Justice Begins at Home

 “Justice Begin at Home”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Jan 13, 2019

Text: Amos 2:4-4:13 // Series: Back to the Start: AMOS

Good morning.  Welcome here, friends.  My name is Brad Sumner, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge and it is our privilege and pleasure to have you here with us here at Jericho.  I want to invite you to come back in and take your seat as we continue with our teaching time together this morning. 

You may have seen them from time to time over the past few months.  In their bright yellow reflective vests, they jump out from the shadows and ambush the unsuspecting.  Often I see them at 64^th and 200^th Street.  Flagging people into a parking lot who have been caught texting and driving.  Police officers, often of the Integrated Road Safety team are on the lookout.  Ever vigilant in their attempts to ensure that we as drivers leave the phone alone.  But some of us still haven’t got the message.  Well, that’s not technically true.  We’ve gotten the message we just chose on the odd occasion, when we think nobody is looking or that red light that has just turned is going to last for a long time – long enough to check our e-mail or send a quick text.    

But what is the first thing you think of when you see someone getting pulled over by the police?  I saw it last night driving.  Is your heart filled with compassion and sympathy for the poor soul who made a wrong choice at the wrong time?  NO!  My first thought is “well, it sucks to be you!”  or “that was an expensive text message you just sent there!” or “serves them right! I bet they text and drive all the time!” 

It is a very human impulse when someone else is getting into trouble or when someone else has done something wrong to think or say “yeah, they had it coming to them!” But when we are in trouble, when WE are the ones pulled over, we sing a different tune: “Oh, officer! I never do this!”  We want JUSTICE for other people when they are (clearly!) in the wrong, but we want MERCY when we are in the wrong!  .    

That is what is going on in our Scripture reading today.  This month at Jericho Ridge we are exploring the biblical book of Amos in a series we are calling Back to the Start.  Amos is one of the 12 short prophetic books tucked away at the end of the Old Testament.  And the major theme of this minor prophet is JUSTICE.  Amos challenges us to ask ourselves “What does it mean to live with a sense of justice? How should we respond when God points out things in our lives individually, corporately or nationally that are out of alignment? How do we get back to the start and the heart of a faith that is grounded in the call to love mercy, to walk humbly and act justly?  These questions are as relevant now as they were to the people in the nations of Judah & Israel in 750 BC when the book was first written.    

Last week, we looked at the first chapter of the book of Amos and we saw that Amos took aim at 6 of the nations surrounding the people of Israel and the tribe of Judah. Through Amos, God calls both people and nations to forsake injustice and violence    

“This message was given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah.” (Amos 1:1a) Amos was just a shepherd & fig farmer but he called out the nations on issues of slavery, of running overtop of anything and anyone to get what they wanted.  They broke treaty promises they had made & lied, they practiced a “me first” extreme form of nationalism. In other words, the offences that God was calling these six nations out on could have been ripped from the news headlines today! 

And you can almost hear the people of Judah and Israel as Amos goes after those 6 surrounding nations pictured on this map begin to cheer him on.  “Yeah, those nations are super wicked and evil, Amos!  Go get em!”  ‘Preach it, brother Amos!  Those people are sinners!”

And then, without missing a beat, near the beginning of Amos chapter 2, God turns the cross hairs from the nations around to the nations of Judah and Israel.  And it gets real. Real uncomfortable. Real quick. Turn with me in your Bibles or on your devices to Amos 2:4 and we see that Gond continues, through the prophet Amos, to use the language of a court case. He is laying our a case first against Judah and then against Israel. 

SO what’s the charge God brings against Judah?

They have an obedience issue   

“The people of Judah have… rejected the instruction of the Lord, refusing to obey His decrees. They have been led astray by the same lies that deceived their ancestors.’” (Amos 2:4)

Fire in the prophetic tradition represents refining.  Experience or challenges or circumstances that will cause people to turn back to or rely on God.  This is where we see that out of all of the offenses listed by Amos, Judah’s is unique.  Other nations are being judged for how they treat and respond to their fellow human beings, but Judah’s sin is specifically mentioned as being against God.  It’s vertical, not horizontal.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I am sinning I tell myself that it won’t hurt anybody.  But is that really true?  What does it mean to sin against God?  It sounds serious but what is that and how could you and I avoid that charge being brought against us? 

First thing to keep in mind is that Sin always involves relational rupture. 

God has a perfect intent and plan for God’s world and for you. And when you and I choose to knowingly violate that by rejecting God’s instructions or refusing to obey something that God has given to us in love and for our flourishing, we are choosing to say to God “you do not know what is best. I know what is best!”  Sin is saying to the Creator who knows you and loves you and has your best in mind: “No thank you. I’ll take it from here!”  That breaks relationship.  So there is no sin that doesn’t involve relationship being ruptured in some way, either a relationship with another human and / or our relationship with God.   

One of the main characters of the Old Testament is a man by the name of David.  He goes from being a lowly shepherd to being the king over the nations of Israel and Judah.  The text describes David as a person after God’s own heart.  And yet, in a season of weakness, he gives in to sexual sin. He sees a woman bathing and he desires her so much that he has sex with her and then he has her husband killed to cover up the fact that she gets pregnant. Listen to how David writes about this tragic part of his life in the Psalm 51:3-4. He is pouring out his heart speaking to God & he says:

“For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. 4 Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.” (Psalm 51:3-4)

Wait a minute, David?!  Against God and God only have your sinned?  Um, what about the guy you killed? The women you forcibly raped? All the people who your force to lie and act duplicitously on your behalf?!  David recognizes something about the nature of each and every sin that you and I commit. Each and every choice, little or big, that takes us off the path God has laid out for us grieves and wounds our relationship not only with other people, but also with God.  Sin always involves relational rupture.  

Relational ruptures are not fixed by piety (good religious behaviour) They require authentic repentance David continues in Psalm 51:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me... make me willing to obey you.” (Psalm 51:10,12b)

To keep in right relationship, you have to clear away any obstacles/debris.

So I want to invite us to pause in this moment and do a practice that David models for us in that text in Psalm 51.  The practice of confession.  Confession is simply the act of saying to God and sometimes to others. I was wrong. I am sorry. Would you please forgive me?  And so I want to invite you to read out loud this Prayer of Confession and Pardon with me.  It is taken from the Book of Common Prayer.  Out loud all together:

“Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against You

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved You with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent,

for the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

that we may delight in Your will,

and walk in Your ways,

to the glory of Your Name. Amen.”

Psalm 51 notes that because of God’s great mercy and compassion, we are assured of forgiveness and pardon because God does not reject a broken and repentant heart.  And maybe today, you are here and you think to yourself “I’ve done too much, I could never be forgiven!”  That is a lie that needs to be broken right now.  God is always ready to forgive and embrace those who come to God with a broken and repentant heart.  You don’t have to carry the weight of that guilt and shame anymore.  You can experience the liberation that comes from confession.  If that is you today, and you want to start walking out a new path, come and talk with Ali or Constance or Katy or Mike or myself during the time of response in song.

Before we get there, there is a bit more ground to cover in this text.  Because the bulk of the book of Amos is actually about the nation of Israel, God’s people.  They are getting pulled over / called to account for three pretty significant things!

So what are the Charges brought against Israel?  Similar to the nations around them.  The first charge is that  

They have oppressed those who are poor   

• “They sell honorable people for silver and poor people for a pair of sandals. 7 They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way.” (Amos 2:6-7)

  “At their religious festivals, they lounge in clothing their debtors put up as security. In the house of their gods, [in the house of God] they drink wine bought with unjust fines.” (Amos 2:8)

The people who themselves were once oppressed as slaves in Egypt, who know what it is like to be trampled on and shoved out of the way, are themselves, now that they have attained economic security, have become the oppressors and the ones who are treating the poor with contempt.  You can take people physically or economically out of poverty or slavery but it is actually harder to get a mentality of slavery & poverty out of people.  

Yet this is exactly what God wanted to prevent by giving the people the law when the left Egypt.  This image of the lounging on the coats of the people who owe them money is disturbing but it’s a little bit foreign to us so let’s press into that image in Amos 2:8 for a moment 

Some of the basic human needs are food, shelter and clothing.  And in the Old Testament times, people had these kinds of long outer garments, coats or cloaks, that they would wrap around themselves to keep warm and to protect themselves from the elements.  So in love and kindness,

• God instituted rules to protect people from exploitation
• Exodus 22:25-27: if you took a person’s cloak as collateral for  loan, you had to give it back         before sundown
• These people used the cloaks of the poor as lounge pillows!

They are so calloused and uncaring that people who live on the street or in extreme poverty might not have literally a shirt on their back yet they just go off to their religious festivals and have a nice glass of rose.  But people who act oppressively are forgetting something deeply important:

For Reflection and Action

God cares about how people are treated People who are poor and oppressed have a special and unique place close to God’s heart.  It is as if God says “if no one else is going to look after you, I will do it!”

• “But you are a tower of refuge to the poor, O Lord, a tower of refuge to the needy in distress. You are a refuge from the storm and a shelter from the heat.” (Isaiah 25:4) so we need to ask

Does my attitude & actions toward people who are poor reflect the heart of God?

Recently here in our city there was a discussion about housing people who are drug addicted and who are living on the street.  And I went to the public meetings and I have to say I was ashamed of a lot of the things I heard expressed.  It seemed to me that people were more concerned about a few digits on their BC Assessment notices reflecting the value of their homes than they were with a compassionate response to people who are homeless here in our city.  There are legitimate ways to do social housing and I’m not here to debate politics or strategies for low income, second stage housing. But I am here to say that we as the people of God need to think and act clearly with respect to how we treat those who are vulnerable and poor in our culture and in our city.  If people who are poor are close to the heart of God, then they need to be close to my heart as well.  I want to be a person who values the things and the people that God values.  That’s why we are a church go to Guatemala every year.  That’s why we work with Wagner Hills addiction recovery here locally.  That’s why Meg and I are leading a team to Tanzania again this year.  Because people who are downtrodden matter to God so they sure as heck better matter to you & me.  OK, I could preach for days on this.  But we have to keep moving J

The second of three charges that God bring against Israel through Amos is that They engaged in perverse sexual sins

• “Both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name.” (Amos 2:7b)

We live in a contemporary culture that is extremely free when it comes to personal sexual expression.  The general mantra is that so long as it is consensual and you are not hurting anyone, it is OK.  We tend to use language like “what’s the big deal?”  They are two consenting adults – who cares what kind of lifestyle they live or what happens in the bedroom.  We tend to think of this kind of liberality around sexuality as a post-1960’s kind of thing. But in both the Old and New Testaments, we see God speaking out against various kinds of sexual perversion because. 

Sexual sin has a way of blinding us.  The Apostle Paul writes to a church in the first century and he says…

“I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his father’s wife You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame.” (I Cor. 5:1-2). 

Like the people in Amos’ time, people in the 1^st century in Corinth and some in our day are taking more liberties in the area of sexuality than is healthy.  We would do well to reflect on the notion

God cares what we do with our bodies.  The I Cor text continues…

“Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.”                 (I Corinthians 6:18)

Sex is a beautiful gift from God that requires wise stewardship

God isn’t down on sex.  God invented it! But there are expressions of sexuality that create damage not only to our bodies, but also to our souls and so we would do well to steward the gift of sex in the way that God has designed and purposed it: within the boundaries of a committed monogamous marriage relationship between a man and women where it becomes the expression of mutual love and something deeply holy.  

Much more could be said there, but let’s move on the third of three charges that God brings against the people of Israel. 

Their greatest sin was forgetting God

• “It was I who rescued you from Egypt and led you through the desert for forty years… I chose some of your sons to be prophets and others to be Nazirites. Can you deny this, my people of Israel?” asks the Lord.” (Amos 2:10-11) chapter 3…

They forgot God’s goodness and care

• “Listen to this message that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel—against the entire family I rescued from Egypt: 2 “From among all the families on the earth, I have been intimate with you alone. That is why I must punish you for all your sins.”.” (Amos 3:1-2) Then finishing with what is perhaps one of the most sorrowful verses in the book of Amos, chapter 3:10

 “My people have forgotten how to do right,”     says the Lord. “Their fortresses are filled with wealth taken by theft and violence.” (3:10)

God’s incredible and lavish generosity is help up and contrasted with the people’s forgetfulness and rebellion. God has been faithful and kind and loving and in return, God’s people have treated others with disdain, they have oppressed people who are poor, they have been stingy with their financial resources and they lived this way for so long, they have forgotten how to do what is right.  Wow.  What a sad indictment! 

You see, God’s plan was to use Israel and Judah, God’s people, as a light to the nations.  God’s heart was to be intimate with them.  To reveal to them a path of justice and mercy to walk on.  And that as God’s people walked in the light, that the nations around would look at them and say “you know what, those people are on to something over there!”  But instead, we see that those who should know better are actually doing worse.  Those who had been given God’s laws, who had God’s heart revealed to them, had actually forgotten.  It’s such a tragic picture! 

But it’s not a picture that only applies to the people of Amos’ day.  It can happen to anyone.  It can happen to a church. A church like Jericho.  God has been at work in our midst in powerful and supernatural ways in 2018.  Providing this home for us to enjoy. Changing lives through this ministry.  And yet we can turn the corner into a new year and settling in complaining about how the coffee wasn’t ready for me in the stupid new building or how someone sat in my spot today or how no one says hi to me at this church. 

I confess. I am a forgetful person. I am very forward-facing and it takes discipline to slow down and reflect ask myself:

How do you keep from forgetting God’s good work & faithful kindness in your life?  

• Rituals or practices that mark a certain event (liturgical calendar is a gift – Advent, coming into Lent)
• Visual representation (friend who put ornaments on tree to celebrate what God had done that year in his life. When God spared his life in a car crash, hood ornament became a tree ornament)
• Journal – I love writing. It’s not a natural discipline for me, but I know that I am forgetful. So I write down what God is teaching me. What God has done in my life and in our church.
• Weekly corporate worship – easiest thing. Just put it in your calendar. Make it a priority because you will be reminded of truth. 

I am amazed ay my own capacity to be petty when God has been so richly generous toward me and us.  That is why I am so thankful for the gift of weekly corporate worship together as a community.  Because I know my heart.  I am a selfish and sinful person.  But when I bring my whole self, body, mind and soul to this place and I let the songs we sing and the teaching from the Bible and the connection with others re-order and practice of confession reorient my heart, it’s a beautiful & holy thing. 

Megan and the team are going to come and lead us in two songs of response.  I know we have spent time already in corporate confession. But perhaps you need some space and time to spend with God in private, personal confession.  These songs give you that opportunity.  Don’t feel you need to sing simply because there are words up on the screen.  Maybe you have an area in your life you need to bring to God and invite God again to breathe new life in.  Maybe you need to declare your desire to trust God in a fresh way in 2019.  Maybe God has done something you want to celebrate and publically give God thanks for.  That’s what this time is.  To bring things on our hearts to both God, who loves you and to tursted people in the gathered community who can stand with you in prayer.  Let’s stand together and Megan and team will lead us in sung worship. 

Benediction: From Reverend Mindi:

“Creator God,

You created the earth, whole and round;

You created us to be whole people.

But we have become fragmented, cracked and broken.

We have been broken by false promises,

lost relationships, shattered trust.

We have become cracked with the experience of systemic sin:

prejudice, oppression and fear.

We have become fragmented,

building up walls instead of lending hands.

Forgive us when we have done the breaking,

heal us where we have been hurt.

Let Your light shine through our cracks and scars

so that we might bring light to the world,

showing that in You we are made whole.

In You we find healing.

In You we find renewed life.

Help us to forgive, to love, to mend. Amen.