The lectionary next Sunday
provides this somewhat timely passage from the prophet Amos as an alternative
reading… Alas for you who desire the
day of the Lord! Why do you want
the day of the Lord? It is
darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a
bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten
by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and
gloom with no brightness in it? I hate,
I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn
assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain
offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your
fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your
songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice
roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.[1]
Well, in our day we are unlikely
to cower in terror from Amos’s God of Wrath, or what he calls the Day of the
Lord. Dies Irae – Day of Wrath – is
a medieval (or earlier) Latin hymn intended to scare us into righteousness. You may know it from the high drama of
Mozart’s or Verdi’s Requiem Mass, replete with trumpets and big drums. Vatican II removed most of the Dies Irae
from the Requiem Mass, but the very last verse, Pie Jesu, has become a
trendy solo for boy soprano.
Jesus does not depict a God of
Wrath. God is to be loved and served. Jesus depicts a Creator of love and
faithfulness, a forgiving God, who nevertheless requires what Amos says is
essential… justice and righteousness. Justice
is to roll down like waters – it is to be there, and it is to be there
for everyone, it is not to be manipulated or bought; justice is there to set
things right, never to promote privilege or to be at the beck and call of the
powerful. Righteousness in Hebrew
understanding is right relationships – you care for the widow, the orphan and
the stranger. Time after time, in the Hebrew
prophets, God is depicted as witheringly contemptuous of worship and sacrifice
if it is not accompanied by justice and righteousness. My Father’s house, said Jesus in the Jerusalem
temple, is to be called a house of prayer for all people, but you have made
it a den of thieves.[2]
Justice and righteousness suffer
whenever religion is co-opted into the service of the powerful or the
privileged. Religion becomes distorted,
even corrupted, to other requirements… whether we are thinking of the religion
of Constantine, or the co-opting of Islam in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, or of
Hinduism in India, or Buddhism in Thailand or Myanmar… or protestant
evangelicalism in the USA. The proper place for faith is on the edges of
the inside, where it is fed by simplicity and silence, where people are free to
live without walls and divisions, labels and discrimination. In the words of the writer to the Hebrews: Let
us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are
looking for the city that is to come.[3]
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