Selective Seeing

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 6, 2011

Selective Seeing

Amos 6:4-8

Ruffling feathers,

stirring pots,

poking, prodding:

the very job of a prophet is to be in our faces,

to jab at us with words,

to point out to us in the highest of high definition

where we’ve gone wrong,

where we’ve failed,

how we’ve not lived up to God’s commandments

and God’s expectations.

No one was better at poking with a sharp stick than Amos.

Read through the nine chapters of his book

and you come away almost glad that you didn’t live

almost 800 years before the birth of our Lord,

back when Amos prophesied,

glad that you weren’t on the receiving end of his

outrage, his venom, his barbs.

His words came fast and furious,

abrasive as he jabbed away.

But then stop for a moment to remember

that all Amos was doing,

all every prophet has ever done

was speak God’s words,

to be the messenger for God’s words to his people.

If we listen to Amos’ words

remembering that it is in fact God speaking,

the words take on even more power.

How angry God was with his children!

“I hate, I despise your festivals,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”

What could possibly have been the cause

of God’s great anger?  

What had the children of Israel done

that so filled God with outrage?

Were they guilty of idolatry?

Had they slipped back to worshiping golden calves?

                                            

No, it was simpler than that.

The people of Israel were guilty of injustice.

The people of Israel had failed to seek justice,

they had failed to create justice –

social justice, economic justice.

They had failed to live righteously,

to live in right relationship with one another

every one in society, the young and the old,

the rich and the poor,

the weak and the strong – all together,

one community.

They had failed to live as God wanted them to live

and so God addressed his children through Amos

addressed them with contempt:

“you who oppress the poor,

you who crush the needy.”

You paid no attention to what I’ve taught you,

how I’ve told you to live your lives.

You’ve failed to make your community,

your society, your nation,

just and equitable.

“Let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

But no, you live for yourselves,

more concerned with living pampered, easy lives,

lives rich in goods.’

but lives without justice, without righteousness.

The people of Israel did live well;

they were affluent, comfortable,

a little too comfortable.

If they knew the Proverb,

“Give me neither poverty nor riches;

[but] feed me with the food that I need,”

They were not the least bit interested.

(Proverbs 30:8)

And in their affluence they had become complacent,

blind to the growing gap between rich

and poor all around them,

the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,

and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the stall; ….,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Pride-filled men and women

blind to the injustices all around them.

Prideful men and women

who may well have worshiped with great pomp,

who may have made their sacrifices

and offered their tithes,

but who were doing nothing

to stop the spread of social injustices,

to right wrongs,

men and women failing to live

 as God commanded them.

More than twenty-seven hundred years separate us

and the people to whom Amos was talking,

but read through all of Amos

and it is all but impossible not to read it as painfully timely,

painfully reflective of our own times,

as the gap between rich and poor grows in our own society,

where the wealthy see themselves as privileged,

content to live apart,

rather than responsible for strengthening community.

A recent study compared the 31 
most economically developed nations

for a variety of social justice metrics.

The nations in the study included the US, Britain, Canada,

Germany, Australia and other peer countries.

The study measured things like child poverty rates,

income inequality,

public expenditure on childhood education,

and availability of and accessibility to health care.

The US ranked 27^th out of 31,

right near the bottom,

across the board.

The US fared poorly in all measurements

but its measurements for poverty were particularly abysmal.

(The New York Times, October 29, 2011, p. A17/

http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de)

Now of course it’s easy to dismiss a study like this;

Cigarette manufacturers taught us well over the years

how to deny, belittle, shift the focus, spin results;

They taught us how to see selectively,

to see what we want to see,

and turn a blind eye to what we don’t want to see.

But as Amos pointed out to the children of Israel so long ago,

denial, scoffing and spin don’t make the truth go away,

the truth that lies before our very eyes.

If it makes us uncomfortable,

well don’t you see: that’s just God’s point,

that’s just what God wants:

to poke us awake,

to prod us to live as God calls us to live.

Do you remember the story of what happened to Jesus

when he came back to his hometown of Nazareth

to teach and preach?

He so outraged the people who listened to him

that they tried to run him out of town;

in fact, they were so furious,

they tried to push him over a cliff.

Now, do you remember what he’d said

that outraged the people so?

God’s words as they had been spoken

by the prophet Isaiah:

“God has sent me to bring good news

to the oppressed,

to bind up the broken hearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captive

and release to the prisoners,…

to comfort all those who mourn.”

(Luke 4:16ff/Isaiah 61)

The words Jesus spoke that so infuriated people

were words of justice,

words of righteousness.

This is the life we are called to, you and I,

just as our ancestors in faith in Amos’ time.

A life working for justice, creating justice,

and righteousness.

Beware of the golden idols that surround us

that draw us away from that life:

money, materialism,

affluence, rugged individualism.  

                 

We are to model our lives on Christ,

model them on the one who cared more about

the poor, the hungry, the struggling

 than he did about the wealthy,

the comfortable,

the affluent.

You and I don’t have to occupy Wall

 or any other street.

We simply have to let Christ occupy our hearts fully,

let Christ occupy our minds completely,

follow Christ,

modeling our lives on his,

seeing the world through Jesus’ eyes,

seeing the world through God’s eyes,

and where we see injustice, rooting it out,

where we see that righteousness is absent,

working to restore it,

guided always by the words of our Lord

when he said,

“just as you did it to the least of these

who are members of my family,

you did it to me.”

(Matthew 25)

Let justice roll like a river,

and righteousness

like a never-failing stream.

AMEN