For the second week the Sunday readings contained a passage from that dour prophet, Amos. When I wrote the sermon on Saturday it was about ten minutes long – oh dear, the moment of preaching extended that by 50%, “alas” indeed. To hear the extemporaneous words, listen to the audio.
Audio
Sermon preached at Trinity Church, Newport RI
Sunday September 25 2016
“Alas…”
The Reverend Alan Neale
Today’s text must be one of the most easily memorable… Amos 6:1 “Alas…”, yes that’s it. “Alas” – acerbic, terse, confrontational, pessimistic; a word we readily and justifiably associate with the dour and reluctant prophet Amos; not quite the model for an Episcopal parish priest. He boasts of his incompetency for prophetic ministry and yet, called by God, truculently engages the rich, the religious and the rebel.
The reader who scans Scripture as if filled with mere suggestions; the reader who scavenges through Scripture in pursuit of that which will support prejudice and bias – such a reader will read the first verses of Amos and decide it is a diatribe against the rich. But it is not… the trumpet note comes in the second part of verse 6… “woe/alas to those who… are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” – and the ruin of Joseph suggests the whole nation.
It is the lack of compassion, the paucity of concern, the modicum of grief that riles the heart of God and so moves His prophet, Amos.
It is not the wealth (obscene though Amos describes it), it is the poverty of kindness and the frigidity of cold-heartedness that prompts the “Alas… alas…”
Today’s Gospel (Luke 16) describes the wretched plight of the rich man (eponymously named Dives as the word means riches – prompting Thackeray to write in Vanity Fair “there must be rich and poor, Dives says, smacking his claret!”)
Dives is condemned not for his wealth but for his lack of compassion for Lazarus and, therefore, his resistance or inability to grieve for the poor, the wretched, the ignored, the powerless and the outcast.
Friends, we continue to be pummeled, assailed, buffeted by news of spontaneous murders, by reports of questionable police actions, of riot and of bedlam. All too understandable to refuse to grieve, to resist angst, to suffer grief and yet for God and therefore for us – this is neither acceptable nor possible. The prophet and the prophetic community is the one whose heart beats with the heart of God and this we must be.
On my 40th birthday (yes, many years ago – hardly in written memory) I was presented with a unique album that portrayed a classic cartoon of the multi-talented James Mitchell. The cartoon described my progress from UK to USA and arrival in Newport. Mr. Mitchell endearingly named Newport as La-La Land. Now, don’t be defensive… it was all in good humor. And yet… on this sceptered isle easily isolated, there may be a temptation to succumb to a “La-La land” attitude to our country, to our world – maybe?
It is the accretion and awareness of riches that can so easily numb our ability to grieve and our capacity to feel bereavement; and to this Amos pronounces “Alas.”
Our resources suggest a security but it is fragile.
Our resources suggest a comfort but it is temporal.
Our resources suggest a defense but it is tarnished.
An English Bishop attended a committee of Bishops at Lambeth Palace. After a dreary, interminable, ineffective meeting the Bishop mumbled as he placed his papers in his briefcase, “Well, it is certain that I carried nothing into this meeting and certain that I carry nothing out.”
And thus the aged Paul reminds the vibrant Timothy and is so doing he does not castigate contentment but he insists it be married with godliness; that contentment never be smug complacency but rather partnered with a passion to be divinely engaged. To reverse I Timothy 6:6 “Contentment with godliness is great gain.”
Amos describes a comfortable community that refuses comfort to others. His portrait comes close to the clichéd image of Nero, who supposed fiddled while Rome burned. Or that of a Marie Antoinette, who is rumored to have said, “Let them eat cake,” while the populace rebelled in starvation.
Episode by episode Wendy and I wade through “The Man in the High Castle”, yesterday one character opined, “The pain is not we lose one we love, but that we are not allowed to grieve.”
The Christian, the Church takes on a prophetic stance when it allows grief, bereavement, loss of an erstwhile safe, secure and pleasant land. We offer radical honesty and radical hospitality; we invite the disenfranchised to find a place and the aggrieved to vent in safety.
We invite others to consider the faith we tentatively hold and all too rarely cultivate; friends this is our faith as the old man Paul writes to young man Timothy “the Lord Jesus Christ is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality.”
So Amos, do not confront us with “alas” for we will not hide from grief nor shelter in our comfort; indeed we will grieve for our nation but not “as those without hope” (I Thessalonians 4:13).
Thanks be to God. AMEN