Amos

Scriptural Sermons

Old Testament: Amos

Take Responsibility

By Rebecca Clancy • May 16, 2022
“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Paul’s right about one thing. God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. Put another way, there’s no such thing as the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world is then an oxymoron. How about the wisdom of the world that youth and beauty are to be prized and pursued at all costs? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him?” Or how about the wisdom of the world that wealth proclaims status and worth? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in a stable and was buried in a borrowed tomb? Or how about the wisdom of the world to look out for number one? Really? Then why is it that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “gave himself up for us as….a sacrifice to God.” The lesson here, obviously, is that we should not accept the wisdom of the world as the gospel truth. Just the opposite, we should be suspicious of it. We should question it, assess it, judge it, and, by and large, reject it. Nowhere is this more true than with regard to the wisdom of the world that responsibility is a bad thing. “Responsibility? The less of it the better!” This is what the wisdom of the world would have us believe -- that responsibility is for chumps and drudges, and the cleverest among us have escaped it. They are sipping margaritas from dawn till dusk on a tropical beach without a care in the world. God has definitely made foolish this wisdom of the world...at least according to the Word of God. There are certain things that the Bible consistently condemns. One is hypocrisy. Another is hardness of heart. And another is complacency -- complacency -- being excessively at ease. If you think about it, complacency is the opposite of responsibility. Consider this morning’s Old Testament lesson. The prophet Amos was addressing himself to a society just like ours -- a prosperous society that was afflicted by social injustice. In Amos’ day, as in ours, there were the haves, and there were the have nots. The have nots were defenseless, resourceless, and vulnerable, so they fell prey to social injustice. For example, in Amos’s day there was an institution called debtor prison. If the have nots found themselves in debt, which was often, their debtors could march them to debtor prison. The jailer would pay off their debt, and the have nots would then work off their debt to the jailer in debtor prison. Naturally such an institution was in no way regulated, so abuse was prevalent and egregious. For the smallest of debts, the present day equivalent of a few dollars, the have nots would remain in prison for years, in conditions you don’t want to hear about; but you could say that debtor prison made Alcatraz look like the Four Seasons. Often whole families were incarcerated. If this isn’t social injustice, then I don’t know what is. And what was the response of the haves? They had no response. They passed the debtor prison day by day on the way to shops or social events. So they knew it was there. Still, they had no response. This is because they were complacent. In Amos’ words, “they lounged on beds of ivory, sang idle songs on their harps, anointed themselves with the finest oils, and drank wine from bowls.” They took no responsibility for debtor prison or anything else for that matter. Amos blasted them for it as only Amos could. No, the Bible doesn’t think much of complacency. It thinks much of responsibility. It’s heroes evince as much. God called to Abraham and told him to leave his country and his kindred and his father’s house and venture to a new land. What if Abraham had said no; said that he was at ease in his country and kindred and father’s house? But instead, Abraham took responsibility. He ventured to a new land. God called to Moses and told him to leave off his life in Midian and return to Egypt to rescue his fellow Israelites from slavery. What if Moses said no, that he was at ease in his life in Midian? But instead, Moses took responsibility. He returned to Egypt and rescued his fellow Israelites from slavery. God called to David and told him to leave behind his flocks and to forge the nation of Israel. What if David said no, that he was at ease following his flocks? But instead, David took responsibility. He forged the nation of Israel, forged its capitol Jerusalem to boot. Where would we be if the Bible’s heroes evinced complacency instead of responsibility? I am not sure, but it would not be a good place. I don’t even want to think about it. We could even remove these considerations from the Bible entirely. Where would be if surgeons did not take the responsibility to acquire and execute highly sophisticated skills in order to save lives? Where would we be if the military and police did not take the responsibility to keep us safe? Where would we be if explorers of all kinds did not take the responsibility to broaden our horizons? Again, I am not sure, but it would not be a good place. I don’t even want to think about it. What good there is in our society has been through people who have taken responsibility. And beyond that, responsibility is good too for the individuals who take it. This is because it is through responsibility that individuals find the meaning they do in life. This is as true as a mathematical equation. Say you take the responsibility to care for an elderly parent. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Say you take the responsibility to rescue or advocate for animals. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Say you take the responsibility to agitate for social improvement and progress. The meaning you find in life will correlate to that. Responsibility and meaning. The two go hand and hand. And another thing is true. The more responsibility you take, the more meaning you will find. That too is simple math. But returning to the Bible, one more thing is true. If you take divine responsibility, you will find divine meaning. That brings us to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He assumed the most divine responsibility and found the most divine meaning, for he assumed divine responsibility for human sin and found divine meaning in human redemption. With him as our guide let us forswear the wisdom of the world, and embrace responsibility. Amen.

Billy

By Rebecca Clancy • April 21, 2021
Amos 6:4-7 I Corinthians 13 Matthew 5:42-48

Pride - Matthew Shepherd

By Rebecca Clancy • June 12, 2020
There are many proverbs that can be considered to capture, in one way or another, the spirit of the Bible: There but by the grace of God go I. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Count your blessings. All you need is love. Every cloud has a silver lining. Forgive and forget. Patience is a virtue. But there's one proverb that can, in no way, be considered to capture the spirit of the Bible. It is: Live and let live. That proverb, in fact, flies in the teeth of the spirit of the Bible. Live and let live should never be found in the mouth of any Christian. Harsh words...you may be thinking. What could possibly be so wrong with a proverb that would seem to extol personal freedom and individual rights? One indicator that the proverb may not be all it is cracked up to be is that was found in the mouths of the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming in the wake the murder of Matthew Shepherd. Some of you are no doubt familiar with Matthew Shepherd. The movie called The Laramie Project was made about him. Matthew Shepherd was a freshman at University of Wyoming in Laramie. He was a distinctive young man in some respects. He was born premature and so was tiny and delicate in stature. But his diminutive size was coupled with a robust and scintillating personality. In an ironic way, he was larger than life. Matthew Shepherd was murdered for being gay. There is no nice or pleasant way to be murdered, but Matthew's murder was particularly heinous. He was kidnapped, robbed, then tied to a fence post in an open field. He was then brutally beaten, tortured, terrorized, and left for dead. He was discovered the following day, still tied to the fence post clinging to life. His face was covered with blood and dirt except for where it had been cleansed by two tear tracks. He survived in a coma for a few days, then died. The movie sought to understand what had happened, what sort of culture could have produced such a monstrous crime. Indeed, as the movie began, the citizens of Laramie voiced disquiet that their culture indeed had produced such a monstrous crime -- that Matthew's two murderers were from among their ranks. Somehow, they concurred, it would been easier to take if the murderers had been outsiders. But one of them? One of their own? As the citizens of Laramie were interviewed, it soon became crystal clear how the murderers were from among their ranks. This was a typical response. I quote (and please excuse my language). “I don’t give a damn one way or another (if someone is a homosexual) so long as they don’t bother me. That’s the attitude of most of the people of Laramie. Laramie is live and let live.” There's that proverb. Live and let live. I heard an interesting lecture at Elmhurst College a while back. It was about bullying. I thought I knew all about bullying, because I really hate bullying and seek to know it so I can combat it, but this offered a new take on it, for me at least. The lecturer contended that bullies have an uncanny knack of targeting victims they know that no one will defend. So if you think about it, then, bullies are merely mirroring back to us our own prejudices. In a way, they are merely our henchmen. In the case of Laramie, the citizens in their interviews made it clear that they didn't much care for homosexuals. This created a culture of homophobia. The bullies, or in this case the murderers, exercised their uncanny knack of targeting a victim they knew no one would defend. And yet, in a consummate act of cognitive dissonance, at the same time, they kept asserting the validity of live and let live. Matthew Shepherd did not stand a chance under live and let live -- not given the reality of life. That's the thing about live and let live. It doesn't begin to grasp the reality of life. Live and let live presumes that there's no one out to get anyone else. Live and let live presumes we all start out on a level playing field, and on that level playing field, I will do my thing, and you can do yours. I will bloom in my way, and you can bloom in yours. Live and let live presumes that everyone is safe to pursue personal freedom and individual rights. But that is not, as I said, not the reality of life. There is hatred out there, and fear and violence and aggression, and it is very often directed against those no one will defend - people who are homosexuals, or of dark races, or of strange religions, or from foreign countries, or who have diseases, or who are poor. Can we really say to these people I’ll live my life and you live yours? Can we really say to these people live and let live? Well they can't live, any more than Matthew Shepherd could live. They need our help. They need our support. They need our protection. They need our resources. They need our advocacy. They need our intervention. They need our prayers. This is why live and let live flies in the teeth of the spirit of the Bible. The Bible declares that other people, and especially those I've just delineated, are our responsibility. This was precisely what the biblical prophets were burdened to declare to the people of Israel. Take the prophet Amos, for instance, from this morning's Old Testament lesson. Amos addressed himself to the cows of Bashan, his unflattering epithet for the wealthy matrons of society. They lived on top of Mount Samaria - roughly the equivalent of Beverly Hills. They cows of Bashan would have been all for live and let live. Because they were women of great privilege, live and let live to them meant living lives of impervious and complacent self-indulgence. Who were they really hurting, besides perhaps their husbands, at whom they carped, "Bring that I may drink?" Amos happened to think that they were hurting someone. He thought that by their indolence, their indifference, their self-vaunting, they were hurting those who lived at the foot of Mount Samaria. At the foot of the mountain lived the poor. Amos' were times economic disparity, like our own times, but worse, much worse. Amos lived in a time when at the top of Mount Samaria the cows of Bashan lounged on furniture made of ivory. Yes, ivory. We all know where ivory comes from. It comes from Elephant tusks. Elephants weren't native to the region. Their tusks had to be imported from Africa. The expense must have been astronomical. Nonetheless, it was the current badge of affluence so the cows of Bashan had to have it. At the foot of Mount Samaria were debtor prisons. It was, and is, very easy for the poor to find themselves deeply in debt. They simply cannot pay what the system costs, or you could even say what the system extracts. You can't get blood from a turnip, as another proverb advances. And so the system punished them for their non-payment with interest, fines, etc. Deeper and deeper grew the hole they were in. This may sound familiar. And so they were sold into debtor prison. The jailer paid off their debts, in exchange for which he exploited them through lengthy terms of hard labor. Families were separated or worse, children indentured as well. Live and let live? But how could they live? This is what enraged Amos into epithet. The poor, Amos declared, were the responsibility of the cows of Bashan. And so Amos declared God judgment upon them. The prophets of Israel did not agree on everything, but they did agree on this. If we bid others, live and let live, it is our responsibility strive for their life. This is the reality of existence. If the citizens of Laramie had, Matthew Shepherd would still be alive today. Jesus in our gospel lesson asked a simple question, "What more are you doing than others?" What he meant was, what more are you doing than those who would say live and let live? He expects us as his followers to do more. To take risks. To take initiative. To act. To make sacrifices. To make the most revolutionary and dangerous witness that can be made - the witness of love in the face of hatred. Christians do not leave others to their own devises. Any more than Jesus left us to ours. Amen.

The Company He Keeps

February 4, 2020
One of the last conversations I ever had with my father happened to be about parenting. We were arguing whether there was any rhyme or reason to it. My father, who the older he got grew more and more laisser faire, was arguing against rhyme or reason. "But surely parenting is not just a crap shoot?" I protested, fearful that all my parental ministrations over the last thirty-five years had been for naught. My father stubbornly maintained his position. "But look at the massive influence you had upon my formation," I persisted. "Ah, but look at the utter lack of influence my mother had upon mine," he countered. He had me there. My father and his mother were the original odd couple. And so we digressed, as people do before a mystery that has never been solved, and revisited their relationship. My father was an only child, born of parents well into their forties. His mother wore the pants in the family. After my father arrived, all of her time and energy and ambition were focused upon him. She had such high hopes for him. She wanted him to be successful; that is, successful as she defined success – She wanted him to be a man of prominence and respectability – complete with a lovely wife, a stately home, a prestigious career, and upward social connections -- a combination, perhaps, of Cary Grant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Henry Ford. But my father was not the stuff of her hopes, so very early in his life, the battle lines were drawn. The battle was not violent or vicious. It was more of a standoff. My father had his own center, as some people strangely do, and sensed that her regime was one to be lived out. And so throughout his youth, she proposed, and in one way or another, he disposed. He remained true to his center, despite all the forces she could marshal. My father did grow to be a successful man. He was a pastor, a professor, a theologian, and an author. But it was not as his mother defined success. He was, in fact, a disappointment to her. Every time she would see him approaching in his corduroy and tweed, his hair after the fashion of Albert Einstein’s, a look of long suffering would come into her eyes. Even after my father was well into his fifties, when there was no hope for her hopes, she never relinquished the battle. By this time, however, there was little in her arsenal except various adages that offered the proof of her position. "Oh Ron," she’d say, every time she cast her eyes downward, and they lit upon his desert boots, "Don’t you know you can judge a man by the shine on his shoes?" Or when one of her neighbors approached, "Remember, Ron, that a firm handshake makes a firm impression." Or as he pulled up in his beat-up Volkswagen Wagon, "How many times have I told you Ron, that nothing succeeds like the appearance of success." My father and I in that conversation didn’t solve the mystery as to how he grew to be the man he was free of parental influence, but I did come to understand why he believed there was no rhyme or reason to parenting. As we were ending the conversation he said, "You know, there was one adage of hers I actually took to heart." "Oh, yeah?" I said, "Which one?" "You can judge a man by the company he keeps." I just laughed. I thought he was being ironic or sarcastic or some such. He knew I had missed his meaning, but my father had a funny way of allowing himself to be misunderstood. He had a funny way of trusting that his words would some day come to be apprehended. I guess it’s not so funny really. And Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed.” Somehow, for my dad, allowing himself to be misunderstood was an act of faith – faith, I guess, that the truth will eventually out. And it worked, because just last week I was passing the place where his house once stood, and it summoned memories of the company he kept. First there were the animals. He was an animal rescuer and took on the tough cases. He favored big dogs, better to say enormous dogs, since they were hard to place. Dugan, for instance, his otter hound weighed nearly 200 pounds, and most of that was fur and slobber. And then there were my foster brothers and sisters of all colors, shapes, and sizes. He was always giving the older ones advice and direction for when the system cut them loose. And then there were the war protesters. I grew up during the Vietnam era. My father had been a conscientious objector during the Korean War and was concerned that their protest take legitimate forms. He made one exception in the case of a young man on a hunger strike who took up residence in the basement. My sister and I thought he was a living skeleton. And then there were his students. The house was always full of them, and my father’s conversations with them always seemed urgently important. And then there was his mother. After his father died, he took her in, and she lived with us until she died. You can judge a man by the company he keeps. I realized as I reminisced that my father wasn’t being ironic or sarcastic. He really took that adage to heart. He thought you could judge a man by the company he kept. He wanted to be judged by the company he kept. And this, it would appear, is because Jesus did. Think of the company that Jesus kept. First there were his disciples, his closest company. And who were they? Peter and Andrew, James and John were fishermen -- Am ha’aretz, men of the earth – peasant stock, uneducated, ordinary, rough around the edges…. nothing in particular to recommend them. Then there was Levi, a despised tax collector for the Roman Empire. And Judas, a frustrated revolutionary. And Thomas, a skeptic. A rag tag group if you ask me – his closest company. And we hear in our Gospel Lesson about the first man with whom he kept company after he called his disciples. It was a leper, a carrier of a disease that was infectious and disfiguring, a disease without a cure. This of course, made him an outcast, just as similar diseases do today. But not to Jesus. Jesus cured him, and then to vouchsafe that he would be an outcast no more, recommended him to the established methods by which he could return to his community. After that it was a man who was paralyzed, another whose condition rendered him an outcast, for not only was he handicapped, it was deemed in those days that his sin made him so. Again, that he might be returned to his community, Jesus cured him with a word of forgiveness. After that it was a Roman Centurion. The Jews were at that time occupied by the Romans. A Roman Centurion should have been counted his political enemy. After that it was widow who had lost her only son; after that a woman who had earned herself a notorious reputation; after that Mary Magdalene, who was demon possessed; after that a beggar; and after that a group of little children. Yes, Jesus kept strange company, noticeably strange company, the kind of company that would make you take notice, that would make you rubber neck, even. So I think it’s safe to conclude Jesus wanted to be judged by the company he kept. And so, if he wanted to be judged by the company he kept, what judgment can we make of him for the company he kept? We can make the judgment that everyone mattered to him. Everyone - though he had a special place in his heart for those in need, and the greater the need the more special the place. And if Jesus wanted to be judged by the company he kept, we should seek to be judged by the company we keep as well. It begs the question, what company do we keep? Does the company we keep reflect that everyone matters to us? For there is always the risk that it’s more like what is recorded in our Old Testament lesson. In it, Amos takes after the notables…ones…to whom the house of Israel resorts. The notable ones were the upper crust, the elite, the prestigious - to whom the people of faith pandered to keep company. And what did Amos have to say to them? That the people of faith, for their arrogance of class and race and nation, would come to punishment. How surprised Amos would have been to discover that in the fullness of time Jesus bore that punishment himself, in the hope that he could soften arrogance of the people of faith; in the hope that he could make everyone would matter to us – that God’s people could be one. Amen.
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