“This is why I wail and howl, why I walk barefoot and naked. And I will make my wailing in the wastes, mourning like a daughter among the ruins” (Micah 1.8).
Outside of some places and beaches, public nudity is not part of polite society (and I’m thankful for that). There are bits and parts of ourselves that aren’t meant to be seen by everyone. They’re private, seen only by those closest to us, revealed only when we are all alone—standing in the shower, lying in the tub, pulling on clean clothes.
But it isn’t just about modesty, is it? It’s…uncomfortable to not have something between our bare skin and the world around us. Think about the last time you walked across asphalt so hot you could still feel it through the soles of your shoes. How about the wind from last winter, the damp breeze that seemed to slip through the threads of your coat and pants? Exposing our bare soles to a summer street or exposed arms to the January wind is painful.
If you go back just a few verses from the one above, you’ll see that Micah is speaking amidst a land in turmoil. The divided country around him—Samaria and Judea, once one united nation and now two—is in peril. The great powers of the world have taken notice of them and are coming for them. The long-delayed disaster is at the gates. The days to come will be filled with sorrow.
It is a time for finding protection. Structures built to support people will crumble; so, everyone must wrap themselves—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—against the danger and destruction to come. It is not a time to be caught in the streets defenseless, vulnerable, exposed.
Yet, that is exactly what Micah announces he will do.
Can you imagine the reaction to his words? It’s as if someone told us they were going naked and barefoot into the blazing wildfires of the American West or upon the darkened beach where a hurricane is coming ashore. Such actions would be…foolish, if not reckless.
Such vulnerability is dangerous. It means nothing stands between us and the jagged pieces of a broken world. The hot ash of burned trees would sear our feet like the summer asphalt. Record-breaking heat can turn our back and chest red.
It’s not as though we have a precedent for that kind of vulnerability.
Micah’s image of himself divested of all protection is a picture of the Heart of Christ. It is of a love fully aware of the hazards all around but offers itself, all of itself, completely. A love that desires to hold close all of Creation, daring the peril for the hope of feeling its touch. It is the action of the lover toward the beloved.
It is an invitation from the One who asks only that we follow, divested of all the things we use to separate us from one another. To walk the Way beneath the late summer sun feeling the touch of the breeze, the grass, the heat upon our skin.
Knowing that the rocks may cut our feet.
Incarnate One, the love and vulnerability you’ve shown us is scary and dangerous. To walk in the Way means risking wounds that might be with me forever. Being that naked means I have no way to hide any part of myself. Help me be brave enough, today, to let this world touch me the way you long to touch it.