Mixin It Up – Mixin in Justice
Sycamore Creek Church
February 6, 2011
Tom Arthur
Amos 8:1-7

Peace, Friends!

Today we wrap up a four part sermon series called Mixin It Up. What are we mixin up?  We’re mixin up missions and small groups.  These are two things that sometimes we don’t think to put together.  Kind of like apples and cheese.  When I first saw someone put apples and cheese together to eat, I thought, “That’s disgusting.”  But then I gave it a try and was surprised at how good it tasted.  The same is often true of missions and small groups.  We keep them separate, but throughout the next two months, each small group will be meeting and doing some kind of mission project in the community.  The emphasis here is not so much on serving but on building friendships with the poor and poor in spirit.  Friendship is a give and take kind of thing.  We receive as much if not more than what we give.  And I’m not talking about just receiving the good feeling of serving.  I’m talking about the kinds of things you receive from friends.  Companionship.  Laughter.  Forgiveness.  Grace.  Salvation.

The first week we looked at a basic blueprint for how this was all going to work.  Then we looked at Jesus’ incarnation, coming in the flesh, as a model for what that friendship looks like.  Last week we looked at mission with vs. mission to.  Today we’re mixin in justice.  Missions as friendship with the poor and the poor in spirit is also about justice.  Let’s look to the book of Amos to understand how missions is an act of justice.

Amos 8:1-7 (NLT)

¹ Then the Sovereign LORD showed me another vision. In it I saw a basket filled with ripe fruit. ² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”

Then the LORD said, “This fruit represents my people of Israel — ripe for punishment! I will not delay their punishment again. ³ In that day the riotous sounds of singing in the Temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!”

⁴ Listen to this, you who rob the poor and trample the needy! ⁵ You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over and the religious festivals to end so you can get back to cheating the helpless. You measure out your grain in false measures and weigh it out on dishonest scales. ⁶ And you mix the wheat you sell with chaff swept from the floor! Then you enslave poor people for a debt of one piece of silver or a pair of sandals.

⁷ Now the LORD has sworn this oath by his own name, the Pride of Israel : “I will never forget the wicked things you have done!

 

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

 

I love puns.  I hear the groans already.  Have you ever heard of the O. Henry Pun-Off?  It’s a contest between two people to see who can come up with the most puns about a topic.  Each person has three seconds to come up with a pun.  They go back and forth and back and forth until one can’t come up with a pun.  The winning round a few years ago was on the theme of dance and the winners came up with over 30 puns on dancing.  Here are my top ten (feel free to groan):

1.      You’re bouncing of the waltz on that.

2.      Do cows that are sick have moo-sick?

3.      If I was Canadian I’d be doing ball-eh?

4.      I’m a-ball-ed at that one.

5.      I don’t know if I con-go on.

6.      At the senior dance you need the right beverage.  It’s called a prom-enade.

7.      I’ve been working so hard I’d better put my ho-down.

8.      I’ve got to hip-hop off the stage.

9.      Dan’ce my best friend.

10.  All this talk about dancing makes me think, “I-rish dancing was part of this competition.”

Just in case that wasn’t enough, here’s one of my own:

These punsters gave us ten puns, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make us laugh. No pun in ten did.

Ughhhh….

Why all this talk about puns?  Because Amos tells a pun to get across his point about justice.  Did you catch it when we read Amos?  If not, here it is:

 

Amos 8:2 (NLT)

“What do you see, Amos?” [the LORD] asked.
I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”
Then the LORD said, “This fruit represents my people of Israel — ripe for punishment!”

Ughhh….

It’s a little hard to translate this pun, so here’s how another translation does it:

Amos 8:2 (NIV)

“What do you see, Amos?” [the LORD] asked.
“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.
Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.”

 

That’s right.  “Ughhh” because of the pun.  But even more, “Ughhh” because of the injustice.  What’s up with this?  Isn’t God slow to anger and abounding in love?  Apparently God’s patience also runs out.

If you read Amos over the next week, which I recommend (it’s only nine chapters long), you’ll come across four visions in chapters seven and eight.  The first two show God’s patience.  God shows Amos a vision of locusts that destroy the land and crops.  Then we read, “Then I said, ‘O Sovereign LORD, please forgive your people! Unless you relent, Israel will not survive, for we are only a small nation.’ So the LORD relented and did not fulfill the vision. ‘I won’t do it,’ he said” (Amos 7:2-3, NLT).  After this vision God shows Amos a vision of fire but relents on this one two.  Then we get past God’s patience.  God shows Amos a vision of a plumb line, a line that tells you whether something is straight.  It is a line of judgment.  God then says, “I will no longer ignore all their sins.”  And lastly Amos gets this vision of ripe fruit and God says, “I will not delay their punishment again.”  If the LORD is slow to anger, it does suggest that at some point God’s patience runs out.  What is it that could possibly cause God’s patience to run out?

The answer to this question is that Israel has oppressed the poor.

God says, “Listen to this, you who rob the poor and trample the needy!…Then you enslave poor people for a debt of one piece of silver or a pair of sandals. Now the LORD has sworn this oath by his own name, the Pride of Israel : “I will never forget the wicked things you have done!” (Amos 8:4-7, NLT).  In other words, they have “nickel and dimed” the poor.  This theme shows up over and over again in Amos.  God says, “They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way…” (Amos 2:6-8, NRSV).  And then again, “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on Mount Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy…” (Amos 4:1-2, NRSV).  And again, “You trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain…and push aside the needy in the gate” (Amos 5:10-12, NRSV).  Israel has neglected and even actively oppressed the poor among them.

But the wrong goes even deeper.  For it is the church people who do this!  This past week I did probably one of the most unchristian things I have done in a long time.  I went to the vigil on Monday night for the young people who died in a car accident this past Sunday.  It was a very very cold night.  I was bundled up as warmly as I could be.  It was a very moving vigil.  Somewhere over 200 youth were there to mourn and remember and pray for their fellow students.  Many of them were woefully underdressed.

After the vigil was over, I saw one of our church members, Erin Umpstead, who is a teacher at Holt High School.  As we were talking one of her students came up to her and showed her the frost bite on her hands.  She wasn’t wearing any gloves.  No hat.  She had flats on with no socks.  I was moved by Erin’s compassion for this young woman.  Erin offered her student her own coat, gloves, and hat.  She didn’t accept but she did say that she needed a ride home.  Erin had a couple of things she was still wanting to do, but she offered to give her a ride home after she had met some other teachers who were there.

The thought quickly went through my head, “I’m leaving right now.  I could give this young woman a ride home.”  The next thought that went through my head was, “Remember your training.  It’s not appropriate for a pastor to give a young woman a ride alone.  It might not look good.  It could ruin your vocation.”  You know what I did?  I didn’t even offer her a ride home.  I chose the safety of “appropriate boundaries for clergy” over the real immediate need that was there present before me, and I walked by myself to my car.  I chose purity of religious perception over love.  I kicked myself all the way home, and then I asked God to forgive me.  If I knew who the girl was, I would ask for her forgiveness too.  This is the kind of thing going on that Amos points out.  The church people, the ones who are supposed to know about God’s love, are ignoring the poor.

God says through Amos, “You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over and the religious festivals to end so you can get back to cheating the helpless” (Amos 8:5, NLT).  They go to “church” but then they can’t wait for it to be over so they can get back to making a buck off the poor.  God adds, “Come to Bethel — and transgress; to Gilgal — and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; bring a thank offering of leavened bread, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel! says the Lord GOD” (Amos 4:4-5, NRSV).  And again, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.  Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:22-24, NRSV).

This last one might sound familiar.  Martin Luther King, Jr. used that last line in his “I Have a Dream” speech.  MLK is perhaps one of the greatest examples in modern times of a Christian who stood up to injustice in a uniquely Christian manner – non-violently with the aim of retaining the possibility for friendship between blacks and whites and people of all colors.  As we watch the mostly peaceful demonstrators in Egypt, we are seeing the same call for justice played out even today.

When I was living in Durham, North Carolina, I would often stop and have lunch with Allen, a guy who “panhandled” at the highway exit to my street.  One day as we were sitting there eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talking, a police car pulled up to us.  The policeman asked us if we had a panhandler license.  Yes you heard me right.  A panhandler license.  In Durham, you have to have a license to beg!  To get this license you must have a picture ID and pay a fee.  Then you have to wear this license around your neck along with a florescent vest.

Laws like this have been overturned as unconstitutional in many cities that have them, but in order for them to be overturned, someone with the resources and will to challenge the law must first be arrested.  The policeman told us that we would have to move along or we would be arrested.  (The issue here is not with the policeman.  He is merely doing his job of enforcing the law.)  Now I have tended to be one who steers clear of acts of civil disobedience like this, but for some reason, maybe it was because Allen had become my friend, a kind of righteous anger boiled in my veins.  I was very heavily leaning toward being arrested, if Allen wanted to, but he was not, and so we moved on, and an unjust law that criminalizes the poor continues in Durham.

On Facebook this past week, I asked about times that people have stood up for injustice.  Emily Vliek, a hospice social worker, wrote me this, and I think it is spot on:

Hey Tom-
I’ve been thinking about your post the other day asking if we have ever stood up against an injustice. I think I’ve learned a lot about this topic in my first years as a social worker, and I am by no means perfect or some ideal of standing up against injustice. I learn EVERYDAY! But I think that often “standing up against injustice” can sound like some grand gesture that only really strong or outspoken people can do. I automatically think of protests and sit-ins and MLK. While this is what he did, I think it can also be done on a daily basis in much smaller ways. Anybody can take a part in stopping injustice. I see this more as being an advocate role for others. Whether they are, “poor or poor in spirit” we can give a voice to people who have no voice or those who can’t seem to find their voice. Helping share another’s story can be a powerful way to stop injustice. In my work I try to make each of my patient’s and family’s struggles relatable so that we treat each patient as we would want to be treated. It struck me the other day that this is stopping injustice. Whether we are poor or poor in spirit we each have common experiences in our living, our dying, our parenting, etc. I feel that finding these commonalities and finding our common humanity is fighting injustice. When others don’t seem as drastically different from “us”…that can be a powerful change.

God might say to us through Amos, “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (Amos 4:12, NRSV).

 

You might be thinking right now, “But aren’t we saved by grace through faith?” (Ephesians 2:8).  By all means, but faith does not exclude doing good.  In fact, ripe faith produces good fruit.  Consider these three ideas:

Faith without works is dead (James 2:26).

Our deeds must be consistent with repentance (Acts 26:20).

Christians bear fruit worthy of repentance (Matthew 3:8).

Israel in Amos’ time has become fruitless, and God will not forgive them forever.  My own translation of the pun in Amos chapter eight goes like this:

Thus the Lord God showed me a cage of fruit,
He asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
I said, “A cage of fruit.”
The Lord God said to me, “My people, Israel, have become fruitless;
I will not forgive them forever.”

God has not called us to cage up our fruit.  Salvation includes bearing fruit in our own lives and in the lives of those around us.  Salvation is not just about friendship with God (justification) but also friendship with others (sanctification).  Remember Jesus’ summary of all the commandments: Love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40).  Being saved, being a Christian means changing things here and now.  We are not just souls waiting for salvation in eternity.  We are whole people with bodies and real needs that need saving right now.

What does this kind fruit of justice look like when it is ripe?  Consider these three examples: First, in the third century plague, Christians risked their lives by ministering to those sick and dying.  If they could not cure them, they would make sure that none of them died alone.  Second, I recently read about the story of Louis Zamporini, a U.S. POW in a Japanese POW camp.  The guards in his camp treated him horrifically except one.  Kawamura, one of Louis’ Japanese guards, was also a Christian.  Kawamura gave Louis extra rations, didn’t beat him, and even protected him from the violence of other guards.  Third, Archbishop Elias Chacour, an Arab Christian, runs a school in Israel for children of any religion: Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.  In this way he helps build friendships that one day may bring peace in such a conflict ridden region.

What people with what needs need to be saved here in Lansing?  That’s what Mixin It Up is all about.  Through our small groups we’ll be forming friendships with the poor and poor in spirit.  Sometimes all that we’ll be able to give is our friendship.  That in itself is an act of justice.  Sometimes we’ll be able to do more.

Thus the Lord God showed me a cage of fruit,
He asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
I said, “A cage of fruit.”
The Lord God said to me, “My people, Israel, have become fruitless;
I will not forgive them forever.”