Sermon - A Prophet for Our Time

Preached on July 18 2010 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Amos 8:1-12

What happens when a nation of people who come from humble, hard-working roots become, over generations, richer and richer? That was Israel in the 7th century before Christ, when Amos was a prophet. Sometimes we get the wrong idea about prophets, and imagine that they are like fortune tellers, predicting the future by magical communication with God. What prophets are really best at is not seeing the future, but seeing the present more clearly than anyone else, and telling the truth about it, especially the truth that upsets people in power. So Amos tells the truth to Israel, to a people who have forgotten where they came from, and have been blinded by their own success. “Hear this, you that trample the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land.”

I think that if Amos were around today doing his prophet gig, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. There's no shortage of targets.

Hear this A.I.G., Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, and everyone who chased short-term profit over your responsibility to be honest and careful with our investments. You who brought ruin to people thrown out of homes, and let go from jobs, and cut off from the support that would give them just a bit of dignity.

In his day, Amos said: "[hear this, you who] say, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and when will the Sabbath [be over], so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’”

Today he might say: Hear this, you who say that whatever you can get away with in business is just fine. You who open factories where there are no regulations for a living wage or even healthy working conditions, you who bury workers in debt and so own their lives like slaves, you who want to rush through your weekly appearance at the big downtown church so you can get back to trading stocks and betting riches where people’s real lives are at stake. Hear this, you who think only of the profit margin when drilling a mile beneath the most beautiful waters of the world, and forget your moral obligation to take such risks only with the greatest caution possible. Did any of you think that you could go on like this, and somehow avoid devastation?

Yes, Amos would have it pretty easy today. Different century, different part of the world, vastly more complex economies and globalized corporate interests: but the same story. And so we hear in Amos a tragic story that is only too real for us today:

“Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? On that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.”

Sobering, isn’t it? And whether we think that devastation is God’s punishment for injustice (which I do not), or that devastation is the natural consequence of reckless injustice, we recognize the story that Amos lived in 2,700 years ago as our story also.

And then Amos says this interesting thing: “The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.”

A different kind of famine: not for bread or water, but a famine of the words of God. What kind of a famine is that?

The people are singing lamentations and mourning in sackcloths because all the prosperity that they’d enjoyed had been ruined, like a sandy beach covered in tar, and now they can’t hear the word of God. I wonder if it’s because things had been going too well for too long? I wonder if they had all benefited just enough when business was booming, when gas was cheap, when the DOW Jones was high, and everyone was buying so everyone was hiring.

Maybe they looked around and said “hey, we’re doing pretty well for ourselves. We’ve got our essential needs covered, we’ve got insurance and a safety net in case of emergency, and we’ve got enough left over to invent new needs and satisfy them.” And if you go along like that for long enough, it’s hard to see what you need to hear from God and so you forget how to listen. Oh, they still went to the temple and sang their psalms and prayed their prayers, but it was kind of just to keep up form. They had no needs, so they forgot how to listen to God’s word. And then when it all came crashing down, there was a famine for the word of God. I wonder if they had forgotten how to hear it.

You can’t ignore a garden, let the weeds grow and the soil dry up, and then one day when you really need a fresh tomato expect to go and find one waiting for you. You can’t stop practicing the piano, and then expect one day to be able to play Chopin. And you can’t ignore your friend’s phone calls, emails, invitations to dinner, and then suddenly reach some crisis in your life and call on that friend for support.

And so it is with our life with God. If things go too well for us for too long, sometimes we forget how to hear the word of God. And if you are not used to listening for the word of God, do you even notice that you’re missing it? I think about that when I read Amos, because the truth is that even though I would like to think about Amos ranting against BP and A.I.G. and whomever else I might blame, there is also a part of Amos that is speaking to me. Because when I am done with my anger at the trans-national corporations, and the government failures to regulate their greed and guard the common good, and when I am done with my frustration at the whole culture that values personal gain over responsibility to the human family and to the earth, then I have to recognize that I drive a car and I look for the cheapest gas without asking questions about why it’s so cheap. And I hope that the money in my pension fund grows big in the stock market without wondering what corners those companies are cutting to earn those profits. And I buy shoes and clothes with faraway labels without wondering if the workers are safe, or earn enough to live on.

It’s great when they speak against my enemies, but they also speak a difficult truth to me. The truth is that even if I didn’t set up the system, even if I never made a conscious choice to demand cheap gas despite the enormous risks, I am still a part of that system. I am a part of a lot of these horrors that we’ve brought down on ourselves. And even if I know that I cannot solve these large problems on my own, I cannot ignore the fact that I can make many smaller choices in a different way.

But my individual choices are not going to solve the big picture. So what’s the point, Amos? What am I supposed to do with this word about the great injustices of the world? I can’t solve them on my own. But then I realize, God doesn’t depend on us doing it on our own. God just wants us to know that God is against injustice. Famine or not, whether we hear God’s word or not, God’s word is resurrection; God’s word speaks new hope for the hopeless; God’s word creates new light when the night is most dark.

Do you remember a few minutes ago when I said that ignoring our relationship with God was like ignoring a friend’s calls and emails and invitations and then expecting that friend to be there when a crisis hits? Well, I bet that there were some of you who thought of a really good friend that you’ve had for a really long time, and you thought to yourself, that image doesn’t work. If life came crashing down, my friend would be there for me even if I’d been a bad friend for the past few weeks, months, or even years. Some of you did, didn’t you?

And isn’t God more faithful than our most faithful friend to whom we have shown no faith? Isn’t God the kind of creator who will restore life to a people even after they have been careless with life? Isn’t God the kind of parent who welcomes the prodigal sons and daughters home after they have destroyed their own inheritance and abandoned their homes?

Amos knew all this about God. Amos knew that God does not let devastation have the last word. Hold on, Amos says, because God isn’t done. We need to hear this from the end of the book of Amos: “On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old… The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when …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 9:11-15, selected).

Those are the final words of the book of Amos. Those are the words given to people who had forgotten how to hear God’s word. God restores our lives even when we have made a mess of them. This is the word that became flesh in the man from Nazareth, who saw the same things that Amos had talked about. Jesus saw injustice and violence. And he saw the sun turned to darkness in the middle of the day, a day when the evil of the world seemed like it was too much, when it seemed like the word of God, the very living word of God, would be forever silenced.

When it seems to us like the word of God is silenced, when it seems like the sun is blackened and we will be forever in darkness, forever hungry for the goodness of God, then remember how bad it looked on that day. Remember that the word of God cannot be silenced in a tomb. The word of God cannot be silenced by greed or cruelty or injustice of any kind. The word of God lives even when the world does it’s best to bury it. And the word of God will restore this world.

Column - The World Cup Final

This past Sunday afternoon, while Betsy, Sam and I were on vacation with my extended family in northern Michigan, we went to a restaurant to watch the final of the World Cup. Allow me emphasize, because a part of me can’t believe that this happened: On a gorgeous afternoon, we left the cottages we were renting on a lakeshore, drove into town, and went inside to watch a soccer game between Spain and the Netherlands, two teams about which we knew next to nothing.

Why did I do it? It was partly because I had missed almost every other World Cup game during my summer class schedule, and partly because it seemed like a memorable afternoon for us to spend with my brothers, and partly because it was the last chance for a World Cup game until 2014, and maybe just a little bit because LeBron James had just announced his departure from Cleveland, and I needed to show that my interests are bigger that local sports.

Soccer is a cool sport. The action is non-stop: no commercials, no huddles, no signals between pitcher and catcher, and hardly any substitutions. These players run almost continuously for the entire ninety minutes of play (and, in this case, the thirty minutes of overtime). The scores may be low, but the action is great. You really just never know when that vital goal is going to be kicked (or headed) past the goalkeeper. Also, although there are star players, soccer seems to be more dependent on teamwork than many other team sports in which star players more easily dominate.

In other words, soccer is a community effort, sustained with steady energy over a long period of time, with only occasional tangible results.

Now, doesn’t that sound like our lives? A community effort, sustained by steady energy for a logn time with only occasional tangible results. Doesn’t that sound like raising children, or improving living conditions, or overcoming prejudice? It sounds to me like the Christian faith. We are a community, sustaining energy in our worship, our service, and our spiritual growth. It is a lifelong journey, and only occasionally do we reach those thin places where we catch a glimpse of God, where we enter into mystical communion with the divine. In the meantime, isn't it great to be on the field?