“Tending the Light”
November 12, 2017
Amos 5:18-24
Matthew 25:1-13
We seem to be a nation, a world on the edge.
Last week the humanitarian chief of the United Nations sent what was called a “chilling” warning that Yemen is facing the world’s worst famine in decades. Millions could die as a result of a Saudi blockade in aid.
The situation with North Korea continues to be intractable.
Our own nation, which just barely kept health care from being take away from millions of our fellow citizens, now faces changes—tax reform it’s called—that will give even more to the rich, seemingly basing tax policy on the old blues song: “Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose.”
Further examples of sexual misconduct of men in power surface each day. And at the end of last week the Gospel account of Joseph and Mary was offered as a revolting defense in the face of accusations of child sexual abuse by a candidate for the United States Senate.
We are on the edge.
Sometimes we go over the edge.
Just four Sundays ago we gathered here following the shooting in Las Vegas—the worst mass shooting in United States history.
Last Sunday as we worshipped here bullets ripped through a small congregation in Texas, killing or wounding nearly everyone there. It is the worst mass shooting in a place of worship—a new category for assessing such things—it was the worst mass shooting in a place of worship in United States history. Worse than the shooting at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston. Worse than the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
Again the words—the solemn announcement that our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the people of the community. Lots of people—myself included—wonder if such announcements do not approach blasphemy in their hypocrisy and insincerity. But if they do arise out of deep honesty and humility, we are right up against the real possibility of prayer.
The possibility of authentic prayer is that it changes the one who prays. Hearts change, lives change, actions changed. So if people gather to pray for our nation and our world in all this turmoil and trouble, and if we pray for our nation and our world, my hope is that the prayer will be genuine and turn us in a new direction—that we will repent. That is, I hope that by God’s grace we and all of Texas and our entire nation will recognize that we are prone to violence and that concerted, concrete, and sustained action is required to change that. I hope that our prayers for victims of such violence will turn our hearts so that we respond with mercy and compassion and not with calls to arm ourselves even more. I hope that we will be roused to look up from our soul-sucking phone screens to see the world we are creating. I hope that by God’s grace we will be pulled out of our numb hopelessness.
If nothing changes, if we don’t change, it is not prayer.
I hope our thoughts and prayers will turn us into the changed people, the new people that authentic prayer creates.
Which brings us to Amos.
The prophet Amos spoke the Word of God to a nation at the height of its power. The rich were very well-off. The might of the military was obvious and well-known. The cities were elegant; the second homes were extravagant.
At the same time, there was an underside to all of this—there always is. There seems to have been a widespread addiction problem. Violence was evident. Commerce was corrupt and fraudulent. The poor were denied justice.
The words of Amos to such a nation were filled with rage.
We heard just a little of that this morning—the condemnation of worship that is simply the noise of solemn assemblies. Empty worship, of course, was not the only complaint of Amos. Take some time to read through this small book—do this in the week ahead—and hear God raging through the prophet against the violence and the corruption, against the excesses of the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Perhaps that feeling of rage is easy to understand.
We need to remember, however, that Amos was not a scold, he was a prophet. His work was not to chastise or criticize, but to call the people to turn in a new direction, to change their minds and their hearts and their actions, to do something different, to be better people.
The religious word for this is “repentance.”
The Book of Amos is a call to repentance—an offer of new life.
This life comes to us as we live in relation to others: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” We might not be able to get along with everyone. But we can seek right relationship with our neighbors; we can work to establish social structures that help support strong, independent lives rather than make more broken people.
Which brings us around to the words of Jesus some 750 or 800 years after Amos.
Near the end of his life, with controversy swirling around him with religious and civil authorities plotting against him—that is to say, with the darkness increasing—Jesus reminds his followers of their task: they are to tend the light.
Again this week people lit candles—as they lit candles after mass shootings in so many places including Las Vegas and Orlando and Charleston and Newtown and Iowa City. We light candles as a bulwark against the encroaching darkness as a sign that we will not let the darkness overcome us.
This is the message that comes to us today: tend your light.
Do not give in.
Do not give up.
Continue the good and valuable work that you are doing. While it may feel like it at times, especially at times like these, we are not at the end. What you are doing matters.
What God is doing through you and through this congregation, what God is doing in our lives is neither easily apprehended nor easily described.
But it is essential to the well-being of our nation and our world.
And somewhere you knew this before you came here today. You did not come here this morning to be told to be an idle spectator. You came because you sense your ability and want to use it. You came here because you wanted to hear again the good news that there is an empowering and forgiving love that will sustain you through all the discouragement and opposition and failure as you act in the world.
That is just what I am telling you.
And this is what I want you to do in the days ahead.
Think about—think prayerfully about—those issues, those situations, those people that are important to you. It might be gun violence or education. It might be famine or climate change. It might be refugees in Europe or immigrants in Iowa City. It might be the creation of beauty or the bringing of joy. It might something else entirely.
Choose one. And pursue that in the coming year. Learn more. Do more.
Tend your light.
Take care of that precious light that is in your charge. Keep it shining.
When we simply focus on present problems instead of defining and moving toward future possibilities we are like those who show up at a wedding with no oil for the lamps. The light grows dim. The joy of life diminishes.
“You don’t know,” Jesus says. I hear that and my spirit is flooded with relief. Yes, he’s right that we don’t know the day or the hour when the realm of heaven will come breaking into our lives. And there is so much more that we don’t know in addition to this. The prophets reminded us that God’s ways are not our ways. We don’t know.
This life is a time of expectation.
God has not given up on this church, this nation, this world. And let me make it even more specific: God has not given up on you.
Your light is vital in these days.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning.