"Out of the Ordinary: A Flood is Coming"
Rev. Paul Mitchell
Vashon United Methodist Church
Vashon United Methodist Church
July 14, 2019
Amos 5:14-27; Luke 12:35-48
Friday evening from 8:30-9:30,
several of us from this congregation joined about one hundred forty others at
the corner of Bank and Vashon Highway to bear quiet, glowing witness to the atrocities
being committed in our name by our Customs and Border Enforcement. The
gathering began with some good old-fashioned protest singing, but then quieted
as we held up lights for liberty – to say with Amos, “People should not be
treated as things.” The most chilling thing I witnessed was a metal dog cage containing
a cloth doll of a child in traditional Central American clothing. Thousands of God’s
children are caged for profit.
How can we gather as followers of
Jesus and not consider the plight of children held in concentration camps by
our government? For that matter, how can we dismiss that it is happening in our
name? In an interview with The Atlantic late last month, Dr. Elora Mukherjee, a
professor at Columbia Law School and the director of the school’s Immigrants’
Rights Clinic, said, “I have been representing and interviewing immigrant
children and their families in detention…. Last week I was in Clint, and the
conditions we found were appalling. In 12 years representing immigrant children
in detention, I have never seen such degradation and inhumanity. Children were
dirty, they were scared, and they were hungry.
“An overwhelming number of
children who I interviewed had not had an opportunity for a … shower or bath
since crossing the border [days or weeks earlier]. They were wearing the same
clothing that they had crossed the border in. Their clothing was covered in
bodily fluids, including urine and breast milk for the teenage moms who are
breastfeeding.
“Nearly every child I spoke with
said that they were hungry because they’re being given insufficient food. The
food at Clint is rationed on trays. Everyone gets an identical tray regardless
of if you’re a 1-year-old, or you’re a 17-year-old, or a breastfeeding teenage
mother who has higher caloric needs. The same food is served every single day,
and none of the children receive any fruit and vegetables or any milk.”[i]
On Friday, after visiting the
detention facility at McAllen, Vice President Pence said, “To be honest with
you, I was not surprised by what we saw….”[ii]
In other words, he had foreknowledge and was expecting to see, “a swelteringly
hot room called a sally port with hundreds of men, a strong smell of sweat and
overcrowding so extreme there was no room for cots, the migrants left to sleep
[without pillows] on concrete beneath mylar blankets.”[iii]
He knew that’s what he would see. We knew that’s what he would see, and smell, and
hear. How well has he slept since Friday? How well have we slept? What do you
suppose his pastor had to say this morning in worship? Most Evangelical pastors
don’t follow the lectionary schedule of readings, but if the worship Pence
attended this morning did follow it, he would have heard from the prophet Amos
as well.
Last week I shared that, like
Amos, though the message is not breezy, light, and summery, I feel compelled to
speak it. Amos’ words for those who see themselves as righteous followers of the
way, the truth, and the life, as they knew it, are pertinent to us as well.
It’s relevant to us, and good and healthy for us, within the context of our
faith, to be held accountable and reminded that it is not a forgone conclusion
that we are favored by God simply because we were born into or continue to
identify with this particular legacy of Jesus, who we claim incarnates God’s
unconditional love and expectation of justice.
Commentator J. A. Motyer articulates
the relevance to us today of Amos’ message this way:
“Affluence, exploitation, and the
profit motive were the most notable features of the society in which Amos
observed and in which he worked. The rich were affluent enough to have [more
than one home] apiece, to go in for rather ostentatiously expensive furniture,
and not to deny themselves any bodily satisfaction. On the other hand, the poor
were really poor and were shamelessly exploited: they suffered from property
rackets, legal rackets, and business rackets, and the defenceless … with no
influence came off worse every time. When the poor could not contribute to the rich,
they were simply ignored and left to be broken. Money-making and personal
covetousness ruled all: [they] lived for their offices, [they] lived for
excitement, [their] rulers lived for frivolity.”[iv]
Remember that in the ancient
Mediterranean, the nation, it’s cult, and the state were more connected,
somewhat like the separate branches of our federal government. Motyer
continues: “When Amos turned his gaze upon the [cult] he found a religion which
was very religious, which adored what was traditional, but which had shaken
free from divine revelation. The religious centres were apparently thronged,
sacrifices were punctiliously offered, the musical side of worship was keenly
studied. But it had no basis outside the “mind” of [the people]. …under the
analytical gaze of Amos, [the shrines of the northern kingdom] were but
exercises in self-pleasing, abhorrent to God. Amaziah, [their chief priest,
about whom we will hear more in a few weeks,] offers a case history of the best
sort of worshipper, … establishment -minded, careful for the ecclesiastical
proprieties, but supremely disinterested in any word from God.”[v]
I often ask myself, am I like Amaziah, only interested in the performative
aspect of worship? Or am I truly motivated by the binding of my heart to God’s
desire for the thriving, beloved community of creation?
Amos preached to the northern
kingdom some thirty years before it was overthrown and scattered by the Assyrians
in 732 BCE. Was he prescient? Or was he one of many prophetic voices that survived
the test of time and circumstance. Motyer’s commentary on Amos was first
published forty-five years ago, and yet his defense of the relevance of Amos
also seems to have only grown more relevant. He continues:
“Authority and the rule of law
were despised, and national leadership, while reveling in the publicity and
dignity of position and quick to score debating points, was not facing the real
issues, but seemed even to be contributing to the complete breakdown of law and
order by allowing personal likes and dislikes to take primacy over caring for
the nation. Public standards of morality were at a low ebb: Amos could speak of
sexual indulgence, transgressions and sins, and [callous commercial] practice
as matters on which he could not be proved wrong.
“These things provided him with
grounds for speaking …, and they also provide us for grounds that he will have
something to say to us today. These are the things which mark our society
also…. None of them is true about everybody; each of them is true about
somebody. Amos might well have been walking through any of our great cities.”[vi]
Considering the accuracy, potency,
and relevance to us of Amos’ preaching, it’s important to take a breath and consider
his tone. It’s easy to hear only an angry voice. But I’d like us to consider a
tender voice – a voice of sorrow and concern – a voice that conveys confidence
that some incisive judgement might lead to our recovery, our healing, our
salvation. “Seek good and not evil, so that you may live.” Again, and again,
Amos cries out in compassion. “Seek good and not evil, so that you may live.”
Amos is concerned both with the natural consequences of evil actions and
systems, and the fear that God cannot continue to champion justice through a
people who do not embrace it. God is not interested in demonstrations of formal
piety and has instructed the people of this – through flood and rainbow,
through captivity and liberation, through privation and providence. Again and
again, God has said to us, “I love you, but you know to be better than what you
choose. You know what I choose – I have chosen it from the beginning. I choose
life! So, … choose life! You are made in my image. Live like it. Seek good and
not evil so that you may live, and so that Y H W H may truly be with you as you
have been claiming.”
But our proclivity to fall back
into formalities instead of substance also seems to be deeply rooted in the
human condition. And so we find Jesus, who said “I have come not to abolish the
law and the prophets, but to fulfill them…,” yet again warning the disciples,
who have left everything to follow him, to be ready. And Jesus, like Amos, has
been clear about what it means to be ready. It’s not about what we do when we
are presenting ourselves properly before God at our designated times of worship,
but about how we comport ourselves around the clock, when we think we are
outside God’s scrutiny. By the time Peter askes Jesus, “Teacher, do you intend
this parable just for us, or do you mean it for everyone?” Jesus has already declared
his mission to bring good news to those who do not enjoy mansions and servants
and good health and plenty of clean water and state-of-the-art healthcare – but
to those who have been cast aside. Jesus has already taught that the greatest
commandment is to love God and neighbor – the neighbor being defined as the one
who seems to be different and outside the sanctioned practices of faith. Jesus
has already taught the disciples to pray for enough simply for the day and to
extend dignity and welcome to all, just as God has extended dignity and welcome
to them.
Beloved, we do not know when the
owner will return. I, for one, believe that the owner has never left, but is at
hand, trusting us to call on our better natures to bring these things: forgiveness,
generosity, hospitality, inclusion, and justice into the world daily. To live
according to the ethic: “That which I enjoy, I must seek for the other to enjoy.”
This is the true worship God desires – to let justice flow like a river, and
righteousness like an unfailing stream. If we do not impede that flow, we will
not be swept away in the flood that is coming. So may our feasts and solemn
assemblies and offerings and oblations and sacrifices become pleasing to God,
because they prompt and prepare us to do justice, love kindness, and walk
humbly with God.
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