2022 Year C Proper 10 - July 10, 2022
What must I do to inherit eternal life?
To honor our Gracious Trinity: God, Savior, and Advocate. Amen.
(Lk 10:25b) “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
What Jesus did not say:
Put your house in order, for the coming of the Lord.
Set your soul upright in fear and trembling to approach the throne of the Almighty.
Take care you are not found wanting on the Day of the Lord.
What must I do to inherit eternal life? Singer/songwriter, Lucinda Williams advises “you’ve got to get right with God?”
I’ve been watching coverage around the Supreme Court decision which reversed legal precedent establishing women’s rights to make reproductive medical decisions. Amid debates of policy and repercussions, an unexpected soundtrack emerged: Christians chanting damnation to women and girls. It’s kind of a shock.
Where do we Christians get this stuff? I read in scripture God loves me and desires my obedience out of love. I preach that Christ walks with us through pain, so we can offer hope to the suffering. I teach we can be forgiven even the worst trespass of our lives and renewed by the Holy Spirit. When I heard a man scream at a weeping girl heading into a clinic, “You’ll twist in the flames of Christ’s wrath!” I yelped. What bible is that man reading?
He may have misunderstood Amos. The prophet’s visions are devoid of any hope to halt Israel’s destruction. Let me open up today’s passage,
“Amos 7:8 “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; 9the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
The plumb line measures the uprightness of a wall. Attach the bob to twine and suspend it from your structure. Gravity will show whether it is aligned and strong or misaligned, doomed to fall. Is the kingdom level with God’s measurement? It is not, according to the vision.
“I will never again pass them by,” means God will no longer spare Israel the consequences of their transgression. God held back smiting. A wave of locusts was to bring famine, but Amos won God’s pity. Wildfire was sparked to destroy fields, but Amos won God’s mercy. Still the plumb line is off. God acts against the king without hesitation: Invasion, devastation, execution, and exile.
Did sexual immorality or scandal provoke God’s wrath? Were the king’s robes too revealing, his addictions too visible, or his family too unconventional? The sin is clear in chapter two, “because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals— they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way; father and son go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned; they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge; and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with fines they imposed.”
It is not the sins of an individual, but of the social order that bring judgment: corruption in governance and business, cruelty to the sick, exploitation of women, greed in lending, and unjust fines on others to enrich the leaders. Amos announces that sacrifices of atonement no longer absolve their sins. They abuse Torah. It is a hard prophecy, especially when we measure our own culture. Are we economically just? Are we compassionate in governance? Do we structure our courts with mercy? Do we prevent sexual exploitation and care for the sick?
That well-dressed man at the clinic who could afford to take an afternoon away from work and drive into a suffering neighborhood to scream hate into the ear of a frightened young teen is not doing God’s work. Regardless of the morality of that clinic, a prophet is never called to oppress the afflicted or condemn people in poverty. There are consequences to a society sick with greed, self-indulgence, and myopically focused on keeping the powerful comfortable. Perhaps the populace under a tyrant can be absolved of social sins, but the citizens of a representative democracy cannot. We are responsible for the righteousness of our social order. Would God’s plumb line find us true?
Lk 10:25 “Teacher…what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself
And who is my neighbor?... The one who [shows] mercy.
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
Amen.
+Dean Vanessa E. B. Clark