All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.

Transcription

1 The Prophetic Call for Justice Sixth in the Series: The Minor Prophets are MAJOR Amos 8: 1 6; Micah 3: 8 12; Micah 6: 6 8 August 17, 2014 McCormick United Methodist Church, McCormick, SC Paul A. Wood, Jr. All biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. Awhile back I read a little book which is simply titled Night. It was written by a man who later won the Nobel Prize for Peace Elie Wiesel. He was a young teenager growing up in Romania when the Nazis came. His family and dozens of other Jewish families were told to hand over their gold and jewelry. Eventually his family was forced to walk to railroad cars. The Wiesel family was put into a railroad car with dozens of other people and given no food or water. They were taken to concentration camps, many to be killed by gassing, then to have their bodies burned. Others were put to work on behalf of the German army. With the teenager were other Jews; polish people who weren t Jews; people who were mentally ill or physically disabled; homosexuals; Freemasons; Jehovah s Witnesses; political prisoners; and prisoners of war. Both of Wiesel s parents perished. A little sister died. Only Wiesel and his two older sisters survived. They were liberated by Allied troops in 1945 from the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. Elie Wiesel is living testimony to the cruelty and injustice suffered by millions of people around the globe in the last hundred years. He is a devout follower of the God of Abraham. He is a hopeful reminder that the future can bring better things. Today we focus our attention on a major issue to the Minor Prophets.injustice. Amos spoke for God and said: Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate. (Amos 5: 15a) I have already mentioned the court system of Amos day and how unscrupulous people used bribes to deny justice to others. In today s passage the prophet has switched to commerce. Farmers are bringing their freshly harvested grain to the middlemen who will have it milled. But the millers are using deception to cheat their customers of what is owed them. Amos is most critical of those with wealth and power. He says they buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. So land owners are forcing their renters into

2 Page 2 of 5 higher and higher amounts of debt, debt they can never hope to repay. That makes these poor, destitute people like slaves, says Amos. (8:6) These are simple examples of injustice. So what is injustice? It is a violation of the rights of others. It is unfair action or treatment. We can use the word unfairly to say that certain people are being treated unjustly. And of course, one person can be the victim of injustice or entire groups of people can become victims of injustice, like all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. So let s pause for a moment. This is not an easy sermon to preach, and I feel sure that it is not easy to listen to, either. That s for several reasons. We are reflecting on people who have endured immense suffering. Like the Second World War, we may feel that this is simply history or that injustice in the present-day is something we are helpless to do anything about. We might also wonder if the preacher is going to point an accusing finger at our own practices and values. I am going to skip over situations of injustice in our country and those which exist right now. This is not normally my style, so I guess I am letting us off easy. But I do want you engaged with me on the subject. As I speak of happenings in distant places or in years past, I hope that you will, with open minds, draw connections with things present and things familiar. Let s lighten up things a bit before we go further. It s the story of the house painter who was hired to paint a church s steeple. He claimed to be a Christian, but he wasn t being honest with the congregation. You see he thinned his paint before going up onto the steeple. Who on earth would notice if the paint he used was not of the expected quality? So on a bright sunny he climbed the steeple with brushes and thinned-down paint. But as soon as he got back down to the church lawn a thunder storm blew in. It was a downpour. The painter watched as that watered down paint dripped right off of the steeple. The job would have to be re-done. But our story is not over. There came a voice from the heavens. It was deep and loud. It was God, and God pronounced: Re-paint and thin no more! So there we have an example of someone committing injustice who got his just desserts. But it sure doesn t always work out that way. No one can ever make things right for people killed through genocide. And as ordinary citizens we feel helpless to intervene. But we can exert our influence to overcome prejudice and hatred. Awhile back I finished shopping at a mall and returned to my car. Going ito the mall were two Arab women dressed head to toe in the traditional Muslim dress which completey covers a woman. Two young men laughed at them and taunted

3 Page 3 of 5 them as they walked by. We can fight and should fight that kind of hatred before it leads to violence. Kay and I are packing for our trip to China. We leave on September 15. Actually it is Kay who is packing. I am procrastinating on the packing. But as I take my exercise walks around town I listen to a history book about China. And I finished another book on China three weeks ago, listening through my iphone. China s history and China s present-day are filled with the horrors of the powerful people taking advantage of the poor, especially the peasants. Nowadays hundreds of millions of former peasants have left their farms and migrated to the coast to take factory jobs. They labor under cruel conditions for countless hours and are for the most part poorly paid. You and I should not forget that the main reason we can find amazingly low prices these days on non-perishable consumer goods is the poorly paid factory workers in places like China. In our country lawyers play a significant and dependable role in providing justice for all citizens. The justice system in China depends largely on who you know. They have police. But the police don t necessarily stand up for victims of crime unless it suits the needs of the town officials. On our last visit Kay and I saw the largest dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam. Yes, the dam provides pollution-free electricity, and it presents damaging floods. But the dam also dramatically and permanently raised the level of the river upstream. So people didn t have to deal with floods anymore. But thousands and thousands of peasant farmers were forced off their land. Their former farm land is now under water. They are forced to live in huge, lifeless apartment buildings which have sprouted up on the hillsides. Our guide told us it has been very stressful for older adults. All they can do now is remember the past when they were farmers and look down into the water where their homes used to be. The prophet Micah in our first reading goes through a litany of criticisms of the rulers of his nation. They take advantage of the poor and trample, he says, on justice. Micah bravely shouts his words of accusation and concludes with stern words of warning. God does not overlook injustice: Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

4 Page 4 of 5 The words are therefore because of you. Those words say to us that God has clear reason to bring down a hand of judgment. The leaders of China should know better than to take advantage of their own people. You and I as Christians with the ethical heritage of the Bible certainly know better than to allow injustice to occur. But one wonders if a day of divine judgment lies ahead. We might wonder: Is a day of judgment approaching? Micah said that the people of his day had forgotten where they had come from. Their ancestors had been held captive in Egypt and lived as slaves. Their taskmasters demanded more and more bricks to be made for their lavish construction projects. Their misery ended when God, through the leadership of Moses, set them free. They were their own people, free of cruel rulers. So the people of Israel, remembering the story of the Exodus generations later, should be sensitive to all persons who are treated unfairly. You know better, proclaimed the prophets. God expects you to be a holy people, not latter-day versions of Egyptian taskmasters. You and I know that there are many injustices which we can do little to stop or prevent. There is this reign of terror now against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq. It is also one branch of Islam versus another branch of Islam. I suppose that our greatest sympathy may very well be with the Christians. But injustice against one group is injustice against all other groups. Here s how Martin Luther King, Jr. put it: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly affects all indirectly. 1 And Elie Wiesel whom I mentioned earlier counsels us with these words: There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. Again, we probably feel helpless to assist people in Iraq. But we can pray for peace and justice and pray for wisdom for our president and our military forces. And we have the power to influence our representatives in Congress. Shall we use it on behalf of people half-a-world away whose lives are so different from ours? 1 Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.

5 Page 5 of 5 We heard these famous words read in worship the other Sunday. Amos said he looked forward to the day when justice [shall] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24) A favorite of Kay s and mine is found in Micah. The prophet is speaking of behaviors that make worship bad and unacceptable to God. He says that God rejects worship which is exuberant but not connected to everyday living. So Micah proclaims: With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Desmund Tutu is an Anglican archbishop in South Africa. He led the fight against the cruelties of apartheid. Tutu once said: If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Then Tutu used an image familiar to African people: If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. I pray for all American Christians for whom relative comfort and safety can blind us to the hardship of others. Let us pray for ourselves that our eyes might be opened, our hearts made sensitive and our hands willing to serve and protect the helpless, the victims and those who cry for justice.