If You Are Coming for Me...

This is a sermon first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on October 29, 2017.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
19:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.
19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.
19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Matthew 22:34-46
22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
22:35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
22:36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
22:37 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.'
22:38 This is the greatest and first commandment.
22:39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
22:41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question:
22:42 "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 22:43 He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
22:44 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? 22:45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"
22:46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Recently Congresswoman Maxine Waters found herself under attack in public because of her strong stands taken against white supremacists and her criticisms of the President. She has gained quite a reputation for her outspokenness, and as a matter of both personal defiance and of encouragement to young women to speak their minds, she has been famously quoted as saying, “If you come for me, then I’m coming for you.” They’re a version of what we might call “fighting words.”

It’s been a long time since I could classify myself as a person who knows all the latest slang and popular phrases. By the time I figure them out, my kids are happy to tell me that I’m so far behind that “nobody says that any more.” So I don’t know if Maxine and I are out of fashion to use the phrase, “If you are coming for me…” to state a challenge to potential critics and enemies. I have a colleague in another city at a university not to be named who can be expected fairly often to offer up challenges to people who would dare to question or challenge her. I think she is the one I first learned the phrase from because she used it quite often. I’ve noticed several other younger academics inclined to take offense at people they think are looking for trouble, and they have started their responses with this phrase, “If you are coming for me….”

When I was looking at this familiar passage in Matthew 22, it struck me that Jesus was surrounded by challengers and enemies who were scheming and making plans about how they were coming for him. The beginning of chapter 22 continues a sequence of similar scenes. A day before, Jesus had thrown the whole city into an uproar, taking over the temple, chasing away moneygrubbers and cheats who were exploiting the poor by jacking up prices on supplies for worshipers hoping to offer sacrifices.

 It was probably a fine-tuned system of outsourcing public business to private contractors. The highest bidders got to set up their tables and animal pens in the temple for a fee, and maybe an extra kickback to the officials to secure their favored position as a preferred vendor. Jesus messed up the furniture, scolded the vendors, chased away the animals, and then would not let anyone walk through the temple. Both the priestly leaders and the Roman occupiers held emergency meetings to consider what kind of response they should make. The may have met all night to get ready to come for Jesus when the morning broke.

At the beginning of the day, when Jesus showed himself in town again, the leaders of the temple were coming for him. They asked him why he thought he had authority to act the way he had been acting. Jesus was a shrewd political operator. He knew that the crowds were on his side, so on this next day after the big confrontation in the temple, he made use of that. This time he turned the metaphorical tables on these priests by asking them to weigh in with their opinions about John the Baptist. They were trapped. John was a popular figure and now a martyr. The crowds would not take kindly to the priests trashing one of their heroes. Jesus outmaneuvered them, and they went away frustrated and angrier.

For the rest of that day, groups kept caucusing, trying to come up with a way that they could come for Jesus and show him up. They were sure they could outwit him. They knew he had to be just a backwoods bumpkin who they could eventually humiliate and get the people to turn on him. Sure of themselves, each group would come with a question or puzzle, only to be caught up by Jesus and have to walk away. It almost became a contest between various cliques and factions to see who could get to Jesus first. After the chief priests and elders failed, the Pharisees gave it a shot. When they couldn’t trick Jesus, the Sadducees gave their best try and failed as well. So at the beginning of our reading today, we learn that after the Sadducees failed, the Pharisees got up their nerve again and came with the question about the greatest commandment. Jesus’ answer was so good, they had nothing to say in reply.

I guess they thought he might say the law was of no value or something similarly rebellious. Instead, he went to the deep meaning of the law, quoting two of the most beloved teachings of the Torah which were revered by the rabbis. They had come for him over and over, and to no avail. So when they had nothing left to argue about, Jesus came for them. He posed them a puzzle from the Psalms, a hermeneutical conundrum about the Messiah as the Son of David, but also as the one whom David himself called Lord. They were mad as hornets at the trap Jesus set for them, and again refused to answer his questions because they feared the crowd’s reaction if they condemned Jesus publicly, even though that’s what they wanted to do.

It’s as if Jesus had said to them, “If you are coming for me, then you had better be ready to face the truth.” “If you are coming for me, then you had better realize who it is you are dealing with.” “If you are coming for me, know that I am calling all God’s children together.” Jesus was fine with their challenging questions, but they weren’t ready for the kind of answers he brought.

What made Jerusalem such a center for turmoil and political controversy? Why was the temple such a focal point for conflict when Jesus came to town? Probably any of us who have read and studied the gospels have raised these questions from time to time. We recognize that Jesus had enemies. We may be puzzled as to why anyone would not like Jesus, whom we have boxed into an image of sweetness and meekness. But if that’s as far as our thinking has gotten us, then we need to dig deeper and ponder further.

While the world of Jesus was in many details very different from ours, there are also many ways in which we need to look at his world as similar to ours. We don’t have a Caesar or occupying Roman legions. We don’t have the same kind of Ruling Council of Priests, Scribes, and Elders, the Sanhedrin, or partisan groups called Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots. On the other hand, we do have Presidents and Governors and Mayors. We have Capitol Police and State Police and Sheriff’s Deputies and ICE Detention Officers. We have a City Council and County Commissioners and a General Assembly and a Congress. We do have Democrats and Republicans, a Tea Party and Anarchists and the Alt-Right. We have the Chamber of Commerce, Bank of America, Walmart, AIG, Amazon, and GlaxoSmithKline.

In our world, as in Jesus’ world, the people who are claiming the most power are scheming together to make sure that anyone else who might want power will have trouble getting hold of it. They look for wedge issues, and they make up ways to divide communities against one another. The Sanhedrin was trying to drive a wedge between Jesus and the crowds of people who had come to the Passover Festival. They were hoping their provocative questions would break down the popular consensus around Jesus and get people arguing with one another. As Jeanne DeCelles has written (New Heaven, New Earth),

Jesus did not get into trouble with the powers of his day simply by challenging the individual behaviors of his hearers. His downfall came from challenging the very systems of his society. He challenged the cornerstones. Just as the values of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, and the Pentagon conflict with the gospel, so too with Jesus and the institutions of his time: he was in conflict with the power structures of his own day, religious and civil alike.

Yes, on the day after Jesus cleared the temple, they came for him. They were set on bringing him down by dividing the crowds against him. On this day, they would not succeed. But they would keep trying.

 Ironically, the Roman Empire’s agents were using the same strategy against the Jewish leaders that the Sanhedrin was using against Jesus and his followers. They played favorites and offered benefits to some and not to others. Some Jewish leaders were called Herodians because they had signed up to play along with the Roman appointed kings in the family of Herod. Others, the Sadducees and Pharisees, had originated when the previous empire’s Greek rulers worked to divide Jews against one another before the Maccabean uprising. Now the Romans played Sadducees and Pharisees against each other, and here they were taking turns at Jesus. All the while, they were maneuvering for power against one another. And the Zealots were lurking on the margins, looking for the chance to stir up turmoil in hopes that it might lead to a revolution to overthrow Rome.

 This strategy of empire to divide God’s children against one another is a perennial and highly successful means of keeping the rest of us down. Rev. Dr. Barber regularly instructs whoever will take time to listen that the strategy of the powerful and wealthy has always been to convince poor whites that no matter how bad their lives are, at least they aren’t black. Now they also try to divide blacks against Latinos, white men against minorities and women, and any potential crack in the social fabric they can capitalize on.

Barber calls on us to remember how the fusion politics that brought black and white farmers and business owners and families together to stand up for their common interests and the common good managed to overthrow the plantation politics that concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few families. The last thing the empire wants the rest of us to do is to figure out that we could work together to make things better for all of us.

Some of you were here at Mt Level last Thursday night. If you arrived near 7 pm, you may have had to park far away. The sanctuary was full to overflowing with people from many different parts of Durham. There were Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Holiness, and some who claim no denomination. There were Unitarians and Reform Jews. There were members of non-profits organized for the environment, for helping students, for supporting the unemployed, for promoting affordable housing, and for building community solidarity. There were African Americans, Latinos, pale-skinned folk, and Asian Americans. There were students from Duke and Carolina, from Central and Shaw. There were people from different neighborhoods, different professions, and different socio-economic classes.

We had every reason imaginable to divide against one another, create rivalries, look down on one another, and try to get an advantage over one another. But in this case, we did not do that. Not only the current member organizations, but a dozen more churches and community groups who hope to become members crowded into this hall. They came together, WE came together, because we realized that it is not our differences but our ability to build trusting relationships for mutual benefit that make us strong.

Moneyed interests and political powers of another sort may wish to tear us down by trying to divide us. They might try to make the Durham Committee or the People’s Alliance shun us or treat us as rivals. They might try to get the DCIA or the Ministerial Alliance to see our clergy leaders as a threat. They might encourage a new group like Durham for All to see Durham CAN as a giant to be knocked down and defeated. Durham CAN could act superior and ignore other potential partners in the struggle. But that’s not what happened here on Thursday.

On Thursday, when they came for us, we stood together to fight for better housing for all, for better wages for all, for a first and a second chance for all. The full parking lot and the full house of people on Thursday night is a glimpse of what it means to live up to the great commandment to love one another. It is love in action that stands up for those who struggle even when they don’t look or talk the way we do. It is, as our own pastor, Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., told the gathered masses, “the measure of who cares.” Which of the people in our community will bear the mark of those who care?

Of course, just because Durham CAN had over 600 people uniting around an agenda on housing and jobs does not mean we have arrived at heaven on earth. Maybe there is a small glimpse of what could be, but the powers of this world have many tricks and traps to continue to break apart what is strong and healthy and flourishing.

Even after a success, we can easily fall back into the trap of letting ourselves be divided and then trying to protect our little bit of turf from others. This is the nature of sin. Sin is the decay and even destruction of the good that God has accomplished in our lives and in our communities. Sin is turning away from the path of hope that we set out on. Sin is rejecting the best possibilities that God and our neighbors have to offer us. And it does not only happen in our cities and suburbs and countryside. It happens in our churches.

Jesus reminded the Pharisees and the crowds in the streets on that day that what God wants for us can be stated in a few crucial sentences. These two commandments represent the revelation in the Torah of the very purpose and meaning of creation and human existence. Late in the night when we can’t sleep, we may find ourselves asking why are we even here? What is the meaning of life? Well, Jesus answered those questions on this day in Jerusalem.

He told all who would listen that the God who is Love spoke the world into existence as an expression and fulfillment of the love that flows in eternity from each person of the Trinity, mutually and reciprocally, perfectly and unendingly. God made the world out of love and for love. We are here in the world to love. We are made to love God and to love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Wayne Gordon says that when he was a young coach and school teacher, leading Bible studies with high school youth, those kids grew very serious about their devotion to God. One day, they brought an insight to him that powerfully changed his reading of this text.

They called his attention to the commandment to love your neighbor. They said, “If the individual Christian is supposed to love our neighbors, wouldn’t it be true that a church full of Christians is supposed to love our neighborhood?” Their deep insight helped him to recognize the call of God to start a church and make a long-term commitment to transforming a run-down, poor neighborhood into a place fitted to God’s purpose of abundant living and beloved community.

But few churches in our day share that kind of vision. We lock our buildings against the neighborhood and flee away to distant places to live. Church people don’t know their neighbors, and when they do know them, they don’t like them or want them inside their church buildings. The original families in a church grow suspicious of newcomers, and new members resent the people who try to hold on to power and position.

Churches start to function as subsidiaries to social power. They occupy socio-economic strata in the social order, so that executives and managers go to this congregation, professionals and academics go to the other congregation, laborers and factory workers here, schoolteachers and public employees there, and the unemployed or homeless don’t feel welcome at any church.

Erika Edwards, a professor at UNC-Charlotte, spoke to the Shaw Divinity School Women’s Conference about the heritage of scientific racism. In earlier eras, biologists, medical doctors, anthropologists, and various other scientists sought to prove what everyone already had decided was true—that white Europeans were superior to people of darker skin from other parts of the world. Very few scientists would be willing to make those kinds of claims in public in our time, but the residual effect of that era continues to operate in the thinking and structures of our culture and our churches. Edwards talked about ways in which ranking—from darkest to lightest skin—functions to classify people’s beauty and intelligence even today. Dividing and conquering even within communities of color prevents the kind of loving cooperation that would lead to the uplift of all.

Ruby Sales talked to us at the same conference about the way that generations are being divided against one another in the current political climate. On the one hand, she said young people do not know the history of the struggle and the costs paid by those who have gone before them. All they can see is that too many seem satisfied to have gotten a small piece of the pie, to have climbed up a few steps of the ladder, and no longer have a vision of change for the better.

On the other hand, older folks have become accustomed to their strategies of respectability politics to the point that the patterns of respectability have replaced the ideals of freedom, hope, and community. Wearing braids, getting tattoos, sagging pants, or short skirts are interpreted as evidence that young people have no dreams or care too little about themselves. They may blame the young people for the lack of knowledge of their history and of the costs paid for every advance, when it was the responsibility of their generation to pass down the story.

All over this country, young people are outside of the churches believing that those of us inside have become too elitist, too self-congratulatory, too closed minded, and too uncaring about the world around us. All over this country, people inside churches are wondering where the young people are, decrying how kids are so messed up these days, angry at the social forces they blame for undermining the lives and faith of our children. We have become divided against one another, and we are being conquered.

So even within our churches, we let the empire seduce us, divide us, turn us into parties and sects and cliques. But Jesus would have none of it. He turned the argument back around to the heart of the gospel. God has loved us. God made us for love. Love God with all that you are. Love one another. Love others by wanting for them everything good you would want for yourself.

Jesus was quoting from the Old Testament. Loving God who made us and loves us was the Shema, the core confession of the entire tradition of the Jews. Today’s text from Leviticus names many ways of thinking about what it means to love our neighbors. We must not harbor any hate. We must be willing to speak up and correct those who are bullying or cheating or doing harm to themselves and others. We can’t hold grudges or be happy at other people’s misfortune. We mustn’t be opportunists and getting advantage or money from what has hurt someone else.

Leviticus says that in graphic terms: you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord. We must deal justly and judge others with justice. We can’t be respecters of persons. We must aim to do no less than to display the love of God, the character of God, in the way that we live.

How is it that we can resist sin and the powers, thrones, dominions, and authorities of this world in order to live according to God’s purpose and calling to love our neighbor? At its most basic level it involves a surrender of our willfulness and our selfishness to God. What is best for us and what we ought to do may not always be what we first wish for and want to do. Our vision is limited, but God in Jesus Christ has revealed to us the way that we should go.

Jesus has called us to be peacemakers, to hunger for justice, to be pure in heart, meek, and humble. Jesus has shown us the way to lead by becoming a servant, to give of ourselves so that there will be no need among us. And he summed it all up by reminding us to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Turning away from our limited self-interest, toward the richness of God’s interest in the flourishing of all our communities, all our neighborhoods—this is the path away from enslavement to sin and domination by empire and the powers of this world that have refused to bow the knee to Jesus.

Have you come to worship today with a searching heart? Have you found yourself jealous of the good others have and bearing grudges every time someone else found success? Are you worried that you will lose out because someone else who is struggling might get some of what you want? Have you wondered if God even cares for you or is on your side?

Have you ever come to know that Jesus came into the world to show us that God is for us? And if God is for us, who can stand against us? How many ways might we keep on dividing ourselves from one another when what God wants for us is to live in loving community? The Holy Spirit is active and present to call you today to unite yourself to God, to follow Jesus down a path of love and servanthood. If you have never given your life to God by following Jesus, there is no reason to continue to delay. Be joined to Jesus so that you live in him and he lives in you.

Have you let your church become your social club where you want to pick and choose the kinds of people who are allowed to join? Has church become a place of status where we can look down on the people who don’t measure up, feeling smug that we are the ones God likes? Has church become an in-group busily defining how many others we can put into the out-group?

If the Holy Spirit has quickened in you a desire to become holy as God is holy, to be set apart by the generosity of your love rather than by the uppity angle of your forehead, then renew your vow to God to be an apostle of love in your neighborhood, in your family, and in your church. God is stirring in Mt Level, and wherever people have ears to hear, to raise up leaders and to raise up a new generation.

If we are not ready to respond and ready to listen, we will continue to quench that work of the Spirit. Will we someday look back on Thursday night, October 26, 2017, as the last day in the history of our church that we saw a full house? Lord help us to be ready to open our hearts and our doors to whomever you send to us, that we might shine as a beacon of love and fulfill our calling to be beloved community in this corner of Durham. Let us not divide ourselves, but unite ourselves to those who are brokenhearted, alone, and struggling, even if they are different from us in so many ways.

If you are in search of a church home, we pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to you about where your life should be united to the work of Christ in our city. If the Spirit is prodding you today to say that Mt. Level is the community of God’s people where you should be, then we welcome you to join with us in the service of God that we have also been called to do. The doors of the church are open.

Whosoever will, may come into the loving community of neighbors who are gathered today to love one another. If you are coming for me, let me be the first to acknowledge that God is calling us into community. Let us be reconciled to one another, and take on the ministry of reconciliation in this world so full of those whom God loves.

A World Fit for Naomi

This is the second reflection/sermon on the horrible violence that continues in our world, preached last Sunday after a week in which police killings of black men rocked Baton Rouge and Minnesota followed by a mass killing targeting white police officers in Dallas.  Some preachers may try to deal with such events by simply continuing to preach on topics already scheduled, ignoring current events.  That seems all wrong to me.  Biblically and theologically, it is a season that calls for lament.  Lament is an honest crying out to God for an accounting and for divine action and presence in the midst of all that is going wrong in the world. 

These deaths, though remote from Durham, still can be personal to each of us in a variety of ways.  We may know someone who has suffered in the same way.  We may know someone who is in the same kind of work.  Or we may have found ourselves in a similar situation such that "there go I, but by the grace of God."  One of my connections on this day was my daughter's birthday; thus, the title represents my struggle with hopes and fears for her life, the lives of my other children, and the lives of so many more who must face dangers and aggressive evil in the world.

As I have done several times recently, I draw on multiple texts from the Revised Common Lectionary to piece together a narrative and argument.  I suspect that this time that the centrifugal force of my anger and hurt have led me to be more "all over the place" than I usually let myself be.  If at times it seems that I am digging down in my knapsack for everything that makes me mad, grant the patience that it also may be an opportunity to speak to as wide as possible a range of different hurts and fears in the congregation.  In retrospect, I have never had so many mothers and women come to offer their thanks and appreciation for a sermon when it ended as this past Sunday.  May that be a learning opportunity for me about how I flesh out an argument when I preach.

Amos 7:7-9, 12-13

7:7 This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.

7:8 And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by;

7:9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."

…

7:12 And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there;

7:13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom."

Colossians 1:9-14

1:9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

1:10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.

1:11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully

1:12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

1:13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,

1:14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Psalm 82

82:1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

82:2 "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

82:3 Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

82:4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

82:5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

82:6 I say, "You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you;

82:7 nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince."

82:8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!

…that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.  May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power.

 

A World Fit for Naomi

to Bear Fruit in Every Good Work

         I was eager when asked to preach on July 10, a special day in our house.  Naomi was born down the road at Duke Hospital on July 10, 1989.  A couple of things immediately went through my mind, perhaps not in this order.  First, I thought it would be an opportunity to reflect on Naomi, and so many other Mt Level children, as a gift of God to us.  Second, I thought it would give me a chance to tell an embarrassing story about her.  Well, I would not really want to embarrass her too bad.

         Naomi came into the world full of energy and joy.  Many of y’all know her for her grace in worshipful dance, but you may not know that she started practicing her dancing almost as soon as she could walk.  There was a time when she would take a bite of food, climb out of her chair and dance a loop from room to room in the house, then climb back up to continue her meal.  She also was a very creative child in making up words to suit her understanding of the world.  One of those words was the name she called me for a while.  We don’t really know why she combined the words Mommy and Daddy to come up with “Momdy.”  But for a while, when she was 2 yrs old, I was Momdy.  Well I could go on and on, but telling stories on Naomi is not my main purpose today.

         Many of you could easily start in telling fun and funny stories about family memories.  Even when life is hard, families and children can show resilience in finding ways to be joyful together.  We can thank God for making us able to be resilient and to see that life need not be judged by its worst moments.  It’s not always easy to see that.  In the deepest periods of my grief over Everly’s illness and death, you all stood by me.  You saw me step into this pulpit and struggle to speak, even weep at times.  I felt like I had become the crying preacher.  And I’m not sure that today is going to change that pattern. 

Today is a day of sorrow, a day for worship through lament.

         “How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?” the Psalmist cried having lost home, family, and everything else she or he loved.

         “How long, O Lord?” the prophets asked, watching the injustices of the world.

         It’s been a week for calling out to God.   In Baton Rouge, a man was already pinned to the ground and still shot.  In St. Paul, a man cooperating with the officer who stopped him was still shot.  Alton Sterling and Philando Castile—two people’s lives were taken from them, from their families and communities.  As people began to rise in the liturgy of protest across the nation, another mass shooting took place in Dallas, targeting police officers.  Five died:  Lorne Ahrens, Brent Thompson, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, and Patrick Zamarippa.  How many lives must be lost to the evils of racial fear and hatred, God?  How long can this go on?

Every name points to a family, to moms and dads, to sons and daughters, to brothers and sisters.  Bullets have destroyed relationships, traumatized loved ones.  Our hearts break when we hear a boy crying for his daddy, when we hear a little girl trying to comfort her mother.  And it’s only human that we start thinking about our own loved ones.  What kind of world is this for our children and grandchildren?  What kind of world is this for the young people who live on our blocks and in our neighborhoods?  Is this a world fit for Naomi?  I know it’s not the world I want for her.

The reading from the Prophet Amos reminds us that too often the world has not lived up to God’s standards for justice.  He tells about a vision in which he sees the Lord holding a construction tool.  The tool is a plumbline.  It’s a simple tool that relies on the force of gravity, and it has been used at least back into the days of ancient Egypt.  The plumbline, sometimes called a plumb bob, combines a weight and a cord or string to measure whether a beam or other element of a building project is vertical, whether it is perpendicular to the ground.  This is similar in its function to a tool many of us may have used or seen, a level.  A level usually is used to judge whether a beam is horizontally level, and it actually also operates through the force of gravity.  When a builder hangs a plumbline, gravity causes it to hang straight toward the gravitational center of the earth.  The string forms a straight vertical line that can be used to measure whether a wall is being squared up properly to build a strong and stable structure.  If the structure is out of line with the plumbline, then it needs to be corrected.

So when Amos sees this vision of the Lord using a plumbline, it is a vision in which God is taking a measure of whether Israel is lined up the way it should be.  God is checking to see whether the structures of Israel have gotten out of whack.  Has Israel become crooked?  Are Israel’s public officials, rulers, and other powerful people out of line, bent, and twisted?  God is not going to ignore a misaligned society, according to Amos.  The rulers and religious institutions are in for an inspection, and being found to be crooked and out of whack, they will have to be set right.  Some boards and masonry may have to be knocked down so they can be rebuilt the right way.  Some people in charge will have to be replaced.

If we were to read the whole book of Amos, we would find that a wealthy class has conspired with the rulers and the priests to let greed win out over justice.  The poor are suffering.  They are becoming slaves in service of an oppressive ruling class.  The systems of political and economic justice that God had given to Israel have been ignored and discarded.  Israel has gotten out of whack, and the priests and prophets who should be upholding the law and looking out for the people are themselves in on the corrupt system.  Amaziah, high priest of Bethel, is angry with Amos for criticizing the temple and the king.  He challenges Amos for daring to speak against the house of worship and against the king.  He says that Amos should not say such things in the king’s sanctuary.

Does Amaziah not understand what he is saying?  Isn’t the house of worship dedicated to God?  Isn’t it God’s house?  Yet Amaziah says it belongs to the king.  He calls it a temple of the kingdom.  Help us, Lord, if we have become the king’s sanctuary and a temple of the kingdom.  Help us if we have become the governor’s sanctuary and the temple of the General Assembly. 

Are we unwilling to speak the truth in our churches because we dare not offend the powerful?  Do we believe our preachers have crossed the line if they criticize the mayor, the manager, the governor, the legislators, the board chair, the police chief, or the sheriff?  Have we gathered here to worship the social structures and the status quo as if whatever is happening in political and economic life is the will of God? 

Lord, give us the courage and hard-headedness of Amos!  He told Amaziah that he was neither a prophet (by which he probably meant a well-trained messenger from God, perhaps from the priesthood like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and others) nor was he the son of a prophet (by which he probably  meant a disciple or trainee working under a prophet).  He was a farmworker who did not let his particular job nor his lack of training  keep him from doing what God sent him to do.  Let us be ready, whether we are trained prophets or not, to speak the truth God gives us to the powers that oppress and abuse people.  The plumbline does not lie.  Social forces have warped the world we are in and gotten it all out of line.  It’s not producing and protecting justice.  God is expecting us, like Amos, to stand up for justice.

Psalm 82 creates a dramatic portrayal of God’s judgment upon the bent and crooked systems and structures of our world.  It describes an imaginary divine council, as if there were a pantheon of gods who came together to argue and negotiate the fate of the world.  It was not uncommon to believe such a thing possible in the ancient world, with the common assumption that every group of people, every tribe or nation, had its own patron god.  Some of the Bible’s stories imply that the various gods battle against one another for territory and for devotion.  According to this Psalm, a council of divinities has gathered, and in walks the God of Israel.  When God walks in, the politics of the meeting change. 

It says God claimed the seat of judgment.  That would seem to be the highest place.  This telling of the story quickly makes it seem that those who would pretend to be gods are being put in their place.  Having taken the seat of judgment, God speaks to principalities and powers gathered there.

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

This Psalm helps us to understand what is out of line from Amos’s vision of the plumbline.

         First, it says they are judging unjustly.  The decisions made by powerful people are showing partiality.  The wicked thrive because the legal system is twisted to help the powerful.  Bribes and influence peddling are distorting the fair distribution of goods among the people.  Abuses and oppression slip through the courts, and no one is held accountable for clearly unjust acts.  The Psalmist calls out all who are abusing the system to benefit some and harm most.  With Amos and the Psalmist, we must stand up against an unjust legal system.  Whether the abuses happen in the North Carolina General Assembly, in the US Congress, in the police department, in the district court, in the banks, in the boardrooms, in the jailhouse, in the fast food chain, in the immigrant detention center, in the housing authority, in the big box stores, or in the social services department—the time has come to change the way things are being done.

         Second, the Psalmist names our duty as “giving justice.”  People deserve better than they are getting.  There is a right response to human dignity and a right response to wrongdoing.  The right response is justice.  When justice is denied, society starts to crumble.  The efforts of the powerful and wealthy to benefit themselves without care for others will eventually destroy the system which is benefiting them.  An unjust social order destroys itself from within, but the tragedy is how many people are harmed and even killed by injustice while the corrupted system remains in place.  The antidote to this road to destruction is to restore a system of justice for all.  With Amos and the Psalmist, we have to fight back against unjust laws and unjust conduct of the legal system.  Those who do wrong should face consequences and have opportunities to repent and change their ways.  Those who have been abused should be restored to their just and joyful state of living. We have to take to the streets and to the halls of decision-making to be faithful to God.  Seeking revenge is no form of justice, but a continuing corruption and expansion of injustice. 

         Having said to give justice, the Psalmist restates this charge with additional demands.  The Psalm has God telling the others gathered in the council to “maintain the right” of the ones who are being abused.  Giving justice is not only setting things right that have already gone wrong.  It is also promoting a system in which justice is the standard operating procedure.  It is making sure people have what is rightly theirs before they become destitute.  Extending the availability of health care to tens of millions more people is an attempt to maintain the right.  Yet if the laws are flawed and create opportunities for powerful corporations and their executives to overcharge for drugs and medical procedures, there is still much more to be done.  If the system continues to shut out millions of people, to allow medical bankruptcy to be the most common form of bankruptcy, and to use medical care as an ideological tool for party politics rather than a cause of justice, there is still much more for us to do.  God’s gift of health to creation should not go to the highest bidder nor be denied to those whose jobs pay less than a living wage.

         Part of our duty, according to the Psalmist, is to rescue and deliver the poor and needy from the hands of the wicked.  Whether it is the abuse of usury through payday loans charging 300% to 700% interest, or the speculative real estate deals that put renters out of affordable housing to redevelop neighborhoods for gentrification, or the high risk financial transactions that led to a worldwide economic crash that put hard-working people out of jobs and homes, we must be about the work of rescue and deliverance.  We can’t sit idly by and watch governments that bail out supersized banks, that allow the very people who destroyed the economy to continue getting richer rather than go to jail, and that leave unemployed people without health care, without homes, and without hope for a job that pays a living wage.  We have to open our hands, our buildings, our pantries, and our wallets to those who have been put out, cast aside, nickeled and dimed, and kicked to the curb.  The work to rescue those harmed by the injustices of the world is part of the work of giving justice.

Third and finally, we should note that the Psalmist is naming the ones who are being abused and should be given justice.  The list includes the weak, the orphan, the lowly, the destitute, the needy.  Just to make sure, the Psalmist mentions the weak twice.  The point is that some have access to the halls of power and others do not.  The ones who have had to depend on a just social order to protect them are now being abused.  Their weakness is not a lack of ability or strength, but it is a lack of connections, of access, and of anyone to call on for help.  They are not in the noble families.  They don’t have money to grease the palms of those who might help them.  They lack many basic necessities.  They are deprived of what any person must have to thrive and flourish.  Symbolic of this kind of weakness is the orphan.  Lacking parents, the protection of orphans falls to other family members or community members, and orphans find themselves subject to the whims and indifference of society.  The plumbline shows that the treatment of these people fails the test of verticality—the way they are treated is not upright.  With Amos and the Psalmist, we must take the side of those who are being oppressed and work together for justice.

This imaginary council of gods has failed to measure up to God’s standards for justice.  So God reminds them of their true nature.  While they imagine themselves to be gods, they are not.  They are mortal.  Their end will come.  Like every human institution and government, they will fall.  Then the Psalmist concludes the Psalm by praising God and proclaiming the truth about who God is.  “Rise up, O God, and judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!”  It’s not a council of equals, a group of gods in competition.  It’s a room full of pretenders who must now face the only true God.  The Psalmist calls for God to rise and judge the powers and principalities, the thrones and dominions, the rulers and authorities, the pretenders and posers and wannabes.

As I pointed out earlier, often the Bible presents the idea that the various nations may have their gods in competition with the God of Israel.  We tend not to think quite that same way about the nations and the gods, although perhaps we are not as far from that world as we think.  But it is definitely true that if we examine the ways that we act, it seems like we expect to find rescue and salvation in the world.  There are clearly many gods in our imagination.  These pretenders, these false gods, find their social embodiment among the governmental, corporate, patriarchal, and intellectual structures and systems of our world.  We look to these powers for salvation, although we seldom use that language.  We keep the salvation language locked up in church, but we live as if we still need many more saviors outside the halls of worship.

Who in our day are the gods gathered in council?  What are the names of the gods offering us salvation from the challenges of our lives?  What powers are we calling on to get a leg up and prove ourselves better than others?  The Psalmist reminds us that no matter what idols and false gods the world is calling on for salvation, only one God is the true judge and savior of the world.

Only a week ago, across this city and the nation people elevated an idol in their churches by pledging allegiance, not to the God of Jesus Christ, but to the flag.  Many sang songs of war and battle to demonstrate their hope for salvation rooted in the nation and its military might.  The idea of America has become a doctrine of salvation.  It is a belief that by spreading the power and influence of this country, the world will be saved.  Statements of faith about “the greatest country in the world” accompany a theological understanding of America as God’s chosen nation.  These unbiblical and heretical ideas penetrate into institutions that pose as churches, but instead act as the king’s sanctuary, the temple of the kingdom.  Amaziahs all over this country seek to silence the prophets and protect the status quo of power that has its origins in genocide of the native peoples and enslavement of Africans.  God is judging the idols of nationalism and calling us to justice.

Another god of our time is whiteness.  Pale skin functions as a sign of chosenness, a sign of destiny, a sign of superiority in our world.  Darker skin remains a sign to many of condemnation, of evil, and of danger.  Thus some like Dylan Roof rest their faith in protecting the white race by seeking to kill the descendents of Africans, even as they gather in church.  Others with less overt in their racist ideas continue to act out this same worship by labeling children like Trayvon, and Tamir, and Michael, as a menace, as a threat, as a monster.  The fiction of race has had deadly consequences for half a millennium, and it remains a powerful doctrine of salvation expressed in the aphorism, “If you’re white, you’re right.”  The differential treatment of people of color in the legal system and through mass incarceration has given rise to the phrase, “the new Jim Crow.”  One way or another, the legal system seems committed to salvation through destruction and degredation of dark-skinned people.  God is judging the idols of whiteness and racism and calling us to justice.

Another false god of our day is the gun.  The NRA has steadily repeated its religious mantra of salvation that the only way to stop bad people with guns is to have more guns in the hands of good people.  The gun is the means of salvation.  Arm everyone with all sorts of powerful weapons, and this idol tells us we will be safer and more able to defeat evil.  What else is a gun but an instrument of violence?  Some might demand that I do homage to hunting and the long heritage of providing meat for the table.  I can acknowledge that without being turned away from the truth that people who are buying and gathering guns are doing so out of fear that they will have to try to protect themselves from marauding enemies, either from beyond our borders or already within our borders.  Guns are being offered as a way to be saved from immigrants, criminals, and jihadists.  They tell us that guns don’t kill people; people kill people.  But guns make it so much faster and easier for people to kill people.  I would have to reply that guns don’t save people; love saves people.  God is judging the idols of guns and gun violence and calling us to justice.
         Another false god of our time is the border wall.  Some would claim that America can be saved, and all of us with it, if we could just keep out all the foreign people trying to undermine our prosperity and society.  The reasons given are differences of language, differences of culture, differences of religion, and scarcity of the goods that everyone needs.  If we can keep out the outsiders, we’ll be saved.  The God of Jesus Christ has invited all outsiders to come and be part of God’s peoples—all of us who are Gentiles are welcome.  Keeping people out is not God’s way.  God is judging the idols of xenophobia (fear of outsiders) and racial and religious hatred, and calling us to justice.

The Psalmist says the gods were gathered in council, so there must have been many of them present.  Who else was there?  There is the god of money that promises us if we can get enough, we will have everything that we need.  Of course, we always need just a little more.  It is a false doctrine of salvation.  There is the god of superficial, chauvinist Christianity that twists the faith of a peaceable, non-violent Jesus into a call for holy war against Islam.  Yet we are called to love our enemies.  It is a false doctrine of salvation.  There is the god of virility and sexual conquest that promotes male sexual domination to prove one’s power in the world.  Elevating oneself by harming others is ultimately destructive of oneself.  Patriarchal power over women is a false doctrine of salvation.  There is the false god of fortified bathrooms.  Fearing what they do not understand about the variety of sexuality in creation, people grasp at harmful solutions to complicated issues requiring understanding and reconciliation.  Hate Bill 2 is a false doctrine of salvation.  There is the false god of consumption that says we can be somebody if we wear the right labels on our clothes, drive the right vehicles, eat the right foods, join the right clubs, and in every way stay abreast of the trends.  But this neverending consumption in fact consumes us until we disappear into our possessions.  Consumption is a false doctrine of salvation.  There is a false god of respectability.  It tells us that if we just go along to get along, if we keep showing ourselves to be respectful and respectable, we will be saved from the dangers of the abuse of power.  Respectability discourages protest.  It tells the young people to go home and stop talking about “Black Lives Matter.”  It looks for fault in the ones who have been abused, as a way to prove to ourselves that it can’t happen to us.  But this week and the past two years are sure reminders that respectability is a false doctrine of salvation.

         The gods gathered in council are not saviors.  They are idols, bent on using and abusing us for our own destruction.  They distract us from the trust in God that we ought to have by urging us to trust in idols, in salvation by other means.  They discourage us from standing up for the truth of God’s salvation because we are too busy trying to earn a false salvation that promises everything but delivers death.  Guns, money, nationalism, whiteness, and every other false god only draw us away from the one true God who is demanding that we live justly, love mercy, and walk in God’s way.

         The Psalmist’s description of God’s judgment and victory among the false gods of this world is a foreshadowing of the victory of Jesus over the powers and authorities.  Our text from Colossians today speaks about how the people in that church and in that city have grown in their faith and in following the ways of Jesus to the point that they are bearing much fruit for God.  Their love and their faithfulness to Jesus’ ways have become well known.  Since we know Jesus and we know what the Psalmist has written here, we can infer that their bearing of fruit must also include a flourishing of justice in their community.

         Beyond the first chapter of Colossians, Paul goes on to write about the victory of Christ over evil.  He says that the thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, and powers are subject to Christ because they are part of the creation that Christ himself accomplished.  Moreover, through his cross and resurrection he has disarmed them and made a public example of them.  He has judged them and now rules over them.  God’s purpose for the structures and institutions of human life is that they contribute to our flourishing, that they serve the good of humanity and all creation, that they give justice to all God’s children.  So just as the Psalmist says, now Paul repeats that we must be about the work of giving justice and maintaining the right, rescuing and delivering the unjustly treated.

         Joining Paul in his prayer for the Colossians, I also pray for our world to be this kind of world.  Although many who seek their own benefit and ignore the good of others are at work to twist this world away from justice, the work of Christ among the Colossians reminds us of the hope for transformation of a corrupted world into a community of love and mutual service.  That is the world that I pray and I work to send my children into.  It is the world that we as God’s people long for.  It is a world in which Naomi can bear fruit in every good work.  Through our prayers and devotion to the God of Jesus Christ, the seeds of that fruit and that good work are planted in her heart and in the hearts of Mt. Level’s children.  Yet we have seen horrifying reminders this week of the continuing struggle against evil, against the false gods and idols of our day, and against the forces that would turn us and our children away from our calling.

         Thus, we continue to join with Paul in his prayer for the Colossians that they will be made strong with all the strength that comes from God’s glorious power.  We will need strength to face the evil at work in our world.  We will need strength to break through the intense misunderstandings and divisions that keep people at odds over race, class, guns, money, and power.  We will need strength to get out of bed day after day to take up the cross of Jesus and live for justice in an unjust world.  We will need strength to love when it seems hate is winning the day.

         Our hope rests in the power of the God of Jesus Christ, who has, as Paul tells the Colossians, “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  As he has rescued us, now we are sent into an unjust world to continue his work.  Jesus has redeemed us.  Jesus has forgiven us.  That is the world into which we may enter:  the loving fellowship of Jesus, a world of redemption, a world of forgiveness.  That is a world fit for our children to respond to the calling to give justice.