove their righteousness through their religious practices, or through abandoning God’s way and turning towards greed, selfishness, and in the end, self-destruction.
These are the two realities that all of us get to choose from each day: To walk, by faith, in the belief that we are beloved of God, and thus, we are free to not focus on ourselves, our circumstances, or our needs, but turn to others.
How many of us know that when we stop focusing on ourselves and start loving on others, that we actually feel better? We actually feel more loved and more purposeful?
This is the subversive message Jesus embodied- Jesus taught that if you want to live a love-filled and abundant life, you must focus on others.
You must serve others.
You must be kind and loving to others.
That is the proper response to feeling the love of God in our lives.
But when we forget that we’re loved- that there is nothing we have to do to be any more loved and there is nothing we could do that would make us any less loved- we usually begin to either overperform- leaning into desperate “people-pleasing” tendencies or we turn inward and become selfish, seeking our own pleasure, our own benefit, our own wellbeing to the exclusion of everyone else.
Israel has, yet again, forgotten that they are beloved. They have turned from God’s truth.
And in this instance, when Micah is speaking to them, they have apparently turned to overperforming. They’ve turned to people pleasing- or rather, seeking to please God through overperforming religious rituals.
Micah says as much in the next verses. The Prophet asks Israel:
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
Do you hear what’s at the heart of these questions?
How can we please God? What does God require of us?
And the answers are all outward, religious rituals. The answers are all performative.
When we forget that we’re beloved, we begin to do everything in our power to prove that we’re worthy of love.
Israel begins to offer excessive burnt offerings.
They offer thousands of rams.
Ten thousand rivers of oil.
They even offer their firstborn child as a way to demonstrate that they are worthy of God’s love.
This may sound extreme, but isn’t this also what we do?
I mean, maybe not offering your firstborn child…I hope not.
But when we’re acting out of insecurity or a lack of a sense of belovedness, we begin to dance, we begin to perform, we begin to do anything we can to prove externally that we’re worthy of love.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned, as a chronic people-pleaser: When we’re acting out of insecurity, out of a desperate desire for affirmation and love, out of a selfish impulse, people can tell.
And people are often very resistant to extend love and affirmation to those who are seeking to draw it out of them.
Why? Because love and value cannot be earned.
This is especially true in our relationship to God.
God does not delight in our religious performances.
God does not delight in our desire to show off how good we are, how just we are, how woke we are.
It’s not wrong to be good, just, and woke- of course. But when we do those things in order to earn favor and love from God or others, we’re missing the point.
And the truth is, our inability to simply accept that we are loved will keep us from feeling anything more than a momentary high from our performative righteousness.
If we’re doing good in order to be praised by others or in order to the be loved by God, we are robbing ourselves of true fulfillment.
Our altruism, our desire to do good should spring from a place of overflow, a place of knowing we’re beloved, knowing we’re blessed, and our desire to share that love and blessing with others because we are grateful.
And in fact, the Prophet Micah says as much in the conclusion of our passage this morning. He answers the series of questions on how to please God with three simple answers:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
What is it that God expects of us? Not in order to earn God’s love but as an acknowledgement that we are overflowing with God’s love?
Act justly- be fair and good to others.
Love mercy- be gracious and forgiving to others.
Walk humbly with God- the word “humbly” here in Hebrew has a connotation of gratitude- to be humbly grateful, acknowledging God’s presence and love in our lives and in our world.
In other words, all of our desires to please God and please others, all of the things we do, all of the outward rituals and offerings we make…they miss the point.
Only when we acknowledge that we are already beloved can we walk in humble gratitude before God, and from that place of humble gratitude we can be gracious and good to others- again, not to get anything out of it, but because we’re confident and full of God’s love.
This morning, as we gather together, the question I want to invite each of us to reflect upon is this: Do I really know that I am loved?
Or am I running endlessly, seeking the love and affirmation of God and others?
Am I trying to prove that I am worthy of love?
Am I turning inward, disregarding others because at my core I don’t believe I am loveable?
These are big questions- but they’re the most important questions we can ever consider.
Regardless of our age, regardless of our status, all of us from time to time forget that we’re beloved.
Just look at Israel.
And in those moment of amnesia, we can run ourselves ragged.
We can beat ourselves up. We can wallow in our pain and sense of purposelessness.
But this isn’t how God desires for us to live.
This is not how we were created to live.
If you do find yourself in this place of amnesia today, the good news is that Micah gives us a simple path out of over-performing or wallowing in self-pity or self-destructive behavior.
The way to return to God’s love is through:
Doing justice- each day, find someone to extend a simple act of love towards. It could be buying a person experiencing homelessness a meal, it could be helping a neighbor with a simple task, it could be taking a few moments to sit with a coworker who is having a hard day.
A simple, subversive act of love towards others pulls us out of our self-centeredness, and actually helps us to feel the love that exists for us.
In giving, we receive. In loving, we remember that we are loved.
Then Micah says, love mercy.
Or be gracious to that person on the subway who bumps into you. Be forgiving to that family member who messed up yet again. Give others- your spouse, your children- a second chance without making them feel guilty for falling short.
When we live mercifully, we remember that God is merciful to us.
And undergirding all of this is Micah’s command to walk humbly with our God- in other words, to take time each day to reflect on God’s goodness in our lives.
We’ve all heard of this practice before- but how many of us regularly take time to pray, to meditate, to journal and express gratitude for the love and blessings we have in our lives.
Neurologists and Psychologists have done thousands of studies that show that taking as little as five minutes each day to disconnect, to sit in silence, in the presence of God, and express a sense of gratitude can drastically change our entire outlook and feeling in life.
Being humble or grateful before God, as a regular practice, roots us in a sense of belovedness and thanksgiving, which in turn allows us to live from a grounded place of love towards others- and this can keep us from leaning into our people pleasing or God pleasing tendencies.
The offering that God desires from us is simple- to acknowledge our belovedness, and from that place to live justly and mercifully towards others.
That’s it.
Not extensive religious rituals. Not overperforming for others praise. Not climbing the corporate ladder. Not having the perfect home.
Walk humbly before God.
Be gracious.
Do justice.
That is the rhythm of a love-rooted life.
Amen?