Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
This is an interactive manuscript. To follow links, click the highlighted words below.
In 1963, a group of religious leaders in Birmingham, Alabama, unfortunately including our own Bishop in The Episcopal Church, wrote a letter often titled “A Call for Unity”. In it, they denounced protests led, in their words, “in part by outsiders.” They said these actions failed to lead to necessary change and reconciliation between black and white citizens. They advocated simply following the law and order, even when such were clearly unjust towards black citizens.
This letter inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In contrast to his white Birmingham peers, King’s writing is sprinkled with reason, Scripture, and even quotes from great thinkers, ancient and modern, within each tradition of those he was writing to, including our own as Episcopalians. King appeals to their Faith, not the society they live in. King speaks to the Law of God, not the injustice of those around him. King speaks to a change that will actually bring about a better society for all, not a maintenance of the status quo to the betterment of some and the continued prolonged detriment of others.
“A Call for Unity” comes off as a soulless, bland, needless, and patronizing text. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” reads as an impassioned argument derived and reasoned from the core of our Faith. It helps, too, that we know from history which side was right, and which side we should fight for still.
The main problem with the religious leaders of Birmingham, though, is they didn’t actually want to listen to what God was working in front of their eyes. If they did, they wouldn’t have written their letter as they did. God isn’t present in their letter, even for a mention, because that’s not who they were actually listening to in that moment.
The same thing happens with Amos today. Amos is offering God’s words as a warning to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the kingdom that fell first to the Assyrians for their inability to follow God, it should be noted. We should also note that Amos was from Judah, the Southern Kingdom. There was no need for him to help them out. He was simply there because God told him to be there.
Amos isn’t even there to get paid, as he delightly points out to Amaziah, the priest at Bethel. He’s not a professional prophet, nor has he been trained as such. He is simply a “herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees” who heard God’s word to him and listened.
And here’s Amaziah, a priest and religious man, more worried about the politics than actually listen to what God might have to say. If he had, if the whole Northern Kingdom had, then the rest of the story of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, might have ended a lot differently.
We have to be willing to listen to what it is that God is telling us in order to be saved. We have to listen to God, even if we learn that we are in the wrong. We have to listen even when we don’t want to.
We have to listen even if we are told that we are not living up to justice in the way God wants, as our Psalm tells us this morning. If we listen, we can learn the ways of justice from our Lord, ways such as taking care of the weak and the orphan, the humble and needy, the weak and the poor even.
We have to listen even when we learn that doing God’s work means being like a Samaritan, as we learn in the Gospel. Samaritans would have been hated by Jesus’ compatriots at his time. We even saw this two weeks ago from how the Samaritans chose not to receive Jesus and from how Jesus’ Disciples overreacted to this action.
For us, ‘Samaritans’ don’t have to be Samaritans. Take any marginalized or disliked group of the population. Take Dr. King and his peers even. The people you most dislike might surprise you and be more neighborly than even we might be, as Jesus’ Parable demonstrates. This person, these people you hate are the very ones called to be your neighbor.
Yet this is our call, to hear God’s Word, even when we don’t want to. Without it, we cannot even know who our neighbor is. Without it we cannot even fulfill God’s Greatest Commandments. As the Epistle to the Colossians tells us from the start, we cannot even know Jesus in any way without first taking the time to listen.
Through Amos, we see how God’s own Chosen People were not always ready to listen to their own Lord. Through events like the Civil Rights Movement, we see some of the times our own country was unwilling to listen. Are we willing to listen now? Are each of us willing to listen to what God is saying, even when it is something we don’t want to hear? Are we willing to follow what God wants, even when it’s not what we want? Do we even care what it is that God has to say? Or are we instead willing to learn from the mistakes of those before us and take them as a warning of what could happen to us if we don’t stop, turn around, and actually listen to God?