Readings
Matthew 25:1-13
Amos 5:18-24
“Tidal,” The Rev. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000)
Sermon
I had planned to focus this week on divine mercy, as evidenced in my decision to use the poem “Tidal” by the Welsh poet and priest R. S. Thomas as my second reading. But sometimes the world demands a different sermon, and only the most stubborn preacher refuses the Word when it arrives. So let me just start with this: how about that election!
Now, I am not naive enough to believe the outcome was driven by some sudden return to virtue. Americans demonstrated their tolerance for corruption, racism, and misogyny when they re-elected Mr. Trump. As much as I’d like to think that seeing Americans shot in the street by masked agents was enough, it was actually selfishness that drove many people to the polls, the fact that the bottom has dropped out of the economy for 90% of us. But still, a whole lot of very bad people received their pink slip on Tuesday night. And while Stephen Miller, our modern-day Reinhard Heidrich, was actually promoted, life just got a lot harder for them.
Tuesday was a “Day of Judgment” of sorts, and as much as our first branch of government may choose to focus on economic justice and affordability, there will certainly be some Days of Judgment along the way. Besides, there is zero evidence the bad guys learned anything this week. In fact, Google, which has spent so much time ensuring that its Chromebook hardware was in as many schools as possible, announced that any schools that refuse their AI will be denied access to their services, essentially holding billions of dollars in hardware hostage in what amounts to an epic cybercrime.
I hope we are like the wise bridesmaids in the parable from the Gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew, prepared, for the bridegroom has arrived in the form of a Muslim doctor and a Paralympic athlete and a Presbyterian seminarian and a woman from America’s First Peoples. I hope we have some fuel and some fire left.
And, you know, maybe it actually is perfect that Amos was the passage assigned to this week, the one I selected months ago for this Sunday, oblivious to the fact that it would fall on the Sunday after the election. And nowhere in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen the joy and tears I saw on MSNow as the results came in Tuesday night.
Amos was a border-crossing troublemaker. A native of the Southern Kingdom, known as Judah, he understood Yahweh as calling him to proclaim judgment on the corrupt elite of the Northern Kingdom, called Israel. He was pretty promptly deported, like some modern-day college student with the audacity to declare that Palestinians are humans.
Amos even compares the “Real Housewives of Samaria” to the “cows of Bashan,” a region renowned for rich pastures and fattened livestock.
I particularly love his warning for the Israelite oligarchs. Apparently some longed for the Day of Judgement. Amos warns them that it is going to be for them like escaping from a lion, then running into a bear. Or managing to get away from the lion by running into a house, only to be bitten by a snake.
This passage from Amos is mostly referenced for that last line, “let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” This may be the second best known call to social justice in the Jewish Bible, second only to Micah 6:8, the passage that commands us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. Both passages make clear that God has no interest in performative religion, in blood sacrifice and festivals. Which is ironic when you consider that Christianity has traditionally interpreted the crucifixion and communion as blood sacrifice, rather than as love’s victory over sin and the meal that seals the covenant.
Now, most of you know that I don’t believe in hell. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of a good God that would allow sentient creatures to suffer like that, not for a moment, not for eternity. I tend to think that for most moral people, sin is its own misery. But a whole lot of Christians do believe in hell, and a whole lot of Christians want the Day of Judgment, and let me just do my best Amos for a moment, and say “Lions and bears and snakes, oh my!”
For if you are longing for the Day of Judgment, confident that you make the cut, you have already committed the first sin, which is pride. See Micah 6:8 on humility.
That does not mean we need to wring our hands in misery and self-loathing, beat our breasts, say seven Hail Marys, sing “God Bless America” and do the hokey-pokey. It does mean that when we dare to denounce kings and despots, we should be mindful of the ways in which we ourselves could do better, whether it is in what we have done or in what we have failed to do, whether we call it sin or bad karma.
I tend to lean into those imperfect saints I mentioned last Sunday, imperfect like me, and as I said then, the term saint is broadly defined in our tradition. It includes those we look up to as models of holy effort. It includes those we have loved and lost, the faithful of this church and other churches, past and present, and beyond churches, the faithful who have lived lives of humility, selfless service, bravery, in other traditions as well, and even no tradition at all if we believe Amos and Micah, who declare, as we do every week, that it is what you do that matters.
My faith is aspirational, a journey not an accomplishment, for I will never do as much good as I want to do in this world, will never love this mystery of existence enough to do it justice, the explosion of star stuff that is me, that is you, that is the everflowing Chemung, if we can stop ourselves before we destroy the planet entirely. As the Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus first wrote in 1883, none of us are free until all of us are free. And in the same way, my work is not done as long as there is suffering in the world, and especially human-caused suffering, children in cages and climate change.
The Day of Judgment is everyday when you are sitting on the kitchen counter in Florida as the water rises, laying on the horn and debating getting out of the car as you see the wildfire flames in the rearview mirror, watching the auctioneer as he sells off your farm for pennies on the dollar.
And maybe this turns out to be a sermon about mercy after all, maybe we need an ocean of mercy, tidal.
R. S. Thomas writes of despair as an ebb-tide, and that is a bit of what happened this week. We breathed a sigh of relief, a little despair drained out of us, but he also asks for brimming springs of prayer, and we need pray. For even if we do not expect a puppet master god to swoop in and fix what we have broken, prayer in any form is a confession that we are not the center of the universe, that we did not call ourselves into the world, and that we are often powerless, praying for mercy, the mercy of the Spirit that moves in a heart attuned to Holy Mystery, mercy where trust can take root and grow.
May we find life in the tide pools, in the everflowing streams, in one another, and may we love the world, this day and always. Amen.