The Road to Perdition

 

This essay is from one of the parishioners at St Patrick's...  

The United States is not on the road to greatness.  We are on the road to perdition.

We have “law enforcement” sweeps conducted by men is militia style tactical gear, devoid of any law enforcement insignia, while wearing facemasks.  They are indistinguishable from street thugs and criminal gangs. 

Our government has established “detention facilities” that reek of concentration camps with inhumane unsanitary conditions for people, human beings, who are denied the due process rights that, at least theoretically, are guaranteed by our Constitution.

In the administration’s eagerness to round up criminal illegal immigrants, we have rounded up legal residents, asylum seekers, tax paying workers, and US citizens.  We have torn families and communities apart.  And far too many of our citizens applaud these travesties of justice, even far too many who claim to be Christian.  But what does the Bible say about how we treat the strangers among us?

Leviticus 19:33-34 is pretty clear.  “33 “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”  Leviticus 24:22 reiterates the point, “You shall have one law for the alien and for the native-born, for I am the Lord your God.”  To me, it is pretty clear that all of our rights as US citizens must also apply to immigrants, both legal and illegal.

But what does Jesus say?  In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus is asked to rank the commandments.  The conversation is recorded as this:  36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

When someone asks, “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37.  The story makes it clear that even those we may despise are still our neighbors.  And how we treat even the poorest of our neighbors matters.  Matthew 25:31- 46 is unforgiving about it.  “31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.””

In John 21:15-17, Jesus summarizes his instructions when he tells Peter, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep.”

So regardless of what our “leadership” is Washington are doing, Christian faith makes it clear that our Constitutional rights and protections must extend to all persons regardless of legal status, that we are to love our neighbors by feeding the hungry, providing drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and, by the small extension of tending Christ’s sheep, healing the sick and housing the homeless.

Anyone who supports the administration’s inhumane treatment of the powerless among us and at the same time describes themselves as Christian, is, at best, a hypocrite.  While Romans 10:9 says salvation is rooted in confessing Jesus is Lord, Jesus himself says that is not enough.  Matthew 7:21 presents Jesus’ warning, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”   If Jesus is “Lord and Savior,” it is incumbent upon us to live by Jesus’s teachings and expectations, even if it is hard, uncomfortable, or unpopular.

Who is my neighbor and so what!?!

Propers for Year C Proper 10... Amos 7:7-17, Luke 10:25-37

This fall our plan for our Wednesday evening forums is to explore some of the Hebrew prophets.  One of my favorites is Amos who like many prophetic voices entered into the work reluctantly and with feelings of inadequacy for the task, but who took on the role because he felt God had called him out of obscurity to speak truth to power. 

There is value I think in understanding who and what power Amos was addressing.  In the 8^th C BCE there were two kingdoms, Judah to the south and Israel to the north.  Jeroboam II was king of Israel and both feared and revered by the people.  Israel was strong and in the business of dominating the surrounding countries.  The ruling class was wealthy and getting wealthier at the expense of poor and marginalized communities.  It was a time of power and prosperity, a time when the people of Israel assumed their privilege and affluence were evidence of God’s blessings to them as the chosen people. They had forgotten their suffering as slaves in Egypt and neglected to share the fruits of their prosperity with the poor. Their religious observance centered in the local shrines such as Bethel rather than the temple in Jerusalem, was disconnected from their social ethics and bereft of social justice.  Amos was called by God from his life as a shepherd in Judah (southern kingdom) to speak a word from the Lord, to call out those who had fallen short of the covenant they had made with God. 

Amos was likely, in his native Judah, a person of social standing who traded in sheep and goats and other agricultural products.  From his vantage point he saw a lack of faithfulness in Jeroboam and in his people and Amos confronted the injustice of their extravagant lives with stark accusations of faithlessness, by calling out oppressors, by naming the sins, and with predictions of doom at the hands of outside conquerors.  He called Israel to the same standard of conduct that God asks of all the nations, to rely on God rather than military might, to unite their worship with concern and care for the poor, to let their faithfulness in God be reflected in their faithfulness to God’s people – friends and strangers alike. 

The images in the visions of Amos are stark.  Today we read a passage in which Amos says that God’s judgment is illustrated through the image of the “plumb line,” a bit of string with a weight used as a guide for measuring whether a wall has been built straight or not.  The Lord takes the measure of a wall that represents the people of Israel. Amos is asked what he sees and he minces no words. The Lord finds the wall is warped, no longer straight and true. God warns the people of Israel, “I will never again pass them by; no longer will they be spared, rather they will be judged severely. The meaning of the prophet’s word of judgment is all too clear. Israel has not tended to the straight and narrow teachings about justice, mercy, kindness and faithfulness in Torah.  God has reached the end of his rope - or in this case string - and will no longer excuse Israel’s behavior.  According to Amos, the Northern kingdom of Israel is under God’s judgment for its selfish, self-centered ways and for its lack of faith and dependence on God.

Now for sure the ruling body of Israel would not have been happy with what Amos had to say.  So the spokesperson for the king steps up.  He is Amaziah, a priest from Bethel which was one of those “High Places” to be laid waste.   Amos is commanded by Amaziah to return home and prophesy there. He is not welcome at Bethel.  This does not deter Amos though.  He announces judgment against the corrupt Jeroboam and the members of the priestly caste who have capitulated to the powers they serve. He spells out a dire vision of the future, including the queen becoming a prostitute, the royal children dying by the sword, and the people of Israel being taken into exile, and using some pretty colorful language he speaks truth to the opulent elite and predicts the comeuppance of Isreal. My personal favorites are “listen you cows of Bashan who oppress the helpless and crush the poor” and the very quotable; “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  But that’s for another day.

In The Women's Bible Commentary, biblical scholar Judith Sanderson writes that Amos' career as a prophet focused on two interrelated concerns: how wealthy the powerful people had become and the fact that they had amassed their wealth by exploiting the poor. For Amos this meant that the people had turned away from God's preferential option for the poor and the understanding that widows, orphans, and sojourners, among others, must be cared for as a matter of social justice.  If Amos were living in the USA today, I believe he would be experiencing deja vue.

Amos’ vision of God’s justice does come true when in 721 the northern kingdom of Israel is overrun by the Assyrians and the leaders are exiled.  But it is his strength of conviction that his message is given by God that invites us to consider the impact of standing up to injustice anywhere we encounter it. The similarities of context between the social injustices of Amos’ day and our own make an uncomfortable link between the judgment Amos foresaw for his people and the implications of the prophetic word for our day.  We live in an age when power and greed and spewed hatred are the driving forces for many policy makers.  And it seems now in our country that to oppose the ruling body by calling out injustice or oppression is to invite reprisal.  It is no secret that members of our congregation and I often stand on the margins in the public arena, standing in solidarity with those whose lives our prevailing society discounts with obscene mockery and disrespect, with cuts to freedom of life and liberty, and exclusion from full participation in our common life.  Many will say that prayer and worship should not have anything to do with the issues of the day.  But I think that if I read Amos correctly, and I believe I do, that is exactly where the prophet is calling us.  It is impossible to separate our prayer and worship from our response to the needs of a suffering world without leaving our prayer and worship hollow and empty.

And that brings me right to the Gospel lesson for today.  Jesus responds to the man who asks what must I do to be saved with a story about getting involved.  The message of Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, like the prophecy of Amos, is that God does not desire that we allow ritually clean practices or prescribed codes of worship to govern how we interact with God and neighbor as the priest and the Levite did or as the elite ruling class of Israel in Amos’ day had done.   Rather we are to open ourselves up to the possibility that the least likely person we encounter will be the one sent by God to show us the way and that we are to emulate those merciful actions with each person we meet.

“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asks.  Jesus’ answer breaks down the rules and boundaries set down by the society in which he lived.  The acknowledgment that the true neighbor was the one who sees, cares, and responds to the needs of each person as a child of God and exposes personal prejudices and institutional barriers that restrict, exclude, or oppress as systemic injustices and which are in opposition to the realization of God’s kingdom.   As children of God and as neighbors to each other, we are to go and do likewise.  May God who gives us the will to love both God and neighbor, give us the power and the grace to do so.  Amen