7/21/19 “What do you see?” by Nancy Petty

Text: Amos 8:1-12

A firefly is not a fly – it is a beetle. A prairie dog is not a dog – it is a rodent. India ink is not from India – it is from China and Egypt. A horned toad is not a toad – it is a lizard. A lead pencil does not contain lead – it contains graphite. A douglas fir is not a fir – it is a pine. A silkworm is not a worm – it is a caterpillar. A peanut is not a nut – it is a legume. An English horn is not English and it isn’t a horn – it is a French alto oboe. A bald eagle is not bald – it has flat white feathers on its head and neck when mature, and dark feathers when young. A banana tree is not a tree – it is an herb. A cucumber is not a vegetable – it is a fruit.

“Things are not always what they seem…” I imagine we have all heard this quote. For you parents, how many times have you repeated it to your curious adolescent? Youth, how many times have you heard this from your parents? As adults, how often have we thought it when we bought something off the internet thinking it was one thing only to realize upon opening the Amazon box that the picture on the internet looked a lot different from the thing we are now holding in our hand. “Things are not always what they seem…” These words are actually the first part of a longer quote by Phaedrus – a character from the works of Plato. The full quote goes like this: “Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.”

“Things are not always what they seem…” I first experienced the truth of this quote as a young adolescent, when my family joined a new church. The joining ritual at the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church was not unlike our joining ritual here at Pullen. At the closing “invitation” hymn anyone who wanted to join the church was invited to walk down the aisle where they would be greeted and welcomed by the pastor. As the church began to sing Just As I Am our family of four stepped out of our pew and made our way to the front of the church. After the final verse had been sung, the pastor introduced my family to the congregation saying that we were joining the church. At one point, the pastor said, “We are so glad to welcome this good, loving Christian family into our church.” I gulped, internally. “Good, loving Christian family…” He had no way of knowing what had gone on in our home just hours before as we got ready for church, or for that matter what went on at 1450 New House Road most mornings during those tumultuous teenage years. From the inside, it certainly didn’t feel like a “good, loving Christian family.” I have often heard parents say that Sunday mornings trying to get the kids ready for church is the most un-Christian day of the week. “Things are not always what they seem.” The calm before the storm that is brewing on the other size of the horizon. The cheerful young person who, on the inside, is struggling with depression and anxiety. The marriage that looks solid but is falling apart. The beautiful house that is infested with termites or mold. No,“Things are not always what they seem.”

This truth has shown itself to me several times in the last few weeks. I love the summer not because I like hot weather, but rather because I love summer fruit and vegetables. Watermelon, peaches, fresh corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes are my most favorite of foods. And this time of year, they are simply delicious. That is if you can pick the good ones. It never fails, however, that I will go to the Farmers Market, pick out the best-looking peaches and the best-looking watermelon only to get them home and find that the watermelon is no good and the peaches have no taste. “Things are not always what they seem.” Just last week, Karla picked out two of the most plump and beautiful purple Cherokee tomatoes for me knowing how much I love a tomato sandwich. The two tomatoes sat on the chopping block for a day looking absolutely delicious. On the second day when I went to pick one of them up to make my beloved tomato sandwich the tomato collapsed in my hand, rotten juice running all down my arm. “Things are not always what they seem.”

God said to Amos, “Amos, what do you see?” And Amos said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Now before you start envisioning those fresh peaches and ripe tomatoes, let me warn you: things are not what they seem when it comes to Amos’ response to God. To fully understand Amos’ response it is important to know the context to which he speaks his prophetic words. Amos lived during the reign of King Jeroboam II, “who reigned forty-one years and built a political dynasty marked by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, and unprecedented national prosperity. The citizens of his day took patriotic pride in their religiosity, their history as God’s favored people, their military conquests, their economic affluence, and their political security.” I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions to the relevance of this passage to our current day context.

“With Israel at the peak of its power, and having many good reasons to believe that no disaster could befall it, Amos preached a counter-intuitive and culturally subversive message…He spoke to average citizens in general, but also to the nation’s leaders in particular – priests, judges, financiers, and state bureaucrats, ‘the notable men of the foremost nation’ (Amos 6:1).” His sermon in chapter 8 begins with a vision – a basket of summer fruit. But this basket of summer fruit is not what it seems. You see, Amos is comparing Israel to a basket of summer fruit that was not merely ripe but close to rotten. The abundance of king Jeroboam’s reign, that basket of summer fruit – the economic affluence, the military might, the political security – was all rotten because it had been built on the backs of the poor and the needy. Those 41 years under Jeroboam that allowed for cultural achievements and economic prosperity also created a gap between the wealthy and the poor. Those 41 years of prosperity had created societal systems and structures that gave to the wealthy while taking from the poor and the needy. To this Amos would speak his words of doom.

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practice deceit with false balances,
6 buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”

All practices that cheat the poor.

“the end has come, [Amos declares] the songs of the temple shall become wailings…” Oh, if Amos were among us today, what would he see? A nation still trampling on its 140 million poor people through unjust systems and structures that cheat and take from the poor to line the pockets of the rich.

While reading Amos “we may be tempted [as many scholars are tempted] to blame Israel’s downfall solely on their breaking of the covenant with God through idol worship, but the uncomfortable truth is that their misdeeds were actually much more commonplace, and much more relatable. While most of us will never pray or sacrifice to an idol, we well may cheat our neighbor as a way to get ahead. Or turn a blind eye to the inhumane treatment of others. Or be so obsessed with money, success, and possessions that we ignore all else.” Amos, the prophet, is not so much concerned about idol worship as he is the practices that create untrustworthy and unjust markets that fatten the pocketbooks of the rich while taking from the poor. And in the tradition of the prophets, Amos reminds us that there are consequences for disregarding and exploiting the poor. In our text this morning, the prophet frames these consequences as God’s judgment on the people and outlines God’s punishment. Honestly, I don’t know how God’s judgment or God’s punishment works – or, even, if there is such a thing as God’s judgment and punishment. But what I do know is that there are consequences, natural consequences, for a society that is built on systemic structures that lift up some and oppress/trample on others. There are consequences for nations that exploit the poor. There are consequences for societies that allow corporations to release cancer-causing chemicals into the air and water sources of poor communities while protecting communities of wealth and privilege from tainted water and air and gas pipelines. There are consequences for nations that spend more on militarism than feeding people who are hungry, housing people who are homeless, paying people a living wage, and educating the nation’s children.

For the social justice prophets, the covenant – the covenant between God and God’s people – was always about justice for the poor. The covenant was and has always been about justice for all – not just some. The covenant – God’s covenant with God’s people – has always been about our behavior in human community – our relationships to and with one another. “Amos views sin in relation terms, meaning ‘sin’ is anything we do to disrupt relationships, either with God or with other people. And we will all be held accountable for our role in fostering oppression and injustice.” Not in some after-life. Not at some pearly gate in the sky. But here on this earth, right now!

God asked Amos, “What do you see?” And God is still asking God’s people, “What do you see?” C. S. Lewis noted that: “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”

This week I’ve been thinking not just about what I see, but where I stand. I stand within a privileged institution. I move in systems and structures designed to protect me as a white citizen of the United States of America. I pastor a predominately white upper-middle-class Christian church in a so-called Christian nation. I make enough money to own a home, afford health insurance, purchase whatever I want to eat and wear, and live a very comfortable life. From where I stand, my view is that of a basket of opportunity, financial stability, access to good medical care, and a life lived with abundance. What one sees depends on where one stands! And I, and this church stand in places of privilege.

But Lewis also says that what one sees also depends on what sort of person you are. I have asked myself this week, “What kind of person am I?” Am I the kind of person who is willing to go to places where people speak a different language than I do so that I may see what my Spanish speaking sisters and brothers experience every day as they live and work in this country? Am I the kind of person who is willing to stand in places where I am the minority so that I might see what people of color see when they worship at this church? Am I a person who is willing to stand with the working homeless young person at the landlord’s office to see what it is like to try and rent a room with no credit history or bank account?

God asked Amos, “What do you see?” And God is still asking those who would be God’s prophets today, “What do you see?” If what we see depends on where we stand, then the question before us today is: Where are you willing to stand in order to see what God sees? Where are you willing to stand so that you may see through the eyes of the poor and all those trampled on by the unjust systems and structures designed for and perpetuated by the rich and the powerful and the privileged? The prophet is asking us: Where are we willing to stand, as a church, to see with God’s eyes? To see what needs to change in our world, in our community, in our lives so that we may repair the breach and re-establish the covenant with God: a covenant that from the very beginning was about God’s people taking care of one another.

At the heart of Amos’ prophetic message, God is asking us, “Do you see the injustice being done to the 140 million poor people in the United States? Do we see the broken structures in our society – the systemic ills – that give to the rich while taking from the poor?” God is saying, “Things are not always what they seem.” And in the same breath, God is asking us, “What is in your basket of summer fruit?” What do you see?

Last month, The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival released its Poor People’s Moral Budget. The overall findings stated that: “The United States has abundant resources for an economic revival that will move towards establishing a moral economy. The report identifies:
• $350 billion in annual military spending cuts that would make the nation and the world more secure;
• $886 billion in estimated annual revenue from fair taxes on the wealthy, corporations, and Wall Street, and;
• Billions more in savings from ending mass incarceration, addressing climate change, affordable housing, living wages, and other systemic structures that perpetuate poverty

We are part of the broken and unjust systems and structures in our society. That’s what Imam was saying to us last week. Sometimes it feels like we are powerless to do anything to change the system. But we are not powerless. There are actions we can take to address the moral famine in this country. But seeing those actions will require us as individuals and as a community, to be honest about where we stand; because from our place of privilege, things are not always what they seem. Where we stand will answer the question, “What do you see?” May we have the courage to stand in unfamiliar places of discomfort, and see those places as God see them.