8/13/23 Sermon
Amos 5: 14 -15
Seek good and not evil, that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of heavenly forces, will be with you just as you have said. Hate evil, love good, and establish justice at the city gate. Perhaps the Lord God of heavenly forces will be gracious to what is left of Joseph. I hate, I reject your festivals; I don’t enjoy your joyous assemblies. If you bring me your entirely burned offerings and gifts of food— I won’t be pleased.
I won’t even look at your offerings of well-fed animals. Take away the noise of your songs; I won’t listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
WORD OF LORD
I guess it’s an occupational hazard, and maybe it’s just the world we live in these days, but it seems like I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints or criticisms about Christianity lately and about the church. Now, I don’t mean THIS church but more like the American Church. We all get lumped together. And it isn’t really from anyone I know in the church-world but it’s from the people I know who are on the outside looking in, I guess.
I think we live in a world these days where it’s just easier to criticize what you don’t understand or it’s easier to hate on things that don’t necessarily agree or fit in with your own worldview.
The problem is that it’s easier to name the flaws and point out the weaknesses of something than it is to offer helpful solutions. It is easier to destroy than to create. It's easier to condemn than it is to encourage. It's easier to break down than it is to build up. Easier to curse than congratulate. It's easier to tear something apart than it is to put it back together. It’s easier to name a problem than it is to offer a solution. And it’s easier to walk away than it is to maintain the narrow path. But if I were criticize the Church or Christianity these days with others, or to try to name why it is that people feel that we are losing our relevance, I’d say We’re ceasing to be relevant because we are not listening to the prophetic voices of people like Amos and we’re losing our understanding of what it means to be a church.
Now, a church isn't a building. It isn't a certain location. In Matthew it says that where 2 or more are gathered in Christ's name there he is also. Church isn't someplace you go to, and it isn't defined by the music and worship that happens there. And church isn't something you do for an hour most Sunday mornings. Church is something we are. Church is the living and breathing body of Christ that happens when 2 or more of us get together. Church takes place around dinner tables. Church takes place in conversations. Church happens when we sit with people we love in their grief on couches or front porches or in hospitals. Church happens at the grocery store when we say hello or when we help out that person in front of us who's a few dollars short.
We make a mistake when we think that the music or a certain style of worship is going to save the church, because although worship needs to be a meaningful expression of the body of Christ in gratitude to God, worship isn't necessarily what makes us a church. While we’re here to glorify God, and the church's purpose is to glorify God, if we continue to believe and act like church and worship are an hour on Sunday, we’ll continue to become less and less relevant in today's society. And probably rightfully so. Because it means that even we, as Christians, aren't taking church seriously.
The problem is, though, that taking church and our faith seriously is a scary proposition. For instance, if we take it seriously my friends should really be crackheads and prostitutes. They should be crooks, liars, and thieves. And if we really are obedient to Christ and follow his example, we're going to be wildly unpopular. Jesus cared for the poor. He fed them. And there weren't any excuses or qualifiers. He didn't say the poor will always be among us because they're too lazy to get a job. Jesus didn’t care about why they were poor. He only cared that they were poor. And he cared because that poverty was causing them to suffer. The “why” never seemed to matter.
In Jesus's time people thought that if someone was afflicted with a disease or something that they or their parents did something to deserve it. And there's this story in the Gospel of John where Jesus is walking along with his disciples, and they see a blind man. So, the disciples asked him who sinned here? Was it the man or his parents? And Jesus tells them neither. Then Jesus spits in the mud and wipes it on this guy’s face, tells him to go wash it off and the guy can see. There aren't any qualifiers. Jesus doesn't ask for an insurance card first. He doesn't even ask if the guy accepts Jesus Christ as his lord and savior first. He didn’t care why the guy was blind or what he was doing about it. He just sees a need and acts.
When he feeds 5,000 people with loaves and fish, he doesn't ask the disciples to first weed out those who may be abusing the system or whose priorities are messed up. He doesn’t ask them if they look like they could have afforded to bring their own food but probably spent the money on something else. He just says feed them. He just sees a need and acts. He comes and heals the sick because, as he put it, the healthy don't need a doctor.
Jesus went to Samaria where they practiced a different religion, and he healed Romans who weren't Jews, and walked among gentiles. Not so that he could tell them that their religion was wrong. He went because there were needs that weren’t met and it caused people to suffer. He went there as God. He went there with compassion for people who were suffering, for people who needed something more, for people who needed to know that God loves them. And it was in SHOWING them that love and not just TELLING them that changed their minds, and it didn't even change all of their minds. And it made Jesus wildly unpopular. So unpopular, in fact, that they tortured him to death for it. You, see? It’s a scary prospect to take this stuff seriously. To view church and being Christian as something more than what we do on Sunday, to really follow Jesus every day of the week can be dangerous. It’s scary to take this stuff seriously.
And yet, if we don't take it seriously, then what we're doing here this morning is a waste of our time and it’s a waste of God’s time according to Amos. That’s the problem. Without real and active commitment to our Christian faith and living that commitment out in what we do and how we live our lives, Christianity will only become less and less relevant in the world today. And rightfully so.
So, what is it? What is it that we are committing ourselves to? How do we become relevant? And it is here that the voice of Amos becomes all the more pertinent now than perhaps ever before: 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.
Let justice roll down like water. And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. As Christians we have to remain dedicated to one cause, and that cause is Justice. And yet it is a justice like no other. It isn't the justice of the law. It isn't the justice of the mob. It isn't even the justice of doctrinal courts. It is the justice of God. It is God's Justice. And Amos is telling us that no matter how flashy our prayers, no matter how pretty our songs, no matter how relevant or hip our worship service can be or can get, it means nothing, nothing at all, if we aren’t committed to God’s Justice reigning here on earth. And God’s justice is strongly linked to God’s grace.
But there’s an interesting thing about that grace. It’s freely given, we’re accepted just as we are, and there’s nothing we can do to earn it or deserve or even to lose it. It’s a free gift. We all are just simply accepted. However, when we realize that we’re given that grace, that God loves us that much and accepts us openly, it should evoke a change in us. We could just accept that grace and stop there, but what people like Amos and Jesus tell us, is that just accepting God’s grace and God’s love isn’t enough. We need to do something about it. There’s a response it should evoke from within us. When we really realize what’s been so freely given to us, it should change our lives and the way we live and act in this world.
Luther in the Reformation stressed how freely grace is given because the Roman Catholic church was teaching that it needed to be bought. Grace was earned. So, Luther and the other Reformers like Calvin hammered on scriptural teachings that grace was freely given; it’s an unmerited gift. But a little over 400 years after him, a good Lutheran pastor and Theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw a very different problem. He felt that the church was suffering because it had cheapened grace. That grace wasn’t a life-changing substance in people’s lives anymore, they just accepted it and moved on feeling free to live their lives anyway they chose without really understanding or internalizing how powerful of a gift grace is. He said grace had become cheap.
Bonhoeffer puts it like this: he said cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."
But Bonhoeffer offered an alternative he called Costly Grace. He says costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Bonhoeffer goes on and says, such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”
Bonhoeffer is making the same argument that Amos is making. Church, being a Christian, being a person of faith has to be something more than worshipping God once a week. Church has to be something more than a place we go to. It has to be something that we embody and live out in the world. And while we’re freely given God’s love and God’s grace, those gifts should compel us to act on them, to be in the world differently, to transform our hearts into God’s heart. To allow our hearts to break with what breaks God’s heart. To set aside our wills for God’s will. To be concerned with God’s justice and then act on it.
Friends, the American church isn’t going to be revived by how hip or cultural or cutting edge we can make ourselves seem - no matter how many tattoos our ministers may have. But the church is going to be revived by how well we’re able to live into our role as disciples of Jesus Christ. By how concerned we are that God’s justice is enacted in this world. By how seriously we take our faith and work to make this world better; not just for ourselves but for the people who desperately need this world to be better. And so while we are recipients of Grace we don’t deserve, we also need to be agents of that very grace to others as well. It starts with claiming that grace as our own. And then it moves to doing something about it.
If we want the church to succeed, if we want church and even Christianity to still matter in our world today, if we really take prophets like Amos seriously, then we have to show people that our faith is transformative in people’s lives. And we show people that by allowing it to be transformative in our own lives by living less for ourselves and more for others. By following the example of Jesus and when we see someone with a need acting on it without qualification or determination if they’re worthy or not. We show people how transformative God’s Grace is by enacting God’s justice which doesn’t necessarily deal in fairness, but it concerns itself with what is right and with what produces more love in our world. Because the truth is that the love and grace of Jesus Christ wouldn’t come to us if God was all that concerned with what we deserve or what would be fair. If we want the church to be relevant in today’s world, then we have to be the church - not just here on Sunday mornings, but every day of the week with the way we live faithful lives following Jesus and no one else.
So may you work to make the church relevant by the way you live your life.
May you live your life in the knowledge that you are freely given God’s grace in order that you may be an agent of that same grace to others.
May you let God’s justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream in everything you do.