Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Micah 2:1–5
In recent years, we have heard many reports of powerful corporations and governments taking farmland from small local farmers.
The reasons vary:
for mines, for factories, for highways, dams, tourist resorts, or large development projects.
The problem is that the land is often taken against the will of those who live there.
Farmers protest. Indigenous peoples resist. Families plead.
But the powerful often win.
Micah’s name means:
“Who is like God?”
And today his answer is clear:
“Woe to those who plan evil upon their beds.”
Micah’s “woe” reminds us of Jesus’ “woe.”
Jesus says:
“Woe to you who are rich.”
Micah says:
Woe to you who are powerful and use your power to steal what belongs to others.
In Jesus’ parables, the rich are often shown as selfish, secure, and blind to the poor at their gate.
In Micah’s time, the powerful seized fields. They seized houses. They seized futures.
They could do this because they had power.
But they forgot Someone far more powerful.
They forgot the Lord who hears the cry of the poor.
Micah says something frightening.
The powerful design evil.
But the Lord also designs “evil.”
Their evil is the seizure of land.
God’s answer is judgment upon the powerful.
They take what is not theirs; what they have will be taken from them.
They destroy the future of others; their own future will be cut off.
The Babylonians shall come and take them all into exile.
Then the poor will finally have the land to themselves.
So we must ask:
What will happen for all the crimes against Indigenous peoples?
What will happen for all the crimes against the poor?
What will happen for all the crimes against nature?
We like to quote Martin Luther King Jr.:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
But what if this is really true?
What if the arc really bends?
What if justice finally arrives?
We live in a world where profit is often more important than the common good.
Powerful corporations shape government policies.
They dominate media headlines.
They present land grabs as progress.
They call displacement development.
They call destruction growth.
And the prophetic voices who warn us are often ignored, mocked, or silenced.
A Catholic priest from Samoa once told me a saying:
“When we have eaten the last fish and cut the last tree, we will realize that money cannot be eaten.”
Micah would understand.
The land can be seized. The forests can be cut. The rivers can be poisoned. The poor can be pushed aside.
But the Lord hears.
And when the Lord hears, the story is not over.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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