(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 17, 2016, Proper 11)
-----
NFL Theology
If you follow football, or are at least a dedicated Super Bowl viewer, then you are likely familiar with what we might jokingly call NFL theology. According to a survey taken a year ago, around one in four Americans believes that God determines the outcome of the Super Bowl. An even greater percentage—one in two Americans—believes that God rewards faithful athletes with strength and success.[1] According to NFL theology, then, God does in fact take sides. A holy energy hijacks some bodies more than others, propelling them to greater heights and a greater likelihood of victory.
NFL theology creeps into the church from time to time. I’ve never personally heard a prayer in church that solicits supernatural assistance for one team or another. But I know these prayers happen. Jack once told me about a church where the elders would occasionally implore the divine to deliver victory to the hometown team. How that would inspire unity around the Table, I have no idea! I’d imagine it would do just the opposite, at least in a place like our own, where allegiances are split between the Wahoos and the Hokies and a number of others.
I suspect that NFL theology makes a number of us feel a bit queasy. Does God really sport athletic allegiance? To the question, “Whose side is God on?” we might respond, “Hold on! Does God even take sides?” And not without good reason. Just a few weeks back, we marinated our souls in the mind of Paul, who proclaimed that in Christ there is “neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female”; in Christ, we are all one (Gal 3:28). Elsewhere Paul makes the celebrated claim that “God shows no partiality” (Rom 2:11). And Paul himself is only drawing from the more ancient theology that God created all of humanity in God’s image, blessing all of them alike.
Our unease with NFL theology is nothing new. It finds an intriguing echo, in fact, in our country’s history. During the Civil War, countless ministers on both sides of the battle lines invoked a more serious sort of NFL theology; both claimed God’s allegiance to their cause. It was in fact the president, Abraham Lincoln, who voiced qualms with this sectarian theology: “Both [sides],” he said, “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other. … The prayers of…neither [have] been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”[2] For Lincoln, God could not be bought by extra prostrations or extra long prayers. God did not take sides.
A God Who Rushes to the Side of the Hurting
I am sympathetic to Lincoln’s understanding of God. Surely God is disentangled from our personal agendas. Surely God is impartial, above our petty disputes. Surely God blesses everyone and desires the goodness of life for everyone, not just a select few.
And yet…I must also admit that this picture of an impartial God seems incomplete. It lacks soul. It lacks the warmth and compassion of love. This picture of God remains impersonal, a bit like the sun or the moon or the elements of life that nourish us but that also seem at times cold and aloof and uncaring.
And this is where Amos steps in. Amos fleshes this picture of God out. Amos shows us a God with a heartbeat, full of compassion and care and desire. Amos shows us a God who takes sides. Not in a competitive or tribalistic way, not in a way that aligns God with a football team or a political party or a nation. God takes sides in the way that a mother or father rushes to the side of the child who is hurting most, in the way that a shepherd might take leave of the 99 to rush to the side of the one who is lost.
Which Side, Then?
The holy rumbling in Amos’ prophetic heart is for the poor. Twice Amos cries out on behalf of the poor, twice he howls out in support of the needy. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,” you who exploit the poor and needy through high prices and then buy them into slavery for their undeserved debts: “Shall not the land tremble on this account?” (cf. 8:4, 6, 8). Amos is not simply a spoilsport, a prophetic party pooper who delights in proclaiming doom. He is not prescribing a divine punishment for bad behavior. He is pointing out that God is rushing to the side of God’s children who are hurting the most, that at this moment in time God’s heart spills out for them. And he is explaining that the natural consequence of neglecting the poor is social disintegration. Ancient Israel will be undone by its own hand.
Such a prophecy echoes in our own nation’s history, in fact. In a moment of prophetic boldness, Abraham Lincoln once proclaimed, “If destruction be our lot, we [ourselves will] be its author and finisher.”[3] When we neglect one another, when we take up arms against one another, we will hasten our own demise. And all the while, God will be shedding tears over the victims—the poor and the oppressed and the crushed.
God on the Side of the Suffering
During Amos’ time, believe it or not, many Israelites subscribed to a sort of NFL theology. Obviously they didn’t know about the Skins or the Cowboys. But they did know about the Israelites and the Egyptians, and all the other peoples. And they believed that God chose sides just the same way some people believe God supports one team and not another. Isn’t that what the story of the Exodus is all about? God looks out upon the Israelites suffering in Egypt, and God is moved by their cries, and so God delivers them from slavery and then chooses them—and not the Egyptians, not anyone else—to be the people of God.
Now, this belief contains within it a scandalous truth. God undeniably took the side of the Israelites in Egypt. But whereas the Israelites interpreted this to mean, “God chose us, God chose the Israelites”—which is a sort of NFL theology—Amos proclaims otherwise. Amos effectively says, “God does take sides, yes. But back there in Egypt, God wasn’t taking the side of the Israelites only and forever. God was taking the side of the suffering, which back then happened to be us Israelites.” To prove his point in shocking fashion, Amos later prophesies that Israel is nothing special; it has no special claim to divine privilege. Because, in fact, God has delivered other nations just like Israel. It’s what God has always been doing: saving the suffering. This hidden gem in the Bible is one worth remembering. Amos 9:7-8. “Did I not bring up…the Philistines from Caphtor,” Amos says for God, “and the Arameans from Kir?” (9:7). Even the Philistines, Amos says. God has rushed to the side of even the Philistines.
The Gospel as It Always Has Been
The gospel has never changed. God is always rushing to the side of the marginalized and the victimized, the vulnerable and the helpless. In Egypt, God heard the cries of the Israelites in slavery and delivered them. At some point in history, God saw the suffering Philistines and rushed to their side. In Amos, God cries out on behalf of the lowly and left-out. Just a few weeks ago, we read Paul proclaim blessing on the marginalized of his day, the Gentiles. And of course, this gospel takes on flesh and bones in the person of Jesus Christ, who identifies himself with the hungry and the naked and the imprisoned and the stranger, who proclaims that poor, of all people, are blessed.
Consider what good news this gospel is! A child who is hurting doesn’t need a mother or father who says, abstractly, theoretically, “I love everyone.” A child who is hurting needs a mother or father who will rush to his side, or her side, and say, “I love you.” And that is the gospel: the gospel of Israel, the gospel of Amos, the gospel of Paul, and the gospel embodied by Jesus.
And that gospel is what gives a heart to a heartless world. It is the heartbeat of the body of Christ. It is the lifeblood of the church. It is the passion in which we live and move and have our being. We rush to the side of the lowly and the left-out, the people pushed to the margins of society, the folks who are of little account to a world that prizes the richest and the most powerful, because this is where we will encounter God. Through CARITAS and our drives for school and food supplies, we rush to the side of the poor; through our hula ministry, we rush to the side the elderly; through D.D.’s Bears, we rush to the side of the sick; through Church World Service’s refugee resettlement program, we rush to the side of the stranger.
A Politics of Love;
Or, the Many Faces of Christ in Our World
I don’t say these ministries in order to check off a box on our ministry task list or to give us a gold star sticker, but rather to remind us of the many faces of Christ in our world. And there are many more. Recently I read a report that there were more acts of violence and vandalism against Muslims in the United States in the last year than in any year since the September 11 attack. In this past month alone, during the Muslims’ holy time of Ramadan, there were numerous reports of abuse and threats against mosques and their worshippers.
The temptation today is to get caught up in this world’s politics of force, which seeks security at the expense of people who look different and who pose the possibility of a threat. But the gospel that we read today, which is a gospel we read all over the Bible, proclaims instead a politics of love, a politics that rushes to the side of the lowly and the left-out, that takes the side of the weak and the vulnerable.
The question, “Whose side is God on?” inevitably leads to the question, “Whose side are we on?” Are we seeking to secure our own life by siding with people whom we know and like, which is just to say, by siding with ourselves, or are we rushing to the sides of the strangers who are hurting? Because it is with them—according to Amos and Israel, Paul and Jesus—that we encounter the life-changing God.
Prayer
God of the poor and needy,
The Philistines and the Arameans;
Christ of the hungry and the sick,
The imprisoned and the stranger and the Muslim—
You are reconciling all people
By the wonder of Your love.
Enlist us in Your cause.
Touch us with Your grace,
And take us to the sides
Where You are rushing.
Amen.
-----
[1] Amy Schaeffer, “God Determines Who Wins the Superbowl,” http://www.inquisitr.com/1799215/god-determines-who-wins-super-bowl-27-percent-of-americans-think-so-study/, accessed July 14, 2016.
[2] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html, accessed July 14, 2016.
[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address.”
No comments:
Post a Comment