"The End of a Season"
Amos 8:1-12
The prophet Amos could not have known,
thousands of years ago when he was delivering his prophetic oracles, that they
would someday appear in the lectionary at this particular moment in American
history. Certainly he didn’t speak his
oracles with us in mind. But this
passage from the prophet Amos comes at an especially fraught and difficult time
in our national life, and it provides us with an opportunity to talk about our
life together.
My heart aches each time there’s another
shooting or terrorist attack. In recent
weeks, Philando Castile, a school lunchroom supervisor, was shot in Minnesota
by a police officer, with his fiancé and 4-year-old daughter in the ca, and
Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police officers in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. Then 5 Dallas police officers
were killed and 9 officers and 2 civilians were injured by a military veteran
who was apparently angry about African-Americans being killed by police. Officer Lorne Ahrens… Officer Michael Smith…
Officer Michael Krol… Officer Patrick Zamarripa… and Dallas Transit Police
Officer Brent Thompson were the officers who lost their lives. All of those killed were precious lives.
We were still reeling from these deaths when
in Nice, France, a terrorist used a 19-ton truck to massacre 84 people and
injured more than 200 by driving through the crowds gathered to watch fireworks
on Bastille Day.
The Republican National Convention is
scheduled to begin tomorrow, and the Democratic National Convention will be
held next week.
This is an intense and troubling time in our
nation. So it seems like a good time to take stock of our nation and our society,
and to ponder what God might have Amos or some other prophet say to us today.
Amos was an “outside agitator” from Judah—a
southerner who was called to speak to a northern audience in a time of national
security and material affluence. The
wealth was enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many. His words may be as difficult for us to bear
as they were for Israel and its political ruler and those who were wealthy and
privileged.
In last week’s Hebrew scripture lesson, Amaziah,
the priest of Bethel, went to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired
against you in the very center of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his
words. For this Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam
shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’”
Then Amaziah told Amos to get out of Israel
and go back to Judah. “Earn your bread there, and prophesy there. But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is
the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”
Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet,
nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and
the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go,
prophesy to my people Israel.’”[1]
When I was in seminary, one of my assigned
papers in an Old Testament class was about distinguishing true prophets from
false prophets. What I discovered was
that there were those who claimed to be prophets, who would tell the king what
he wanted to hear. As Jeremiah said,
“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no
peace.’”[2]
Ezekiel criticized the false prophets: “Because,
indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace—and
one builds a wall, and they plaster it with untempered mortar…” Ezekiel
brought a word from the Lord about “the prophets of Israel who
prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace….’”[3]
One of the events I attended at the
Wild Goose Festival last week was a Town Hall on Racial Justice, with Jim
Wallis and other panelists. Near the
end, there was a time for questions and response, and someone asked, “When I go
home, how can I talk to my congregation about racial justice without upsetting somebody?” Can you guess what the response was? “You can’t.”
For a lot of people, it isn’t easy to hear or think about it. But it’s necessary and important.
Whether people in Israel heard Amos’
message as good news or bad news would have depended on where they found
themselves in the story. If they were
comfortable with the status quo, they probably heard it as bad news. But if they were poor or marginalized or
oppressed, they would have been glad to hear that there were consequences for
those who act unjustly and that God would be bringing an end to this
wickedness.
This week’s Hebrew scripture lesson
began with a vision that the prophet received:
This
is what the Lord GOD showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit. “Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon
my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple
shall become wailings in that day,” says the Lord GOD; “the dead bodies shall
be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!”
In my study this week, I was
reminded that puns are common in biblical prophetic literature. When you get the pun in this passage, it’s
jarring. The Hebrew word used for
“summer fruit”—qayits-- sounds
similar to qets-- the word for “end”.
Some of the translations try to re-create the word play in English,
saying something like “The time is ripe for my people Israel.”[4]
Phillando Castile, Alton Sterling,
police officers in Dallas, mass shootings in schools and night clubs and malls,
the state sanctioned executions of those on death row, kids who are hungry in
our own extended neighborhoods—everywhere we look, we find suffering, injustice and death. There are cycles of violence and retribution,
oppression and marginalization that play out over and over again.
These things are painful to see and
hear. People who are privileged may get
through life without seeing or hearing some of them at all. But God calls us to be quiet and listen, and
to see things through God’s eyes, to see the pain of God’s beloved children.
Now that nearly everybody has a
video camera in their phone, violence and injustice is being documented and
shared over the internet. So, unless we refuse to see it and hear it, we are
more aware of it.
I
think—I hope and pray—that we have finally reached a tipping point, that we are
heartbroken enough now that we are
ready to recognize the end of a season in the life of our society and that we
are ready to do the hard work of listening and learning, and to commit
ourselves to God’s way of justice for all
God’s people.
I think the time is ripe.
We can do better in our society, in this new time. We can be
better—with God’s help.
At
the Wild Goose Festival, Jim Wallis reminded us that 75 percent of white
Americans have entirely white social networks.
The lack of direct, regular, and personal connection makes it very
difficult to get beyond the racial biases and stereotypes that are still so
strong in white American society. [5]
Fifty
years after the great victories of the civil rights movement, and Dr. King’s
reminder that Sunday morning at eleven o’clock was the nation’s most segregated
hour, most Americans still live most of their lives segregated from other
races. In many parts of our nation, we
live in different neighborhoods, and most of us are not together in our schools
and churches. So most people don’t have
opportunities to talk more deeply together and develop the empathy and
meaningful relationships that bring understanding, friendships, common
citizenship, and even spiritual fellowship—unless you work at it intentionally.
When
you’re not with other people, you
simply don’t know what their lives are like, what they’re most concerned about,
what their core values or top priorities are, what they’ve been going through,
and what they desire for their children.
You learn about other people when they’re your neighbors, or parents of
your children’s classmates or teammates, or members of your religious
congregation….[6]
You
learn a lot about people if you did, as a pastor in Atlanta started to do a few
days ago, on his daily commute on public transit, where he is surrounded by
persons of color. He usually focuses on
reading on the train, which isolates him.
But after all the shootings recently, he decided to push past his
comfort zone and engage with people.
In his blog, Presbyterian pastor Greg Allen-Pickett wrote: “Last week, our country convulsed from the
untimely deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both precious children
of God. I have been wracked with many emotions. But as I made my morning
commute, I realized that what I am feeling must pale in comparison to what my
black sisters and brothers are feeling. So for the past week, I wore my
clerical collar on my train ride and I asked my fellow riders how they were
feeling; this is what I learned….”[7]
I hope you’ll read his post.
In summary, he heard people of color saying that they’re sad, they’re scared,
they’re fearful, and they’re angry. He was surprised to hear that they’re
hopeful. The people on the train expressed hope that things will get
better. They expressed “hope that God is
present, even the midst of all of this injustice, and that God is actively at
work, redeeming and reconciling.”
So what did he learn from this experience? He says most days when he gets on the train,
he keeps his head down, and he usually reads a book. But with his nose in a book, he wasn’t
connecting with the people around him.
He learned that to be an ally, he needs to close his mouth and listen—really
listen—and pay attention to the world around him. He learned that it isn’t about him, that he
can strive to live with empathy and compassion, and to be humble about his
inability to fully understand the experience of being black in this
country. He learned that he needs to
push out of his comfort zone, to make eye contact and interact with people who
are different, to ask authentic questions and be prepared for authentic answers—answers
that may challenge him and make him uncomfortable.
As he writes, it is in that discomfort that
we begin to grow. And this Presbyterian
pastor learned from this experience about the power of prayer. He learned how
to pray from his sisters and brothers on the train that he prayed with. He learned that “even in the midst of
profound darkness, there can be hope and light.”
I
think we need to hear peoples’ stories and acknowledge their pain and
fears. So I’m grateful for the courage
of a number of people—mothers of black children, elected officials, and
others—who have shared some of their experiences and posted them online, and
I’ve been sharing some of them on Facebook, for those who “have ears to hear.”
When you trample those on the margins, Amos tells us, things
will not go well for you. The end of injustice is coming, whether or not you
have eyes to see.
The good news is that God loves every one of us and wants us all
to live in beloved community together.
God wants all God’s children to
enjoy freedom and justice and joy.
Do we believe this? Can
we trust that God loves us and all God’s children, and that God has a plan for
us that is good for all of us? Is anything too wonderful for God?
The time is ripe. It’s up
to us. How will we respond?
Will we join God in heralding the arrival of justice for all? Or will we stand in the way?
I pray that we will all respond faithfully.
May it be so. Amen.
[2]
Jeremiah 6:14
[3] Ezekiel 13:10, 16.
[6] Jim
Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism,
White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America. Brazos Press, 2016.
[7] Greg Allen-Pickett, at https://pres-outlook.org/2016/07/reflections-train-racism-ally/
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