Homily
by The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC; 8th
Sunday after Pentecost, 10 July 2016
Proper
10 Year C RCL: Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82;
Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
Remember
the scene in The Titanic when they first see the iceberg? Recall the
utter horror of their realization? Think of the desperate efforts of
the Titanic’s crew to stop that ship, to change
course. It
is too late.
Human
pride to show off how this ship can reach New York faster than anyone
ever has brings on this disaster. Many wealthy passengers ignore the
situation, refuse to wear life vests, refuse to get into lifeboats.
They are sure they can keep doing what they do, not change their
course of action & all will be well.
We
see Amos face this challenge in our 1st
reading. Using a plumb
line, God shows Amos the problem: God has built this wall – this
people – designed to live aligned with God's
love, God's justice, God's mercy.
The
people live totally out of line.
God
sends Amos to tell the power structure what it does not want to hear.
We hear Jesus challenge the lawyer to change, to live aligned with
God’s will.
Change
is difficult.
Bestselling
author & college professor Rhoda Janzen talks
about changes she experiences through cancer & through leaving
her Mennonite roots to worship in a Pentecostal church.
In
her book, Does
This Church Make Me Look Fat?,
she says she thought changes in her life automatically changed her.1
“But
change doesn't work like that. Altered circumstances give us only the
opportunity to change. We actually have to do the work. We have to
make the decision to get things moving, & then we actually have
to move them. We can't sit around & wait for other people to do
our work for us. We can't even sit around waiting for God to do our
work for us.”2
Doing
something different is the problem for people in Amos' day. Like the
people on the Titanic, they do not stay the course to live as God
calls them to live. Amos lives in a time of “military might,
security, & economic & national prosperity”4.
Not
a professional prophet,5
Amos shines the light of truth to show that the country lives with
wide disparity, social injustice, cheating in the market place, &
“shallow, meaningless piety6.”
We
hear this shallow, meaningless piety when the king’s priest,
Amaziah, says Bethel “is
the king's sanctuary...it is
a temple of the kingdom." The
king's sanctuary? A temple of the kingdom?
It
is supposed to be God’s sanctuary, God’s temple.
It
is supposed to be like this beautiful place where we worship: This
beautiful Body of Christ that we call St. Francis is God's sanctuary,
not mine, not one particular family's or special insider group's.
It's
God's place where all are welcome.
When
we reach out in love, open to God’s grace, we live aligned with
God's Love.
This
is the problem Amos must address to the power structure. As a paid
professional in the power structure, Amaziah
knows it is safer to tell leaders what they want to hear.
Amos
is free to speak for the forgotten people, to speak truth to those
who oppress the powerless7
& deny justice to the poor.
Amos
makes it clear the power brokers neglect what we ask in our Collect
today: that God let us know & understand what we ought to do &
have the grace & power faithfully to accomplish it.
This
is what Paul commends to the Colossians as he encourages them to hold
to the truth & new life they have through Jesus, to stay the
course. What
they do matters.
What
we do matters: within these walls, in our individual lives &
beyond. This
is what Jesus helps the lawyer see in today's Gospel:
God's
love is for all people, all nations.
“...(A)cts
of love are the final requirement of the law.”8
The
law keeps the lawyer stuck. Jesus
works to shift his perspective so that he can change course. The
former Mennonite Rhoda Janzen
speaks to this kind of change.
She
says her core beliefs about church & people's role in church
(are) “based on many years of scholarship, (and)...unlikely to
change.9
“But,”
she says, “I
could assign them a different level of importance...God works through
imperfect people,...imperfect churches,...imperfect faith.”10
She
says:
“I still (believe) that the idea of divine calling transcends the
very barriers we use...categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation.” She asks: “How (can) we call it a divine
calling
if it (doesn't) supersede our own human categories?”11
Jesus
helps the lawyer & us see beyond our human categories, to see that God's love, mercy & justice supersede our categories of who are
acceptable people we will help & who are outcasts we can convince
ourselves to ignore.
Sometimes
change is uncomfortable,
as
Janzen says. It
can be
hard to let another perspective supersede ours, as we hear in
this erudite book on
philosophy, Plato
and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. It says:
The
lookout on a battleship spies a light ahead off the starboard bow.
The captain tells him to signal the other vessel, "Advise you
change course 20 degrees immediately!"
The
answer comes back, “Advise you
change course 20 degrees immediately!"
The
captain is furious. He signals, "I am a captain. We are on a
collision course. Alter your course 20 degrees now!"
The
answer comes back, "I am a seaman second class, and I strongly
urge you to alter your course 20 degrees."
Now the
captain is beside himself with rage. He signals, "I am a
battleship!"
The
answer comes back, "I am a lighthouse." 12
Lighthouses
withstand storms, rough waves, strong winds.
Lighthouse have to stay
aligned.
Lighthouses have to be tended* to keep shining light, to keep
others safe in the winds of change.
Jesus
is our lighthouse*, shining forth God’s love to guide us. Jesus calls you &
me together & as individuals to shine the light of God’s love.
Like
Amos,
we are to shine the light of truth on the disconnect between the
power structure & people, the disconnect between what God says to
do & what we do.
We
are change agents. Like Jesus, like Amos, we are to (proclaim that)
“the world can be organized differently.”13
The
world can be organized differently.
* We must tend our relationship with Jesus, our Lighthouse.
Bibliography
Boadt,
Lawrence. Reading the
Old Testament: An Introduction.
New York: Paulist Press. 1984.
Book
of Common Prayer. New
York: The Church Hymnal Corp., and The Seabury Press. 1979.
Brueggemann,
Walter. Journey to the
Common Good.
Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2010.
Brueggemann,
Walter. The Prophetic
Imagination. 2nd
Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2001.
Cathcart,
Thomas. Daniel Klein. Plato
and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy through
Jokes. New York: The
Penguin Group. 2007.
Harper’s
Bible Commentary.
General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers. 1988.
Holy
Bible. New Revised
Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Holy
Bible with the Apocrypha.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plumb%20line
Accessed: 6 July 2016.
Janzen,
Rhoda. Does This
Church Make Me Look Fat? A
Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems.
New York: Grand Central Publishing. 2012.
Jewish
Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Levenson,
Jon D. Sinai &
Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible.
Minneapolis: A Seabury Book. Winston Press. 1985.
Matthews,
Victor H. Social World
of the Hebrew Prophets.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. 2001.
New
Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha.
Eds.: Herbert G. May, Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University
Press, Incorporated, 1977.
Poitier-Young,
Anathea. Old Testaments Prophets class notes. The School of Theology,
The University of the South Advanced Degrees Program. Summer 2010.
1
Janzen, Rhoda. Does This Church
Make Me Look Fat? A
Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves
Her Lady Problems.
P. 125.
2
Ibid. Pp. 125-126.
3
Ibid. P. 126.
5
Class notes by Dr. Anathea Poitier-Young for Old Testaments Prophets
class. School of Theology, The University of the South. Summer
2010.
10
Ibid. 128-129.
11
Ibid.
12
Cathcart, Thomas.
Daniel Klein. Plato and a Platypus Walk into
a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy through
Jokes. P. 179.
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