“Resurrection People” based on Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 & John 17:20-26

“Infuriating Plumb-Lines” based on  Amos 7:7-17

This poem is entitled “Allowables” and it is by Nikki Giovanni:  

	I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened1

And yet, so many people are dead because others were afraid. We, as a country, are frightened.

The fear lives in us in many ways. We have anxiety for our own futures and for the futures of those we love, particularly of younger generations. We are afraid of the world that is becoming, particularly with regard to: Global Climate Change and the ways it is destabilizing the world; the global refugee crisis and the millions of humans left without a place to call home; and the global economy, still slumped in many ways and still biased to producing wealth for the rich by continuing to devalue the lives of the poor.

We are afraid, as well, of the prevalence of violence. Violence also comes in many different forms to keep us afraid. Around us there is domestic violence (emotional, physical, and sexual), violent crime, mass shootings, bombings, terrorism, and of course war – both declared and undeclared. Violence is terrifyingly common!

We a country that lives in fear of violence and death for ourselves and our loved ones. Most of us are afraid of not having enough to survive – no matter how much we have right now. We are afraid that we too could become refugees.  We are afraid that our government and way of life could collapse under us (or is collapsing under us.) We are afraid of what another single person could do out of their fear or anger.

I watched the videos of the shootings that were perpetrated by police this week. I didn’t want to, but I did because it didn’t feel responsible to stick my head in the sand. It was clear that the officers were responding to their fear, and not to the actual events occurring around them. It is not yet clear what motived the police shootings in Dallas, and what we hear indicates that it was motivated by hatred. Yet, I suspect there is fear under that as well.

The fear itself is not the problem, although it is nearly epidemic. The problem is how the fear gets dealt with. It get denied, repressed, and projected – rather than admitted to and faced. That makes it stronger and less rational. Furthermore, the projection usually means that fear gets placed on people perceived to be “other”. That’s when fear gets dangerous. This, however, isn’t a new phenomenon.

In fact, I think what we see in our society today is also reflected in what Amos was calling out in his society in the 750’s BCE. Amos’s life as a prophet occurred during the reign of King Jeroboam II, who was the most “successful” king in the history of Israel. He was successful militarily, economically, and politically. He restored the kingdom to its largest known boundaries, brokered deals with other leaders, and the nation prospered. Well, like it goes, the wealthy prospered. Amos was from Judah, so the other country from whom Israel had succeeded in a civil war. Amos describes himself as a simple farmer, called by God to speak what others would not.

As Rev. Dr. Thomas Mann eloquently put it in my reading this week, “Prophesy is the gifted ability to see what other people cannot or will not see. Prophets focus primarily on the moral and spiritual conditions of a nation; they do not simply predict future events but warn of consequences to injustice.”² The nation of Israel was “successful” but as we’ll hear next week, Amos accuses the wealthy and the king of “buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.” (Amos 8:6) The cost of “success” was oppression. Amos was calling out the upper class for what they did to the lower class – and if you are patient, I’ll get to how that has to do with fear.

When people are oppressing others there are two interconnecting ways that they have to dehumanize the people they are oppressing. First of all, to choose to oppress someone requires creating a narrative that says that the other person or people matter less than you do. That can be done lots of ways: via race or gender or age or economic status or SAT score or position or whatever. Secondly though, to choose to oppress another person or people is an inherently terrifying act. When you are an oppressor, you have to be aware (at least subconsciously) that YOU could be the oppressed instead of the oppressor. Given that reality, it becomes imperative to continue to dehumanize the other, to oppress them further, to keep as much separation as possible between your full humanity and their partial humanity. Also, you have to make sure that they will never rise up and oppress you.

This was a significant piece of our history as a nation that engaged in racially “justified” slavery. There was a narrative – the race theory- created to justify dehumanizing people. There was a constant fear of slave rebellion, and there was a terror of slaves wanting to do harm to their masters like the harm done to them. The cycles of violence against people of color were deep, as was the fear of white people of being treated the way they treated their slaves. Both the violence and the fear live on. At the Schenectady Black Lives Matter march on Thursday someone made a sign that said “This is the new genocide of Black People.”

Race, of course, is not the only marker used to justify oppression. Any “otherness” will do – real or imagined. Often the marker has been economic – although the definitions of who gets to be wealthy and who doesn’t has changed with place and time. In Amos’s time, some of the poor in that society were poor by position: widows because they had no male protection nor access to land, orphans because they had no male protection nor access to land, and foreigners because they no male protection that counted nor access to land. Some would have been poor by circumstance – because of bad harvests or because there were too many male children in a generation or because they were the youngest sons of youngest sons.

There were people living in poverty, and the policies of those in power was to add to their struggle with oppression, rather than to lighten their load with policies of support. The vision of the Torah is of a nation where the widows, orphans, and foreigners are provided for, and where it is not possible to slip into generational poverty. By this time though, the people who claimed the vision of the Torah were acting more “normally.” They were participating in systems that used the labor of the poor to enrich the wealthy and strengthen the power of the already empowered. As Mann says, “For Amos, the primary failure is injustice,”³ and injustice is prevalent.

Amos doesn’t think God likes the injustice of Israel, nor the way it found its “success,” one little bit. He expresses it by suggesting that justice is not found in the nation, and God is so upset as to abandon the people. That’s the role of a prophet. The role of “those in power” is played in this story by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. According to Mann, “Bethel is something like northern Israel’s ‘national cathedral.’ The collusion of religious and political institutions is blatant when Amaziah says to Amos, ’[Bethel] is the king’s sanctuary.’ One would have thought it was God’s.”⁴ In particular, the name “Beth-el” means “house of God” so the suggestion here is not overly subtle.

Amaziah wants Amos to GO AWAY, because he is upsetting the kingdom by speaking the truth. Then Amos basically predicts the exile of the Israel, which will happen Assyria in a single generation. The important pieces of this passage for me today are: that the role of the prophet was to speak uncomfortable truths, that the man understood to be speaking for God was calling for justice for the least empowered, and that those in power desperately wanted the one calling for justice to HUSH.

Often prophets, however, have to point out not only what injustice looks like but what consequences it has. Amos pointed out that the “success” of Israel was unstable and could lead to its demise. As people of God, prophecy is some of our work. We end up having to say that unless this country turns itself around and faces its own racism as well as its ridiculous gun laws, the violence we experience now will only continue to escalate.

There is such fear in our society because there is such oppression, and those of us who benefit from it live in fear that it will turn around and oppress us. (Because life and society are complicated, almost of us benefit from it in some ways and are oppressed by it in others.) Injustice anywhere is not ONLY a threat to justice everywhere, is it a source of our anxiety and fear, and thus a piece of the violence of our society itself.

There are many intersecting issues in our country today, and I’m expecting that many of you who are listening have already done many of the things that can make a difference. I’m going to remind us all of them again though, because in the midst of fear it is a good reminder that we can do things that matter.

We take courage from each other and from the God we know so that we can acknowledge our fears without repressing them nor letting them rule our lives.

We continue to educate ourselves about our past and present as a nation with racial oppression, to destabilize the myths of racism and thereby change them.

We can speak up about gun access.

We name injustice and oppression wherever we see it, and we participate in actions to change them. We do this even when it infuriates others.

We love all of God’s people as much as we can as often as we can and as well as we can, and trust that God will use our love to build the world as God would have it be.

We trust that if we work together, and act out of faith, hope, and love, even the brokenness of our country can be fixed.

May it be so, and may the God of justice use us to help heal our country, even if it means infuriating others with our calls for justice. Amen

1“Allowables” a poem by Nicki Giovanni, in her book  Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, page 109.

2Thomas W. Mann in “Exegetical Perspective on Amos 7:7-17” found on page 221 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

3Mann, 221.

4Mann, 225.

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Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady