University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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Amos 5:1-24
A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham
University Presbyterian Church
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
August 8, 2010

I’m begging you [he said]… look for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.  Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes![1]

A few days later, he called an emphasis on social justice “a perversion of the gospel.”[2] The response was swift and strong from many Christian church leaders, and even from Beck’s own Mormon church leaders, all of whom pointed out that concern for justice was not an option for Christians (or Mormons, for that matter), but rather an essential component of our calling to faithfulness.  My guess is that Beck got exactly what he wanted out of the exchange, because his program is designed to provoke and enflame and outrage people as a way of guaranteeing market share. So I held my fire at the time. 

            But then we started this summer preaching series, and I knew it was only a matter of time until we turned to the Old Testament prophets.  I knew that for the most part the prophets had only two concerns: faithfulness to God and, you guessed it, social justice.  How Glenn Beck could have missed such a dominant emphasis of the prophets, echoed so often in Jesus’ teachings, is a mystery to me, but I do know of one seminary that immediately began taking up a collection to buy a Bible for Mr. Beck.

            I don’t intend this sermon as an argument with Glenn Beck, but on this matter I need to say as clearly as I know how, he is just wrong.  After his tirade in March I went immediately to look at our own Web site, hoping that we had been faithful enough to name justice as part of our mission. Sure enough, it is there:

            It is our belief that God calls us to be Christ’s community

            of faith and moral discourse in Chapel Hill and the University…

            worshiping with enthusiasm and joy,

            proclaiming God’s truth with boldness and confidence…

            equipping all members for ministry in today’s world…

            reaching out with compassion and love to all who are in need…

            [and] constantly seeking peace and justice for all of God’s children.

            It is part and parcel of who we are…of what we’ve long aspired to be, at least, here at University Church, as it is at a lot of churches.  In language that varies from place to place, many congregations affirm such values.  Soon after Glenn Beck’s diatribe, one of my colleagues, Tim Hart-Anderson, pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Minneapolis, said this about his congregation’s mission statement, posted on its Web page… a mission statement that calls the church’s members “to work for love and justice,”

I do not fear an exodus of people from Westminster over these issues; I doubt that anyone will “run” from this church over a read of scripture that leads us to seek justice. Sometimes we disagree on particular matters, but we have not hidden our commitments, which I believe we share. This latest controversy, if anything, merely serves as a reminder for us to reiterate where we stand. Social justice is not “a perversion of the gospel,” as has been claimed. On the contrary, pursuing justice is at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. [3]

Tim said further,

Biblical justice is in the very fiber of our faith. We do not subscribe to the notion that our faith stops at simple acts of charity. Like the women of scripture who stand up for the poor, we, too, respond to human need; but biblical justice – the Hebrew concept here is [mishpat,  or justice, blended with] tzedakah, or righteousness – biblical justice requires us to do more: to work for a world where oppression and poverty and injustice are not the norm for anyone. God mandates this of us in the pages of both the older and newer testaments.[4]

            Today, we look at this critical theme of “social justice,” this fundamental element of the Judeo-Christian repertoire.  And we do so by turning to Amos, the prophet.  Amos was not a man of great theological training. He was a simple shepherd from the crossroads community of Tekoa.  But God gave him a message to speak, and the words nagged at Amos like holy heartburn.  Kathlyn James says,

Amos is the earliest of Israel's prophets from whom we have a book of writings. The name Amos means "burden bearer," and it fits, for Amos carries the burden of being the bearer of bad news. Nobody likes to hear about evil and injustice, especially when times are good. Being a prophet of God is always a lonely job.

Amos comes onto the scene during one of the most prosperous periods of Jewish history. Israel is free from hostile enemies; the economy is sound; society is stable. But Amos can't help but see that within this outward peace there is a creeping rottenness at the core of society that will bring destruction in the end. He sees rampant cheating going on in business; judges being bribed in the courts; gross mistreatment of the poor; religion that has grown shallow and meaningless. He sees a people that have become self-indulgent and soft, and leaders who are increasingly corrupt.[5]

         And so Amos speaks words of God's profound disapproval and warning.  "Seek the Lord and live," he shouts, "or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire, and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it."  He says, "Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate," holding out the hope that "it may be that the Lord . . . will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."

         But he assails their self-confident assessment that all is well and they enjoy God's favor because the nation is propserous.  He warns against their self-assurance before God and speaks in God's name before the people:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
   Why do you want the day of the Lord?
 .... Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light?  

I hate, I despise your festivals,

  and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

 ...  Take away from me the noise of your songs;

  I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let [mishpat] justice roll down like waters,

  and [tzedekah] righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

²¹

What does Amos mean when he says, “Let justice roll down like waters”?  Lutheran scholar James Limburg sees three important dimensions to this central Biblical mandate as it is expressed by Amos and the other eighth-century prophets.

            First, he says, justice is a “dynamic” notion.  Justice is something we “do” as a people. When the prophet Micah asks the question, “With what shall I come before the Lord,” the answer is first and foremost “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

The picture that the word “justice” beings to mind in our western tradition is that of a woman, blindfolded, holding a set of balances before her. Thus “justice” is a static concept, a noun, describing the achievement of fairness and equality and symbolized in the state of balance where all is at rest.  The image Amos calls to mind is entirely different. Justice is like a surging, churning, cleansing stream.  All is in motion and commotion. Nothing is at rest….This is the prophetic picture of justice; it is more like an onrushing torrent than a balanced scale.[6]

            Second, says Limburg, justice is the expected response of the people of God to what God had done for them.

The prophet Isaiah once put his message in the form of a folk song (Isa. 5:1-7). He sang about a friend who carefully tended a vineyard, digging it, clearing it of stones, building a watchtower in it, and hewing out a wine vat; but the vineyard produced only wild and worthless grapes! This, said the prophet, was a picture of Israel [in his time]. Although God had done much for this nation, when the Lord looked for the fruits of justice and righteousness they were not there, and the vineyard had to be destroyed. God’s people doing justice is like a farmer’s vineyard producing grapes.  Doing justice is the people of God responding to what God has done for them.[7]

            Finally, Limburg says, the prophets’ notion of letting “justice roll down like waters” means that the nation and its people are to act as advocates for those who are powerless. The prophets were particularly concerned about the poor and those who had been orphaned or widowed.  When the prophet Isaiah calls on the people of Israel to “cease to do evil,/ learn to do good,/ seek justice,/ and correct oppression,” he is calling them to take up the cause of the powerless. Thus, says Limburg,

When the prophets speak of justice, they do not enter into the realm of the theoretical or speak of philosophical or legal notions… at all.  Rather, they lead us through those quarters of the city where the poor live and they invite us to look into the eyes of the lonely widow, the hurting orphan, and the hungry beggar.  Or they take us through the countryside and introduce us to a young couple about to lose the family farm. Or we may be led to a home for the aged, where a lonely hand reaches out to be touched.

When the people of God expend their imagination and their energy [not just in compassion, but] in advocacy, in working to remove the discrimination built into … economic and legal systems, in finding ever new and effective ways to take up the cause of the powerless, then justice will begin to roll through the land like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[8]

            After days of relentless criticism from church leaders, Glenn Beck relented a bit. He said later that he wasn’t against justice, which he equated with charity and compassion. What he opposed, he said, was an emphasis on social justice that implied political advocacy for the redistribution of wealth.[9]

            But, you see, once again, by Biblical measurements, Beck missed the point.  Biblical justice is more than charity.  Charity is an act of mercy and compassion, and mercy and compassion are no small things, but mercy and compassion without justice are incomplete.  The prophets’ call to the nations was to do both – to open wide their hands to the poor and to work for the elimination of poverty, to care for the oppressed and to advocate for the end of their oppression, to feed the hungry and to challenge the economic structures that allowed some to feast while others starved.  The prophets did care about the redistribution of wealth, about the redistribution of access, about the redistribution of fairness and equity; they cared about setting things back the way God intended them to be.  The prophets still teach us, and Christian faith affirms that we are to live lives of deep compassion – extending care to those who need care, food to the hungry, companionship to the lonely.  But the prophets also teach us and Christian faith affirms that compassion alone is incomplete without an accompanying passion for justice in the land.

            When we gather here for worship each week, in our prayers we most always lift up the needs of the world.  We ask God to be with the hungry, the lonely, the victims of war and of disaster, the oppressed.  Our prayers, I believe, are earnest and heartfelt. I see evidence every week of the way so many of you live out your prayers in ministries of care and compassion for those who have deep needs, lending your hands and hearts to your prayers.  Yet I also pray that God will judge our hearts kindly when it comes to the way we have worked for the end of oppression and hunger and war and have fought against pride and greed that tend to blind us to injustice all around us.  I pray that God will look with mercy upon us, that we may never hear the words that Israel had to hear from the prophet Amos:

         I hate, I despise your festivals,

           and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

         Take away from me the noise of your songs;

         I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

Indeed, I hope God will judge that we have heard and heeded Amos’ clarion call to faithfulness and obedience:

         Let justice roll down like waters,

         and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.