Sermon, July 13, 2003
5 Pentecost; Proper 10, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, July 13, 2003
5 Pentecost; Proper 10, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Scripture -- Amos 7:7-15
It is the year 750 BCE, and you are relaxing in the shade of your summer cottage on the northern side of a protective cliff just outside the teeming, prosperous city of Samaria. A breeze all the way from the Mediterranean channels itself toward your little seasonal refuge from the oppressive semi-tropical heat of this arid stretch of the Middle-East.
Life is good. You reflect on what a remarkable time these past few decades have been for you and for your people. For fifty charmed years there has been no external threat -- no army looming from across the Euphrates. You lean back in your recliner, softly touching the artistic ivory inlay along the arms, and you ponder. Fifty years is a long time of peace. A lot of good things can happen.
Your eyes gaze out to the horizon and your imagination stretches beyond to distant borders. Your people now control a geography with almost the full sweep of the legendary empire of Solomon. Your King Jeroboam controls the valuable trade routes between Syria and Arabia. The capital city Samaria is an international center of wealth. Making money is easy. A powerful merchant class with strong ties to the royal house can lobby for the policies that expand commerce.
As you admire the beautiful pottery cup in your hand and take a sip of its wine, you say to yourself -- It is obvious. Our nation Israel has been blessed. We are special -- God’s chosen people. And because God has set us apart from all the others, God is giving us prosperity, victory and prestige among the nations. Our temples are full; we have prayer in our schools, prayer in our courtrooms, prayer at our athletic gatherings, and pride in our nation’s predominance.
But just over on there the other mountain, in the city of Samaria, there is an outsider, Amos an immigrant from Judah, who sees the same prosperous, religious nation and declares in the name of the Lord, "I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; ...the high places ...shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."
What is he so angry about in this best of all possible nations?
Here is what Amos is mad about: The rich have gotten richer, but the poor have gotten poorer. The powerful have abused the weak. Wealthy merchants under-pay the poor and increase their profits. The leaders revel in luxury, are corrupted by indulgence, lying on beds of ease, unconcerned over the ruin of Joseph, he says. He mocks their wives, sophisticated ladies whom he compares to the fat, sleek cows of Bashan, pushing their husbands onward and up the corporate ladder. He scorns the law courts who protect the vested property interests of the commercial class while oppressing the human interests of the poor. He cries out in the name of the Lord: Do you think you are special, Israel because I brought you out of Egypt? I brought your enemies the Philistines from Caphto and the Syrians from Kir. Your unearned privileges are not a sign of entitlement but rather a call to greater responsibility. Because God has known and blessed you more than the others, you have a greater responsibility and a greater censure, for you should have known better and cannot fall back upon the excuse of ignorance. God hates, God despises, God abhors the whole scene of your pride and your power. "Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
Shift forward 2,750 years; the dawn of a new millennium. Another God-blessed nation has enjoyed nearly thirty years of peace. With the crumbling of the Soviet Union, there is no military rival on the planet. A wealthy, gifted country has enjoyed nearly a decade of booming economic activity. Religious values are on the front page; books on spirituality are best sellers. We look around and we can say, it is obvious -- the United State of America has been blessed. We are special. And because God has blessed us, God is giving us prosperity, victory and prestige among the nations.
But there are twenty-first century prophets who speak from computer terminals and on-line web pages. They deplore the growing gap between rich and poor. They are scandalized that the bottom one-fifth of wage earners are not participating in the new wealth. They see workers increase their productivity by 12% during a decade when their real income rose only 1.9%. They decry the injustice as increasing numbers of working poor struggle without health insurance while CEO salaries go stratospheric. They see hard working people laboring sixty hours a week at two jobs still unable to make ends meet. They see schools struggling backwards, a medical industry run by actuaries, hopeless islands of poverty and drugs, massive cuts in welfare, and rising unemployment, while wealthy corporate lobbyists spend record amounts of money to influence our politics and tax cuts.
And they say, "What would Amos say?"
I don’t much want to hear it. You probably don’t want to either. The Amoses of the world bother us; make us feel bad. Amos bursts our bubbles of comfort and content. It’s easier to hear the professional prophets, the ones that are well-paid to make those of us who are comfortable feel like we’ve earned it and pretend that those who are miserable aren’t my concern.
But deep in the back of my conscience, something troubling stirs. It is an "Amos voice" that reminds me that privilege is a responsibility not an entitlement. From those to whom much is given, much is expected. That "Amos voice" reminds me that God is not interested in prosperity, pride or success. And the other voices in the world that tempt us to give ourselves to those idols of prosperity, pride and success -- those are the voices of the false gods.
That good inner voice reminds me that the things of God ring with a prophetic authenticity. And what are the things of God; the themes of the prophets? They usually have to do with four or five things: with unqualified love and unbounded compassion, with deep trust in God and courageous forgiveness, and finally with justice. Real justice, for all. The voice calling those God-things is usually a pretty humble sounding one, because there is none of us who have lived up to unqualified love, unbounded compassion, deep trust, courageous forgiveness, and full justice. Anyone who speaks of such things has to do so knowing he or she has failed in them.
Sometimes that humble voice sounds pretty angry though. But it’s not like a profane anger; it’s a righteous anger. Righteous anger is the appropriate emotion whenever anything you love is threatened. That kind of anger can be a motivator for reform.
And that’s how we can help. We can be part of God’s reform movement. We can consciously turn away from the old false gods of the eighth century before Christ, old false gods who are also familiar to us here in the post-modern twenty-first century. We can resist the temptation toward comfort and rationalization. Acting positively, we can use our privilege and power to become more responsible, especially toward God’s favored people, the poor, the outcast, the stranger. And we can humbly try to shift the balance of power more toward those divine ideals of unqualified love, unbounded compassion, deep trust in God, courageous forgiveness and full justice.
Who knows? Maybe one day there will be no more need for the discomforting sound of the voice of Amos.