The Sermons at Calvary
By Father Richard Humke
SPEAKING
THE WORD OF GOD
July 13, 2003, 10-B, Calvary Church
Amos 7:7-15
Ps.85
Ephesians 1:1-14
Mark 6-7-13
Picture
this situation which, I suppose, a few professional Southerners would still like
to see.
The
Civil War in the United States is over, but the South has prevailed in its
desire for secession. Beyond that, the
South has become the prosperous, vigorous, growing nation while the North has
remained relatively stagnant.
The
two nations know they are related on a deeper level than is customary between
two nations because they once shared a common history. People travel back and forth quite freely;
they intermarry often; and they are most congenial to each other, some even
hoping they might become one nation again.
Into
that prosperous, and successfully rebellious, South there goes a Yankee peddler
from the declining North who presumes to lecture the South on its decadence, on
its love of luxury, on the moral and social evils that still prevail in that
land. Some people, most people
as a matter of fact, do not like what he is saying, of course; and one
prominent citizen of the South, someone who is sort of like the president's
private preacher, who always tells him what he wants to hear -- let's say,
Billy Graham or perhaps Franklin Graham -- tells this irritating fanatic from
the North to go home and to do his preaching back where he came from.
If
you have that picture in mind, then you have the picture of our Old Testament
reading today with only the directions changed. Israel had had a civil war after King
Solomon's reign. The north had seceded
successfully and had prospered; the south continued on but remained relatively
stagnant, though it still had all the trappings of the original government.
Into
the prosperous north of Israel there went from the south an itinerant
farmer-preacher named Amos, who lectured the north in the name of God because
of their lack of concern for justice and for the care of the poor in their
land, because of their love of luxury and pleasure, and because of the
increasing arrogance of the rich . (I
don't think you have to stretch your mind very far to get that
picture.) The chief priest at that
royal shrine, a man named Amaziah, told Amos to leave them alone and to go back
home to do his lecturing there.
That
is the situation in the First Reading, and I would like you to remember it as
we go along.
In
the Gospel today Jesus called his 12 Apostles to him and then sent them out to
continue his ministry. They healed;
they cast our demons; they preached. He
instructed them carefully not to go from house to house until they found only
congenial hearers, but to do what they were sent to do and to say what they
were sent to say, whether it was liked or not.
I
think we do not have just a happy coincidence of readings, in both of which
people say, or are encouraged to say, things that their hearers may not like to
hear. We have, surely, a planned
convergence in these readings: the word
of God must be spoken whether it is what people want to hear or not. That's what these two lessons are about.
Few
of us, including the present speaker, really want to hear the whole word of
God. If someone presumes to tell us
something we don't want to hear, like Amaziah we suggest he go somewhere else
to say it.
We
want to hear of God's love, but not of God's justice. We want to hear of God's grace, but not of God's demands. We want to hear of God's forgiveness, but
not of our sin. We want to hear about
healings, but not about sufferings. We
want to hear how God has blessed us as a people, but not how we have failed God
as a people.
We
want to hear about the blessings of prosperity that faithfulness brings, but
not about the demands for a just and fair society that it requires. We want to hear about success, but not about
failure. We want to hear a personal
gospel that comforts us, but not a social gospel that challenges us. We want to hear what makes us feel good, but
not what will trouble us when we leave.
Woe
to the preacher, then or now, who too often says too much about sin, about
injustice, about the social policy of the nation, about luxury, about
dishonesty in high places, about corruption, about anything that does not feed
the desire of people to feel good about themselves and to have their prejudices
confirmed.
This
is not an unusual situation. It is true
at Calvary and at almost any other church you can name. And it was true in our Scripture readings as
well, you see -- so it isn't anything new.
I
remember reading some years ago a tongue-in-cheek litany that someone had
written. It was called "A Litany
for a Nice Church." It went
something like this:
We
have a wonderful group of people at our church who all think the same way.
Isn't
that nice.
We have a preacher who always makes us feel good.
Isn't that nice.
There is never anything controversial from our pulpit.
Isn't that nice.
Well,
you get the picture of that litany, I think.
Had it not been a caricature and had it been placed in our Prayer Book,
I'm sure it would have been one of the most popular pages in the whole book!
As
you look for a new rector, for God's sake (literally) don't choose one who is
never going to challenge you, who is going to tell you just what you want to
hear, and who is in love with the status quo.
Of course, you never really know what you're getting. He could be a Justice Souter! And there is certainly some balance and
respect for different ideas that that person should have. But look for someone who challenges you and
sometimes makes you uncomfortable.
Amos,
our figure today in the First Reading, was a simple man, someone who took care
of sycamore trees as well as of a flock of sheep. In a little village of Judea, near Bethlehem, one called Tekoa,
Amos brooded over the wickedness and injustices of the day. We don't know how such a simple man was able
to know about any of the world beyond his home, but perhaps he made some trips
further north in order to sell wool and at that time had an opportunity to
observe what was going on. However it
happened, he saw it.
He
saw not as the common run of us see. It
was in the solitude of the Judean hills, where he lived, that he contemplated
the invisible world and the happenings and injustices of his own land. The question he must have asked himself as
he observed things in his nation, and as he thought about them, was "What
does God say to all this?"
You
see, it was in that solitude, which he had as a keeper of sheep, and the quiet
it brought with it, that he heard God's voice stirring within him. The solitude and the silence gave him the
opportunity to think, to make connections between things, to question some old
assumptions he had, and to find the courage to do something about them. I
wonder if he would have done anything at all if he had not had those
opportunities to listen to the voice of God within himself.
In
today's First Reading Amos used the image of a plumbline, seeing God standing
beside a wall with a plumbline in his hand.
When God asked Amos what he saw, and Amos answered that it was a
plumbline, God told him that God was setting a plumbline in the midst of
Israel. In other words, God would
demonstrate that Israel was no longer
"straight" in doing God's will.
(I wish a plumbline could be stretched over Israel today.)
You
see, the point of the plumbline is that the God of the Bible is a just God who
measures peoples and nations with moral plumblines, and the consequences
of their actions will itself be the judgment of God. The role of the Old Testament prophet, like Amos, was not to
predict the future, as many think, but it was to interpret the present in the
light of God's will and then to say that there will be a judgment for what has
been done. Most of the time that judgment
lies, not in some extraordinary event, but in the consequences of the decisions
that peoples and nations make. That
is the justice of God.
We
are never comfortable with the justice of God just as Jesus knew that the
people would not like what they heard from his disciples whom he sent out. We are forever having trouble seeing that
justice is not the opposite of God's love,
It is another way of looking at God's love. It is a dimension of God's love.
It is the love of a parent who knows that having expectations for their
children and living with those expectations is better than always saying,
"Oh, it doesn't really matter."
God
demands justice and righteousness in our lives and in the life of our nation
because God knows that that is the only way we will ever be truly happy
in this world -- when it is a just and righteous world.
So
the book of Amos speaks important words to us and to our nation: walk in God's ways of peace and justice and
then the plumbline will hang more straight, and then you will be placing your
feet on the solid foundations that were laid before the world began.
Richard
H. Humke