(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 10, 2016, Proper 10)
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Unbearable Words at the Center of Power
The first thing you need to know about Amos is that he’s a country bumpkin of a prophet. He’s a shepherd and farmer from the south, but today we find him prophesying in the north. In ancient Israel, there was a north-south divide, comparable in fact to the north-south divide that we have in our own nation. And so the situation in which Amos finds himself would be a little bit like if a good old boy from Texas moseyed up to D. C. or New York, and once he got there, proclaimed that God was unhappy with the way they were living. What kind of response would he get? Honestly, probably not much of a response at all. Amidst the hustle and bustle of a city consumed in its own business, the words of a street preacher are more or less tolerated, ignored, or even viewed as a form of entertainment.
Reading through Amos, I get the sense that he has received a response similar to the one that our country boy from Texas would have received. Up until today (chapter 7), there is no mention of anyone around him responding.
But today Amos touches a nerve. Today his dark prophecies become “unbearable” (cf. 7:10). Today they turn treasonous, for his words today threaten the downfall of the establishment, both religious and political. First he proclaims: “The high places…shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste” (7:9). This would be like our cowboy from Texas declaring that all the churches in the north would bite the dust. Next, Amos speaks for God, saying, “I will rise against the house of [the king] Jeroboam with the sword” (7:9). This would be like our country boy promising that the White House and all its close associates, including Wall Street, would fall.
Speak like that, and people will take notice. Speak like that, and there might be whispers and rumors that you’re a terrorist. That seems to be the case for Amos, because immediately after he makes these dark prophecies, a priest sends a message to the king Jeroboam, accusing Amos of treason, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel” (7:10). We aren’t told how the king responds, but we can imagine it’s not too favorably. The priest tells Amos to “flee,” to leave quickly, which suggests perhaps that the priest is having a bit of mercy, that he’s telling Amos to save his own skin while he still has time.
And the priest tacks on a final warning, and this perhaps speaks loudest of all in our scripture today. He says, “Never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary” (7:13). The place name Bethel means “house of God” in the Hebrew. And so there is a scandalous irony in the priest’s words. Really, he is saying, “Don’t you ever dare speak these words of God again in the house of God. It is the king’s sanctuary.” Regardless of what the priest meant, his words reflect the reality that God is no longer the leader of this people. God is now the servant of the king. The word of God is only acceptable if it performs the purposes of the powers-that-be.
Elvis Versus the Television
But that was a very different day and a very different place. Do Amos’ words still speak to us where we are now? Are there any modern day prophets who speak for the country bumpkin of Judah, who transpose his prophecy to our day and age?
I have one playful suggestion—and all I ask is that you humor me long enough to get the point across: the king himself, Elvis Presley.
If you go to Graceland and peruse the relics of the hip-swiveling king of rock and roll, one of the items you’ll see is a television that’s been shot right down the middle. There is a legend, accordingly, that Elvis shot his television. And as with any legend, there are several unverified versions of the story that try to explain just what motivated the event. Perhaps this television is just a testament to Elvis’ unorthodox method of appliance repair. (I’m sure a number of us can identify with this method in theory, if not in practice.) One Graceland spokesman implied this idea with his statement of regret that this television is “the only surviving…appliance that Elvis shot out.”[1]
But the version that fascinates me speculates on an entirely different motivation. According to this thread of the legend, the king was actually reading his Bible in front of the TV. Upon reading 1 Corinthians 13, that beautiful chapter on love—“love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”—Elvis had a “light-bulb” moment, an “ah-hah” flash of clarity. And without a second’s hesitation, he grabbed a gun and shot at the seductive images invading his home.[2]
Despite my deep misgivings over the place of guns in our society, this legendary event captivates me. It’s a mystifying act, rich in symbolic possibility. What exactly was Elvis shooting at? I would suggest that in a very profound sense, he was shooting at the heart of a nation. I would suggest that, like Amos, he was conspiring against the nation, against the very center of its power. Because these days—and I imagine that even in Elvis’ time, it wasn’t too different—the television along with its social media cousins is the ultimate authority. It is the center of power and money and fame. Seekers and holders of public office must buy their way onto its airwaves in order to gain our recognition and approval. It is the shopping window of our nation. It is the stage of make-or-break for celebrities.
The Television and Its Polarizing Power
One of the early presidents of CBS News, Fred Friendly, had high aspirations for TV journalism. He believed that the television could be an influential instrument for positive social change. In his words, the job of the journalist should be “to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can only escape it by thinking.” He envisioned the day when television would capture those rare and enlightening moments when people changed their minds or conceded a point in conversation.[3]
I imagine that Fred Friendly would be appalled with social media these days. In the wake of this past week’s tragedies—Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas—television and all of social media have greedily consumed the stories and then pitched them back to us in a collage of foregone conclusions, a hodgepodge of polarizing sound bites and divisive talking points. In doing so, they polarize us. The beacons of power and money and fame in our world—those glowing screens that sit in our living rooms and bedrooms and flash across our telephones—they seduce us with the false gospel of certainty and taking sides and winning arguments and feeling safe and secure behind slogans and battle cries. They reduce life to a combat zone of mutually exclusive and competing interests. They weave us a story of war and arm us to the teeth with uncompromising sound bites and catchphrases and watchwords.
The Hidden Gospel of Amos:
Living the Answer
The gospel that I hear hidden in Amos’ prophecy, a gospel that speaks to us today, is two-sided. On the one side, it is good news that sounds nothing like good news. It sounds like difficult news. Faith must waltz into the very center of power—the very heart of how things are done—and proclaim treasonous words. Like Elvis ridding himself of the television glowing in his living room, or like Amos proclaiming the social injustices of Israel and the catastrophic consequences that would naturally result, faith must renounce the ruling way of the day, and set foot on a completely different way.
And it’s here, on this different way, that the good news starts to sound like good news. The gospel underneath all of Amos’ proclamations of doom, is a gospel that hopes for change. It is the good news that the answer is not something we can know or possess or claim for our own—it’s not a slogan or a battle cry or a position. The answer is something that we live. It’s a face-to-face, flesh-and-blood way of life. It’s a love that really does believe and bear all things—even the feelings and desires of others with whom we might feel aggrieved.
I recently read a short story that embodies this gospel. An African-American mother of two young children had a holy conviction that the tragedies repeatedly trumpeted on the news would never cease or change unless people went beyond the polarizing sound bites and divisive battle cries, unless they actually lived the answer themselves. And so one day at the supermarket, when she saw a police car idling in the parking lot, she gathered up her courage and moseyed on up to the officer. She greeted him. Told him her two kids were terrified of police and she didn’t know how to change that. They carried on in a good-natured conversation for half an hour, and at the end, the officer gave two badges to her kids. As she was pulling out of the parking lot, one of her kids reflected, “He was actually a nice guy.”
We Are Prophets of a Future Not Our Own
I know—that’s only one heartwarming story. How can it stand up to the enormous power of polarization and conflict streaming through the screens all around us?
But the real question, I think, is how will this present age ever change if we do not allow the kingdom of God to take hold of our own lives?
A martyr dear to my heart, Salvadoran Oscar Romero, says it better than I ever could:
“The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. … Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom”—this act of treason in which faith conscripts us—“always lies beyond us. … [What we do] may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. … We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
Prayer
God of a kingdom
That will one day
Eclipse our wildest dreams
And redeem and reconcile us all—
Embolden us to conspire against
The ruling powers
That polarize the world.
Inspire us to forge
Flesh-and-blood relationships
Of kingdom-love and -peace.
Amen.
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[1] Associated Press, “Nighttime Elvis on Display,” http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/22/entertainment/et-quick22.1, accessed July 6, 2016.
[2] David Dark, The Gospel according to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 10.
[3] Dark, The Gospel according to America, 27-28.
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