A sermon preached at Good Shepherd Berkeley: Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, July 15, 2019

Proper 10C: Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

It’s a long road this morning from Amos’s horrifying encounter with the priest Amaziah to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Two powerful readings, but what can they possibly have in common? What makes both of these stories a part of the scriptures of our faith?

Well, each embodies something central to human existence. Amos’s prophesy talks about the past and justice and judgement. Jesus’ parable speaks of the future and friendship and love. They’re both terribly important. And, all through the Bible, there is a serious conversation going on between these two.

So, first, why is Amos so angry at the people of Israel? (That’s “Israel” in the sense of the northern kingdom, created after Solomon’s death when ten of the tribes of Israel rejected the heirs of David and chose another king for themselves.) Why is he so angry? The short answer is that he was outraged by some things we are getting reacquainted with in our own world: extremes of social inequality, indifference to the fate of the poor and needy, a philosophy that human life is all about getting rich—and woe betide anyone getting in the way. It’s been astonishing in the last few decades to find these evils coming to life anew in our own country. 

Amos was angry and he had been sent by God to tell the people of Israel that God cares about justice and will not overlook the wrongs that have transpired. Indeed, Amos tells them that their land will be laid waste in punishment and they themselves taken off into slavery in a distant place. 

How did he know? How could he be so sure of all this? Partly it was because God had spoken to him, inexperienced though he was with this sort of thing. (He wasn’t a professional prophet or preacher; he was a stock farmer and an orchardist. And he must have been appalled at what he was told to do and say.) But that doesn’t just mean that Amos had been let in on a divine secret. The Scriptures are full of the conviction that social crimes like these will produce disaster, that no people or nation can stand when the rich and powerful treat the poor like dirt. 

God passes judgement on Israel in that vision with the plumb line. A plumb line, a cord with a heavy weight on it, will always be vertical. All it does is show how crooked the wall is that it’s held next to—how close to falling. God has rescued his people before from disaster. But not this time; now they will be left to their just deserts: “I will never again pass them by.” 

And the kind of disaster Amos foresees will not, of course, fall just on the perpetrators of wrong, the greedy ones, the persecutors of the poor. For the whole society the has become warped and tottery, and its fall will bring everyone down with it, the innocent alongside the guilty. 

It all becomes horribly clear in Amos’s prophecy to Amaziah: 

Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,

and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,

and your land shall be parceled out by line;

you yourself shall die in an unclean land.

Isn’t that rather unjust in itself? I am relieved to remember a passage from Ezekiel that contradicts this one, saying that children will not be punished for the sins of their forebears (cap. 18). But we all know, from the history of the last century, that when society goes berserk, the consequences fall on everyone.

Justice is a cardinal issue of our faith, a note struck again and against throughout the Scriptures. It was there in our Psalm this morning. A peculiar Psalm, isn’t it? Not easy to make sense of. We’re used to starting the Bible with Genesis and thinking of God as simply God, right from the start. But this Psalm tells an older story, older than Genesis about how God became the only God. This Psalm says it’s because God convicted his rivals of injustice. 

How long will you judge unjustly, he says,

and show favor to the wicked?

For all their injustice, the punishment was to lose their divine status:

Now I say to you, “You are Gods,

and all of you children of the Most High.

Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, 

and fall like any ruler.”

That Psalm must have come from some very ancient writer. But it still rings true: we know these other gods are still at work in our own world. The god named “Wealth,” the God named “Market,” the god named “Greed,” the god named “Force,” the god named “Indifference,” and all the rest. And we know that when they fall, they can take the innocent as well as the evil down with them. It may be a reckless, careless kind of justice; but it is a familiar reality of our earthly, human lives.

And what in this world is anyone to do about it? One thing, of course, is to make sure that our own voices and lives express a different kind of faith, the faith of Amos and of Jesus. And this isn’t always easy in a world where the super-rich and super-famous set the standards of human behavior. We find ourselves having to make choices that sometimes go against the flow. How do we find an image of the kind of life we hope to lead, a life that will help ameliorate our current injustices? 

And this question, which rises inevitably out of our reading from Amos, finds one of its answers in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

It’s a familiar story and one that you’ll have heard many times. You’ve probably heard its obscurities explained many times, too, but let me say just a few words about it. Remember that the passage begins with Jesus and a lawyer talking about life with God. And Jesus gives the answer he must have given many times, quoting two passages from the Torah: Love God with your whole self and love your neighbor as yourself.” But the lawyer says, in effect, “How do I know who my neighbor is?” 

Then comes the story: a traveller, presumably Jewish, is going down to Jericho when he is attacked, robbed and left for dead. Two religious leaders come along, a priest and a levite, both officials of the temple in Jerusalem. Each passes the man by. Who knows why? Fear that the robbers might still be lurking nearby? Fear that it’s a trap? Fear that he’s already dead and that touching him would render them unclean and unable to perform their temple duties? Who knows? The point is simply that here are two people who are quite religious and probably otherwise admirable people—and they don’t pause to help. 

But then someone does stop. And, if the man who’s been robbed is conscious enough to see who it is, he’s going to be terrified all over again—because this man is a Samaritan; and in those days, Samaritans and Jews got along about as well as Israelis and Palestinians today. If the priest and levite might be assumed to be neighbors of the man lying beside the road, this Samaritan is a presumed enemy. Yet, the Samaritan takes the risk that the priest and levite chose not to, gets the man to an inn, pays for his care and promises the inn-keeper more when he returns if it’s needed. 

And then the story ends with a very strange question. The lawyer had asked “Who ismy neighbor?” Jesus responds by asking—this gets covered up, I’m afraid, in our English translations—”Who becameneighbor to this man?” Jesus’ question undercuts the idea that we have a limited group of clearly defined neighbors whom we have a duty to help. The real issue is how we go about makingneighbors. 

Jesus agrees with the rest of the scriptures about the evil of injustice and the judgement it inevitably calls down on itself. But if we turn our eyes from the past and its consequences, how do we imagine and embrace the future? Make neighbors. Become neighbors. It may not be anything quite so dramatic or dangerous as what the Good Samaritan did. But the opportunity arises again and again in our human lives. Making neighbors, becoming neighbors, is the great key to the future. It flies full in the face of the culture of casual injustice that has gained such a death grip on our world today. And it opens the door to the future.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ABOUT TRANSLATION: The traditional English translation of Luke 10:36 has Jesus ask, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” (King James Version) This must reflect a desire to have Jesus’ response match the lawyer’s original question: “And who is my neighboour?” But the Greek verb (a form of ginomai) is not the same and should be translated, as David Bentley Hart has done, “Who of these three does it seem to you became a neighbor to the man . . .?”

The earlier translators’ desire to have question and answer match is understandable, but Jesus is actually implying that his interlocutor has asked the wrong question. “Neighbor” is not a predefined category, but one to be created through acts of love.