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A Sermon on Justice: God Mend Thine Every Flaw

A SERMON ABOUT JUSTICE: GOD MEND THINE EVERY FLAW

TEXT: AMOS 5: 15-15 and 21-24

INTRODUCTION TO SCRIPTURE
A couple of weeks ago, we had our Church Council retreat. As a way of introduction, each Council member was asked to bring a favorite Bible passage or story and tell why they were drawn to it. I picked this one because I frequently need this reminder of what a religious community is all about.
I confess, I'm a pastor who's obsessed with the minutiae of church life. This week I'll be on the phone to the cleaning service about the spots on the rug, I spent many thoughtful moments this summer figuring out which drawers should hold the silverware and cooking utensils in the new kitchen. I fret when publicity doesn't get out on time for a coming event. I'm joined in my obsessions by the Finance and Administration Committee in their worries about heating ducts and leaky toilets and the Worship Committee who attends to all the details of getting ready for worship on a Sunday morning. Sound system on-check; ushers on board-check; baptismal font set up-check. I'm not minimizing any of this. Making a church run smoothly requires many, many people focusing on lots of particular tasks.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE BIBLE PASSAGES
But this passage is an especially good reminder to us. Because when we think that this is what it's all about, that these details are the end, not the means, Amos steps in to remind us of why we're doing it in the first place.

Amos was a prophet at the height of Israel's power and influence. The nation was at peace, the religious leaders were favored by the king and were part of the power structure. Israel's leaders were prosperous, but this prosperity came at a price. There was a downtrodden underclass-the poor were over-taxed, their land was seized by powerful cartels, widows were begging in the streets. The nation of Israel had been chosen by God to be a model government, one that took care of all of its citizens. They were to take seriously their responsibility for the poor, the sick, the widows and the orphans. But they were failing that high calling. Instead of attending to basic human needs, they substituted scrupulous religiosity. They thought their painstaking attention to all the rituals would win God's favor. But they were mistaken and Amos doesn't waste any words telling them so. He speaks as an oracle of God.

FROM AMOS 5
Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, ...
Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ..... Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals, I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

OR AS AMOS MIGHT SAY TODAY ...
I hate your Christmas pageants and your Hallelujah Choruses on Easter. I take no delight in your annual meetings or the pages of reports that spew forth from them. Even though you load up those offering plates with hundred-dollar bills and do a capital campaign for a bigger, grander pipe organ, I will not even listen to the music. Take away that New Century Hymnal. I have no use for it. And I don't want to hear hymns from the Pilgrim Hymnal either. None of this will please me unless you are doing the one thing I require.
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!

IMAGE OF GOD AS JUSTICE-SEEKER
In two weeks, we are going to host the first in a series of very informative panel discussions. Members of different faith communities are going to get together to talk about what their religious practice means to them and how it affects their lives. I think it will be a very positive step in inter-faith understanding. The October 14th panel discussion will be held here; the topic is "What is your image of the divine?" If I were a panelist instead of the moderator, this would be one of the aspects of God I would hold up: the God that doesn't care what kind of house we build to worship in, or whether we call him God, Dios, or Allah, he or she; the God who isn't fussy about whether we baptize by sprinkling or immersion. No, the God of Amos cares only about whether we love our neighbors and care for them.

IMAGE OF CHURCH AS HYPOCRITICAL AND JUDGMENTAL
This week someone sent me an article from Christianity Today, the premier journal of Evangelical Christians. It can be summarized this way: Christianity is regarded with hostility by an overwhelming majority of non-Christian young people 16 to 29 years old. Only 16% said they had a good impression of our faith.
Many seek religious affiliation with other faiths because they regard Christians as excessively judgmental, hypocritical, old fashioned, too involved with politics, and hostile to gays and lesbians, many of whom are their friends.

If we were being the church Jesus and Amos calls us to be-concentrating on homelessness, poverty, hunger, and prison reform not on whether gay people can marry each other-I don't think this would be the dominant impression people have of us and we might be in less danger of becoming irrelevant. As Martin Luther King Jr. puts it,
Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of people and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that can scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. (The Dream of a Common Language.)

JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS SERVED UP LAVISHLY
I've preached on this passage before. But because I chose it this time to go with water Sunday, I'm seeing something I never noticed before. And that is how Amos uses the images of water. It's so lavish-justice is like rolling waters and righteousness like ever-flowing streams. There's nothing about this kind of justice that is wrung out of the legal system, teardrop by teardrop, token by token. There is nothing here about filling out 10 pages of inscrutable forms to obtain food stamps. Imagine a community that was so embracing toward its poor, pouring out just treatment. Amos imagines just such a realm.

PILGRIM'S ATTEMPT AT RIGHTEOUSNESS FLOWING LIKE A STREAM
A WELL IN HONDURAS
In a month, we will be dedicating the newly renovated space downstairs. We are grateful that we can better serve our children in the Sunday school and nursery school and that we have more gracious space for fellowship and mission events. When we launched the capital campaign to fix up our building, perhaps we were a bit nudged by Amos's warning that a fancy building is not God's primary interest.

Ten percent of the money we raised is designated for mission projects beyond these walls. I'm pleased that one of the projects the Mission Committee is exploring is providing clean water for the village of Flores, Honduras. Almost the entire town suffers because of parasites in the water, dozens die each year because of waterborne diseases. If we succeed in this project, righteousness will pour forth like everflowing streams.

BUT JUSTICE IN HONDURAS IS YET TO COME
But justice will not roll down. There will be no justice as long as that village has to depend on the charity of a gringo church in Mass. for health care and clean water. There be no justice in Honduras as long as the people are vicitmized by a corrupt government and wealth is in the hands of a very few. Justice in Honduras is a long time coming.

A PATRIOTIC HYMN WITH A DREAM OF JUSTICE: O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES We cannot escape it. The words of the Old Testament prophets and the teachings of the prophet, Jesus, have social implications. I am very fond of the way Katherine Lee Bates puts that together in the hymn we're going to sing at the end of the service. This is a patriotic hymn that I can sing with conviction. "Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies" talks about a nation "under God" in the sense that Amos would have it. It is not nationalistic and puffed up. It does not celebrate America's might in battle but its impulse toward goodness. Bates imagines a nation humble enough to confess its shortcomings. Are there any other national songs that have that element?

And we also hear her vision in the hymn-the dream of alabaster cities undimmed by human tears. Written one hundred years ago, conceived by our founders 230 years ago, the dream is still far from realized. How long, Oh Lord, how long? Amos is still among us, calling church people to be leaders in this struggle. No showy worship, no empty rituals, but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.