So … last Sunday (Jan. 8 ) we began a series on the minor prophets at my church. They are called minor only because they wrote short books. We began our series with a bang of a service where there were 12 prophet stations (with a nod to Grace for the idea) where we all got a taste of each prophet and his message brought to us by a different member of our church.
This immediately past Sunday it was my turn to give the message or “content” (or “non-sermonic exploration” as we irreverently call it). I say “turn,” but I asked for this Sunday, because it was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and I loved that man and I wanted the chance to give a message on his birthday. I didn’t care what prophet got put on that Sunday. The Design Team (this is the team that I’m a part of that puts together the service each week) gave me … or maybe God gave me … the book of Amos. So I read Amos. And I read Amos again and I loved Amos. Then I read MLK’s speeches again and my universe shifted. Suddenly I knew where his vision of justice came from!! It wasn’t all from Jesus (although certainly he started there). It wasn’t all from Gandhi (although that’s where he got some of his non-violence from). But Martin Luther King, Jr’s vision of justice and mercy and racial harmony came out of the Old Testament and it came from the prophets!! And suddenly I realized that Jesus had been preaching a very old message all along. It was nowhere near as revolutionary as I’d always thought it was. What I mean is that I knew it wasn’t that revolutionary, but now I **knew** it!! Does that make any sense??
Dang! I love it when God grabs your shoulders like that, shakes you up and makes you see things fresh again. So I wanted my peeps to hear it that way too. So I tried to “channel” Amos to grab their attention and get them to hear what God might be crying out about in the world today. So what follows is the “rant” I opened up with to give my church the experience of having a prophet in their midst. If you should stumble through here and don’t know me, please try to understand the context of what you are about to read. Please make sure you’ve read the Book of Amos before you comment here. I am not necessarily advocating all of this.
AMOS:
God roars out of Israel
He shouts from the rooftops of Jersusalem
Fields dry up and mountains crumble when the voice of the Lord roars past …
Hear the voice of the Lord in the Lion’s roar!
1. I’ve told Wal-Mart 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for oppressing the poor, creating shoddy products that are costly and keep the poor under their thumb and forcing people to work on the Sabbath, I will take their owners and lead them away in chains f
2. I’ve told Exxon 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for taking advantage of misery and death to earn more money more money more money; they will die poor and on the streets
3. I’ve told China 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – for enslaving her people, abusing them in factories not fit for dogs, for treating them like grain in a threshing machine; I will march her kings to Taiwan and South Korea to live out their days in imprisoned there abused in their minds as they have abused others.
4. I’ve told Sudan 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – she deports whole towns; her leaders are greedy for land; they enslave and rape women and children; for this she will burn and see my justice complete.
5. I’ve told Saddleback Church 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – spreads apostasy in that abomination of 40 Days of Purpose. So many unwittingly choose death through that, and they gather wealth into their coffers building large fancy temples while the poor starve under their fat noses. I will strike those buildings down unto the foundations.
6. I’ve told Willowcreek Church 3 times and NOW they are on my last nerve! I am just DONE with them – they water down My message and because they try to be all things to all people they have become nothing to everyone. They are an empty shell full to overflowing of dead people who think they are alive. I will scatter them to the four winds in the hope that they may find Me and then find life.
WHY DO YOU LOOK SO SMUG? Do you think you’re any better than these?
I’ve told you three times and now you’re on my last nerve too. I am done with you. What makes you think that working at a homeless ministry one day a month absolves you of your sin?
How many homeless do you walk by on your way to work? Do you know their faces? their names? Do you look the other way?
I said to you, sell everything to follow me … have you done that yet?
What do you do with your time? When do you feed the poor among you? Or do you just sit and bemoan it to each other while feeding your well-fed faces and children? You have time to exercise, but not to clothe those without jackets in winter. You have time to play games, but you don’t have time to work a soup kitchen? Hah! I have time for you now and you will spend time in eternity wishing you had spent your time on the things that are important to Me.
You cows of Fairfax who think you can come here each week to prove your goodness to each other and the world are merely showing me the blackness in your hearts. You do not change … you keep doing the same things and they are NOT the things of My Way. You cannot follow me if you will not pick up your feet and walk.
Yet you run to follow these fancy musicians and slick talkers …their music is filthy trash in my ears.
You just don’t get it, do you? If you cannot have the same priorities in life that I have then you are not about what I am about and I will not know you … I will not call you by name … I will turn my face from you and condemn you to the everlasting pit.
I am talking to you … Y had better hear me now!
LightHusband told me to work myself up into a real lather and get angry. But when push came to shove … I couldn’t do it. I’m a failure as a prophet. A real prophet-weenie. Or prophet-mallow. I looked out at the people (my peeps) and as I railed, they curled up. I got three sentences into the part about them (Israel in the real Amos) and I could go no further. My heart is too soft for the prophet business. So I cut it short, left off a big chunk and finished early, mostly to make my stomach stop hurting. Because I’m a chicken. LightHusband was disappointed. He still is. He’ll have to live with it.
Then we talked all together about Amos and his picture of justice and most importantly what does racial justice look like. We began by looking at the Remember Segregation website. No, we began by listening to a portion of “I Have A Dream.” and then looking at the website. The website is a shocking reminder of how blatant segregation was. A lot of ideas were thrown around. I liked this one … racial justice will include giving hope to each generation that they will grow up and be able to have opportunity. I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Sunday and how we’ve done away with the blatant signs of segregation, but we continue to withhold hope from so many children and parents. We’re not so much closer to that dream of measuring people by the content of their character.
The beauty was that in our lily-white church this one particular Sunday, a man with very dark skin came to partake in the worship of God with us. I gave him the last word in the discussion for no particular reason other than that he raised his hand and we were over time and it seemed like the right thing to do. He reminded us that in the church we are neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus called to bring His Kingdom here on earth. It was lovely.
