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Amos 8:1-12
On the way back from breakfast with Glen, I noticed a local church sign that read – “For the latest tragedy, Lord, have mercy.” It was a way of recognizing that our hearts are on overload. And I have to tell you, from the perspective of the pulpit, it is times like these, where violence is pervasive and commonplace and the heavy weight of our disjointed-ness seems to lay on us like a wet blanket, that I join my colleagues in this profession, wondering how we are supposed to come to you each and every Sunday and have some magical words to make it all make sense?
Here’s what Amos has for us – the voice of an angry God. And maybe that sounds appropriate. I don’t know about you, but over the last two weeks I’ve done shock, sadness, misery, hopelessness…and now I am angry. I’m not sure that I can even articulate what I am angry about. Can there be any more cruelty? Can we find any way to interact other than insult and injury? Every time I think that it can’t get worse, it does. Another shooting, another attack, another act of terror…and then coups and war and martial law. I can easily imagine the voice of a God who is just sick and tired of this. I know I am.
Even a God of love, the source of grace without end, must have a breaking point, right? Most of Amos is full of just that – promises of God’s indignation, feasts turned to mourning, lamentation and grieving and, most bizarrely of all, baldness on every head. A horrific notion. Amos overflowing with God’s pledge to leave, to just walk away and let the madness of Cain overtake us. Amos looks at the injustice around him and just plays the current path out – what else could one expect from such violent disregard? And yet here is the thing. After almost a full 9 chapters from Amos, imaging doom and the retribution of God, the most curious thing happens. Nothing. God doesn’t bring ruin and chaos, God does not abandon us but instead the final paragraph of Amos goes like this:
The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
when the one who plows shall overtake the one who reaps,
and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed;
the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them upon their land,
and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them,
says the Lord your God. (Amos 9:13-15)
It’s not that Amos is a charlatan, or that God is a liar. It’s that even an angry God is finally a God of justice and love. Amos chastizes a world we can identify with, where people “make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances” or “buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the sweepings of the wheat.” Inequity, it seems, has been around a long time. And we certainly haven’t invented violence or war. While we may know that life has always been scary, it is really, really scary right now. I know I am scared. What does our future really hold when it seems like everything is falling apart? It can be easy to feel hopeless. And here is what I hear God calling me to do. Keep going. It’s a soft voice, like purr of a cricket after a thunderstorm, but it is there.
Almost 30 years ago I arrived on the campus of the University of Oregon. President George H.W. Bush had just sent forces into Kuwait against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Guard. This was the first time I was exposed to war at a time that I could make sense of it and decide where I would stand. Little did I know that this undeclared war would go on for the rest of my adult life until today…where it still goes on, the longest war in American history.
But at that time, I was really struggling with what my response to this might be when I saw a flyer for a candlelight vigil to protest the war at the local campus ministry building. Keep in mind that I had not had anything to do with church for some time. I felt scared and angry and wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. So I went to visit the campus ministry building. It was an old house right next to the library renamed the Koinonia Center – Koinonia is Greek for fellowship or close community. I walked right in – the door was open and no one seemed to be home. I finally called out “hello?” and a voice answered from upstairs – “Yes? I’m up here, c’mon up.” So I walked up the stairs and into an office that would house some of the more profound and life-changing discussions that I would have over the next few years.
It was the office of Tom Heger – the Presbyterian pastor who ran the ecumenical campus ministry. I told him that I was there to talk about this candlelight vigil. He said, “Great. But why don’t we discuss this over some fries and a beer?” We trotted down the street to one of the local hangouts. Tom explained to me that the vigil was about having a faithful response to events that affected us in our lives as human beings, and also as Americans. It was a matter of justice and judgment, he said. Justice that centered on human rights and judgment that God was a God of love and peace, not a God of war and vengeance. When we believe that God is a God of justice, he said, we seek justice. And when we believe that God is a God of love, we seek love.
We went on talking for a long time and I liked his responses. I heard him saying God wasn’t a great judge in the sky and yet also defending and longing for God’s judgment. He was pretty comfortable with the ambiguity and even the contradictory tone he was setting, just as he was also comfortable with the clear idea of how he was called to pray, but also to act in the world, even when it was hard to do so. He didn’t have a flawless argument and he knew it. He also wasn’t trying to convince me, just to talk about how he experienced God and what kind of person God called him to be. Finally he said, so what do you really think about all this? And I said, well this talk has been a great way to pass the time, but honestly you had me at fries and beer.
Still, on that day, Tom allowed me to see another side of judgment. I had always held it to be one of the aspects of Christianity that those of us who call ourselves “progressives” sort of hold our noses at. I mean, it’s in the Biblical texts a lot, but we just gloss over it because it’s too hard to fit into our otherwise sound rendering of a loving God. But judgment, Tom taught me, is in the eye of the beholder. And for me, God’s judgment, founded in love, and it is there to push us, to remind us that there are consequences for the choices we make. Call it karma, call it “what goes around comes around”, call it “the chickens coming home to roost”, whatever – but sustained injustice is not sustainable. It feeds on itself, and sooner or later it implodes. Meanwhile I want us to read Amos…ALL of Amos, like the part that says:
The time is surely coming, says the Lord…
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
I want us to know that even as we’re hurting and angry, at the world, even at God, that we need to be clear that God might be mad, too…and that God, at least according to Amos, makes choices. And we should pay attention to what our tradition says God chooses…mercy, grace, compassion and love. God favors the oppressed and the weak. God has a heart for the poor. And God chooses Love. While we, like the God of Amos, might start with anger or despair, we don’t have to end there.
Now is the time to remind ourselves of just exactly what we think God is. We need to call out light and hope, to chant the mantra of peace and justice, to read the promise of faithful presence and loving kindness. God’s justice, Amos teaches us in his language, is mishpat and tzedeqah, individual rights born not from treaties or coercion, but from living in right relationship, from seeing ourselves in each other. So, at a time when our hearts are clearly not in the right place, at least as a society, as we are inundated with disturbing images, riddled with heartbreaking stories and assaulted by yet another account of another instance of another tragedy, let us not forget to train our eyes for kindness…to balance out the wrong relationships with right relationship, to do our part to unveil the kin-dom among us…
In a time of turmoil and suffering, we must choose to seek our discipleship…to trust once more in the promise of love over hate, of mercy over retribution, of hope over despair. So we step from this sanctuary to be a living sanctuary ourselves, pure and holy tried and true…engaged in the simple and profound work of being light in the world. We cannot fix all of the pain and evil we see. But that does not mean we are powerless, nor are we without agency. And the Good News I have this morning is this. Do not discount the small things. After three years I think I can say that I know you. And I encourage you to continue to do what you already do. Visit people in the jail. Teach them. Love them. Deliver mobile meals. Have a conversation. Fly those angel flights, delivering people to needed medical care. Take care of animals, children, the wounded and hurting. Care for your grandchildren. Help veterans find their way. Take care of that “honey-do” list for those who need someone to do it. Foster your nephews. Listen to the immigrant. Work for a non-profit, make your own workplace a place of kindness and goodwill. Organize the community. Gather kids around a campfire, real or not, and tell them they are loved. Cook food. Write cards. Visit the sick. Welcome the stranger. Give some good counsel to people who come to you for clarity. Feed the hungry. Help the needy. Sing. Dance. Do what you do. I have been on the receiving end of this congregation’s generosity and compassion, especially for the past three weeks, and it has made all the difference to me.
I think we need an Amos right now. We need someone to help us feel our way through our new period of being disingenuous. We need someone to remind us that we can be very kind and helpful people on an individual basis but when we live within a system that can question whether or not we should help people in clear need, and when we live in a time in which legitimate political voices are calling for an end to any notion of “common good”, when we have to say “Black Lives Matter” instead of “All Lives Matter” because it is painfully obvious that all lives don’t matter, or we’d have reasonable gun control, no argument with criminal justice reform and no delay whatsoever when refugees from a war-torn country seek our shores.
This is my prayer this morning. That we might see that some judgment is needed…judgment that awakens our souls and refreshes our resolve to be the people of God, judgment which reminds us that there is a morality that undergirds the universe, imbalances will be corrected, but that God asks us to choose justice rather than have it visited upon us, to continue to engage the world with our seemingly small acts of kindness, so that we might build something that lasts…so that we might turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh…so that we might let our lights shine.
May it be so. And quickly. AMEN