“Being Love over Being Right”

Second Sunday after Epiphany

RIC: Black, Indigenous, and People of Color

January 14, 2024

Amos 5:18-24

Luke 4:16-21

It should come as no surprise that this week’s focus on people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color align with Martin Luther King Day. A day in which we lift up the work and the words of a man who spoke with such passion about a future he would never see—a future in which all of the humans in this nation would be cared for, given equitable opportunity—a future in which our bloody and despicable history would no longer continue to influence our expectations of one another. It is a day we still long for. It is not yet here.

I imagine that King’s words and imagination conjured up similar feelings to those who witnessed the teachings of Jesus. Especially the teaching we hear today. “The Scripture has been fulfilled today in your hearing. The blind see, the captive are released, the lame walk. THIS is the year of the Lord’s favor.” And everyone looked around, stunned. Today? Now?

And yet…the blind are still blind. The captive remain captive. The lame still struggle. The poor are still poor—and getting poorer. Injustice still happens. Those in power wield it like a weapon. Nothing has changed in the 2,000 years since Jesus uttered those words. Very little has changed in the 70 years since we heard about King’s dream for his nation. We still cling to stereotypes. We still participate in systems that protect the status quo. We still fear the changes necessary for life and light to prevail.

And we do it while hiding behind flowery words of faith and religion. That is what Amos speaks to as he rails against the people of Israel. Channeling God’s displeasure, Amos condemns the way in which faith in God has become a show. “I despise and reject your feasts. I reject your offerings and sacrifices. Spare me the racket of your chanting and your harps. Why are you looking for the Day of the Lord? Because it is not going to be pretty.”

Why do we seek the presence of God and the Day of the Lord? Because we have been taught through the generations that the right words, the right prayers, the right hymns, the right theology, the right amount of money, the right skin color, the right gender will save us. We have been taught to fear anything that might challenge that sense of order—the order that keeps the powerful people in power and the lowly in their place.

How did we get here? How did we get to the place in which righteousness had anything to do with us? How is it that we continually find ourselves on the wrong side of justice? Throughout the ages—the Crusades, the Inquisition, the colonization, stripping people from their land and their customs, kidnapping people to work as slaves far from home, denying basic rights and dignity of simply being human—these things have been fueled by the Church. Even now, many Christians seem to think that if they just clamp down hard enough on the people and things they don’t understand or don’t like, they can somehow control God’s love, God’s power, God’s favor.

Why do we seek God’s presence? Why do we seek the Day of the Lord? It will be darkness, not light. According to Amos, the people want God’s judgment to come quickly in order to prove that they’ve been right all along. When will we learn that God’s judgment, Christ’s favor, the Spirit’s movement always defend those who are defenseless—those who have been told they don’t have a leg to stand on—those for whom the system has never worked. People who have been denied their humanity by the very organization that claims Jesus as Messiah, savior of the world—the One who will give sight to the blind, release the captive, and heal the broken.

That’s part of the reason that, shortly after this teaching, Jesus’ own hometown tries to push him off a cliff to shut him up. Because he tells them that the Good News he is bringing isn’t going to turn out quite the way they had hoped—that God’s doesn’t reward bullies. And the Church has been a quintessential bully since it received legal status by Constantine in the year 312. Since then, we’ve thrown our weight around, insisting on our own ways.

Instead, perhaps it’s time to break out Paul’s love chapter to the church in Corinth. Rather than a sappy wedding passage, this is a passage that speaks directly to people who can relate to Amos’ audience.

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.”

I’m reminded of the term ‘ubuntu,’ a word used in the Bantu language but with counterparts in various other African languages and dialects. It essentially means, “I am because you are.” Now, that doesn’t mean, “I am better because you are worse.” It’s not a matter of comparison but of unification. I grieve because you grieve. I celebrate because you celebrate. I hurt because you hurt. This philosophy understands that the world cannot improve until ALL the world and ALL the people of the world are properly cared for. It is a dream that implores us to make it a reality.

Without you, I cannot exist properly. Without your well-being, I am diminished. Without your ability to thrive, I merely survive. This philosophy is essential to our understanding of faith. It is essential to hearing God’s intent for us. It is essential to understanding the cross—that until we know how to live in a way that sees dignity in every cell of every part of creation, we will continue to resort to killing the God of love in order to maintain what we think is right for ourselves.

We are seeing this play out all over the world—from Russia and Ukraine to Sudan to Israel and Palestine to the drug lords in Columbia and the gangs on our streets—even to our own households.

One of Israel’s most celebrated poets, Yehuda Amichai, wrote a poem in 1996 that still challenges his people and the people of the world two decades after his death.

From the place where we are right

Flowers will never grow

In the spring.

The place where we are right

Is hard and trampled

Like a yard.

But doubts and loves

Dig up the world

Like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place

Where the ruined

House once stood.

Pastor Tobi White

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE