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God for the Poor
By Administrator | September 10, 2007
God for the Poor
Amos 8:1-18
July 22, 2007
I. Someone sent me an interesting e-mail this past week,
one of those “forwards” that has no doubt been making
the rounds, probably through your computer mailbox
as well.
It lists the opening words to the preambles of all 50 state
constitutions.
Florida’s constitution begins thus:
“We, the people of the State of Florida, grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, establish this Constitution…”
For kicks, I looked up my native state, Texas:
“We the People of the Republic of Texas, acknowledging, with gratitude, the grace and beneficence of God.”
In fact, every state in our beloved union gives honor to
God, or the Creator, or the Supreme Ruler
of the Universe, in the opening words of its constitution.
The point, according to the e-mail,
was of course that we are a country founded on
God and Christian religious values and
therefore should be ruled by God.
That all sounds good.
It sounds easy and simple, like the good ol’ days,
if ever there were any.
It sounds like a good thing to slip God’s name in whenever
and wherever possible,
into any public arena,
stamped on everything from money to monuments.
It seems like the perfect solution to put prayer back
into schools,
into civic meetings,
sports events.
Calling on God’s name, we thing,
will surely make us a godly nation.
Just as swinging a hammer makes me a carpenter.
And being able to curse like a sailor makes me seaworthy.
No, when we press God’s name into service,
when every politician and government leader
ends a speech with “God bless America,”
when we claim to plant the very seeds of
our democracy in the favor bestowed upon us by God,
what that makes us is liable.
It makes us accountable.
II. That is the central claim of the prophet Amos against
Israel.
This was a nation of people who told their story as
religious narrative.
America may be the new world, the land of opportunity.
But Israel was the promised land,
the land God,
according to story and faith,
gave to the people.
It is the gift given to slaves,
those who suffered great horrors at the hand of Pharaoh
in Egypt, given to people who wandered in a vast and
barren wilderness for forty years.
The nation of Israel was blessing from God.
From the beginning it was never meant to be a hammer.
It was always meant to be something exquisite,
something unlike any of her neighbors.
Everyone—everyone, expect the priests who were provided
for by law—owned land in the nation of Israel.
Can you imagine?
Still, there are years when the crops fail and
economics aren’t so good and even if one owns land,
disease and death and circumstances can be such
that life gets turned upside down.
The law made provision for that as well.
The poor were to be treated with dignity and respect.
No one who fell into a role of service was to ever be treated
as the slaves were in Egypt.
Finally, in Israel, every effort was to be made to return
the poor to a status of equal sharing in the community,
usually by way of restoration to the land,
to home, to ownership.
But saying it did not make it so.
Calling themselves God’s people did not make
them God’s people.
Calling themselves a holy nation did not make
Israel holy.
III. By the time of King Jereboam, around the year 760 BCE,
here’s how business was conducted in Israel:
The sabbath was still strictly observed,
but the very moment it was completed,
the merchants were back in the marketplace.
They were famous for cheating their customers,
especially those who had little power or recourse
for justice.
Thus, the poor became poorer and the business owners
more and more wealthy.
Finally, as Amos accused, only the price of a pair of sandals
would stand between a person and the abyss of
poverty—becoming a slave, owned by one’s debt
to others.
Israel had forgotten her story.
She had forgotten the land was a gift.
She had forgotten she belonged wholly to God.
Most importantly, she had forgotten that when she was
in Egypt and a slave and her people cried
out to God, God heard her cry,
and God answered.
Now the people she had enslaved, the poor,
were calling out to God.
IV. I wonder…when we ask God to bless America,
do we understand that we’re making ourselves
liable to a God who will hear the cries of the most
vulnerable among us?
Some months ago, I attended an informational meeting,
along with four other members of our church,
for a non-profit ministry with homeless families called
“Family Promise.”
Several churches are hoping to begin this ministry in
South Brevard county.
We were so impressed with the real possibilities for helping
families get back on their feet again.
I remember someone asked the question,
“Do we have very many homeless families in
Brevard county? I just don’t see them.”
An article in Friday’s “Florida Today” answered the
question.
We’ve seen a 14% increase overall in our homeless population
and the number of homeless families is counted at
166, as compared to 19 at this time last year.
Think of this: in our county, 166 families—defined as
households with children—are without a place to call
home:
no address to give on work applications,
no place for the bus to pick the children up for school,
only one dependable hot meal, that at Daily Bread
soup kitchen,
a scramble to find shelter each night—
a relative’s home, a motel room,
maybe sleeping in the car (if they have one),
even camping out in the parks or woods.
Those are households with children.
Visit the other end of the impoverished spectrum
with me.
This scenario is too familiar.
A woman living alone since the death of her husband
is struggling to make ends meet.
Her prescription costs skyrocket until she can no longer
pay her other bills.
Her son, concerned, brings a social worker in to work
through the problems and is assured that the state
has programs to help.
Over and over again, they are patted on the head by
different organizations—it’s going to be alright.
Then, it is discovered that the woman’s income is
$50 over the poverty level.
She is ineligible for any help.
Her electricity is shut off.
She is stuck with all her medical bills.
She needs surgery and she needs her prescriptions.
Never mind trying to pay for groceries.
Her son, on the edge of trying to take care of his own
family, goes further into debt to rescue his mother.
That story is not from Florida Today.
In fact, maybe it’s your story.
V. When a country casually tosses around God’s name,
it makes itself liable to God’s covenant.
The prophet Amos and no less than Jesus himself
remind us that the greatest sin in God’s eyes is to
forget the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.
So are we a godly nation?
That’s a large question,
perhaps one to be debated at other times,
in the public arena,
with other e-mails no doubt.
The question which remains for us is this:
are we a godly people?
There should be no doubt about that.
Gathered as we are in this place,
called to be witnesses to what we have heard,
what we have known,
what we have experienced of the holy one,
we are part of the core of God’s people.
It begins here, in places like this,
where rich and poor live and worship together.
It begins with us.
Do we,
here at Riviera United Church of Christ,
take care of the most vulnerable among us?
Are we reaching out,
shaping the kinds of ministries here that will catch
people who are crying out to God?
Does our mission reflect the resurrection power of Jesus,
the power to restore people
from the death of poverty and servitude
to the life of hope?
Our words matter.
Our stories shape us, hopefully into people of faith.
What we say about God counts.
When we call ourselves God’s people,
we are held liable, accountable, for our actions.
As we continue with the work of shaping our mission,
coming up with a statement or an image to capture
the essence of Riviera United Church of Christ,
what we finally say about ourselves will be important.
But what we do,
how we respond as God’s people,
how we live out our lives of faith—
communally, here on the Lord’s Day,
and in our ministries together,
and individually, when the Lord’s Day is over,
in the marketplace
and at home
and in our politics—
that’s where it really counts.
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