July 21, 2013 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

Blessed Are the Organized

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 56
Amos 8:1–12
Matthew 5:1–16

“The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.” Amos 8:11 (NRSV)

It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.

Nelson Mandela

I have often passed a man standing on a corner of Michigan Avenue, preaching a message amidst the hustle and bustle of this part of the city. Using a bullhorn and wearing a placard, he obviously has a message that he wants the public to hear. Though I have been curious to know what his message is about, I have not stopped long enough either fully to listen to him or to read his placard. I have heard only bits and pieces of his preaching, while waiting on the corner for a traffic light to turn. I have caught only a word here and there, while walking and reading his placard between passersby. So while I don’t know the full or specific content of his message, I do know that in one way he takes on a trait of the ancient prophets: I can tell that, unlike most of us, he is not bedazzled by all the glamour and glitter of the Magnificent Mile; instead, he stands out because his mission is to point out what he views as being wrong with society.

One Sunday more recently, when worship had just ended, my husband, daughter, and I were leaving the church. That day the man whom I had often heard preaching along Michigan Avenue was standing outside at the corner of our church, at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Chestnut Street. As we crossed Michigan Avenue, I quietly said under my breath, “Gosh, I wonder if passersby might think that his preaching has to do with Fourth Church.” Upon hearing this, my daughter immediately looked over her shoulder at me and said, “Oh, I thought he was a member of Fourth Church who volunteered to preach to the people walking outside; Mom, wasn’t that one of your sermons that he was preaching?” So quick was she to catch me in my judgmental moment and to tease me, knowing that I felt guilty about it.

Today I will be preaching a sermon that, while it may not be prophetic in style, will be on the prophetic message of Amos. Amos is the quintessential prophet. He has visions, and he has the capacity to see injustices that escape the view of most people. Though today prophecy may not require a bullhorn or preaching about earthquakes and cosmic disaster, it still and always will require the kind of vision that Amos had and demands that we too have.

The prophet Amos provides some of the strongest language in the Bible about social justice. It is Amos who said “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” It is ironic that Amos was called to prophecy during a period of time that historians call the Silver Age of Israel’s history: a time when Israel reached the summit of its material and economic prosperity and had gained territories through its military conquests. Despite the opulence and optimism coloring the period of time in which he lived, Amos nevertheless saw injustice underlying it all. He saw at what cost and at whose loss prosperity had been gained. And he warned that if these injustices continued to prevail, there would be dire consequences for all. Instead of seeing a basket of figs as a sign of a good harvest, he saw it as fruit ripe enough that it would soon rot. Amos prophesied that the earth would quake the sky would darken, and worst of all, God would be found nowhere. “The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” Worse than any physical, natural, or cosmic consequence would be the spiritual deprivation of God.

Amos’s words are hard to hear. Even though we may wish that ignoring them or thinking about something else could be as simple as crossing the street when the light turns green, he holds us captive in the pews, in the pulpit, and in our consciences. Amos’s words are hard to hear, partly because they bring to light ugly injustices and paint a terrifying picture of consequences, but mostly because—even though none of us are fully to blame for all the injustices in the world—all of us bear the responsibility for seeingthem and fixing them.

In his most recently published book, On God’s Side, Jim Wallis, a preacher, social activist, international commentator on ethics and public life, as well as president and CEO of Sojourners, writes about our shared responsibility to work for the common good. He laments that the term social justice stirs up so much controversy in American politics. The term has become so politicized that people who speak of social justice are sometimes even accused of being socialists. The way Jim Wallis uses the term, and the way it makes sense also to me, is simply to say that to be concerned about social justice means that we use justice as a lens by which we see society. “Part of the job of each new generation, part of the vocation of young people, and part of the faith obligation of Christians,” he writes, “is to learn to see what is wrong, unfair, cruel, and unjust in the world around us. . . . Paying attention to what is wrong and then figuring out how to make it right—that’s exactly what people of faith are supposed to do” (Jim Wallis, On God’s Side, p. 247).

The problem, of course, is that we all have blind spots that prevent us from seeing what is wrong, unjust, and unfair. Unfortunately, by virtue of their being blind spots, they need to be pointed out to us, and it is no fun when someone else points out what we were unable to identify about ourselves. We get defensive and sometimes even deny that those blind spots exist.

One of the things that I like so much about Jim Wallis is that he seems to enjoy when other people point out his blind spots, to the point that he goes out in search of such people. Usually they are people who are outside what he calls his tribe. He writes that he has learned the most about the world, that he has learned to see the world more clearly, by being with outsiders, that is, by being with people who were not of his race, socioeconomic class, evangelical Christian community, etc. From being with people outside the groups into which he had been born, he learned the true meaning of the gospel, and he writes, “I think that’s why God is always telling people to welcome the strangers, the foreigners, the poor—the outsiders” (On God’s Side, p. 127).

I would like for us to entertain an idea that I think goes an important step further. It is not enough for us to welcome outsiders and learn from outsiders. We ourselves need to know and learn from the experience of being an outsider. When God commanded the Israelites always to welcome the stranger in their midst, he never failed to remind them that they too had been strangers in a foreign land. God reminded them that they too knew how it felt to be at the mercy of others’ hospitality, others’ power, and others’ privilege. Likewise, when Jesus sends his disciples to go out, he instructs them to take no gold or silver or copper, no bag, no extra tunic, sandals, or staff. He instructs them to be at the mercy of those who receive them.

What blind spots might be identified and removed if we were to leave our comfort zones and venture out of the “tribes” into which we were born? I’ll never forget how brave I thought my college roommate was when she told me that she had decided to spend a year in Kenya. When she returned, of all the many things she told me about her experience, most memorable to me was when she said, “I had never before been so aware of my skin, how white I am.”

My mother’s father had been governor of a province in Korea. As his seven children grew older and decided, one by one, to come to the United States, not only for further education but also to stay and make a life for themselves here, my mother’s parents made the decision that they too would immigrate to the United States. They were already older in years, and I can only imagine that the decision to leave Korea brought with it significant losses: loss of command of language, loss of a social circle, loss of social status and the privileges that went with being a former governor. From time to time I wonder what my grandparents learned from being immigrants, from being at the mercy of others’ hospitality, power, and privilege?

I will always remember the time when my sister’s college boyfriend met almost our entire extended family. It was winter break, and our extended family had gathered at the home of my aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania. My sister’s boyfriend drove a long distance to meet everyone and to take my sister out on a date. I observed the kindness with which everyone received him, and I overheard the heated discussion that ensued after he left. My uncles and aunts challenged my parents with their decision to allow their daughter, the eldest child of the second generation of our extended family living in the U.S., to date someone who was not Korean. What kind of example would this set for all my sister’s younger cousins living in this country? What would happen if their children grew up to marry people who weren’t Korean? Every now and then my grandmother would gently say, “As long as he believes in our Lord Jesus Christ, that’s all that really matters.” Out of respect for her, I guessed, nobody told her that he was Jewish. For hours into the night, I overheard my elders expressing their tribal fears and proudly watched my parents staking our ground outside the tribe.

The stories that I can tell mostly have to do with race and religion, but there are other kinds of tribes as well—tribes delineated by gender, class, and groupthink. As Jim Wallis says, stepping outside of our own tribes—whatever they may be—is a necessary step. But beyond this, the next step is the step into a group unlike our own. It is only by joining groups outside our comfort zone, by being at the mercy of their hospitality, at the mercy of their norms and their ways of doing things, that we can see for ourselves what our blind spots have been, how they have made others feel, and the damage they have done. It is only then that we can start to remove our blind spots so that we can see society in ways that we couldn’t see it before—through another’s lens. That is the start on a path toward social justice.

In a book entitled Blessed Are the Organized, from which I appropriated the title for this sermon, Jeffrey Stout, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, asks the question, “Why think that ordinary citizens can end a war, deal adequately with global warming, achieve a just and wise resolution of the financial crisis, or bring multinational corporations under rational control if the most powerful people in the world dig in their heels” (Jeffrey Stout, Blessed Are the Organized, p. xv)? Why suppose that we can hold the most powerful people in the world accountable to everyone else? Despite the cynicism that always resounds to a question like this, Professor Stout also discovered that all across the country Americans are deeply engaged in efforts to work for the common good. His study of community organizers and volunteer organizations concludes with a profound appreciation for the important role that volunteer organizations can play in teaching people to seewhat is wrong, unfair, cruel, and unjust in the world around us and then in fixing things to be right.

I recently returned from a road trip, over the course of which my husband, daughter, and I drove through many little towns along the northwest states. Welcoming us into each town were the signs posted by the Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club, and the Lions Club. I found myself pointing out these signs to my daughter and saying what my father used to say to me: “You see these signs? This is what makes America great!” The Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club, the Lions Club—they represented to my dad the spirit of volunteers working together for something good beyond themselves.

I too share the appreciation that Jeffrey Stout, Jim Wallis, and my dad have for volunteer organizations that work for something good beyond themselves, that teach people to see society through the lens of justice. The church is no less called for this work. From the beginning God has been calling his people to leave their tribe and to put themselves at the mercy of others. The story of the church is the story of God’s people wrestling with that call. Will we, like Abraham, be willing to leave our home, our kin, and our comfort zone in order to follow God into a land unknown to us? Will we, like Moses, be willing to leave the power and privilege of Pharaoh’s palace? Will we, like Israel, be willing to be led by God into a foreign land, and will we never forget what it feels like to be foreigners? Will we, like Jesus’ disciples, put ourselves at the mercy of others’ hospitality, as we teach the gospel? Whenever Christians answer yes, whenever Christians step away from their tribes, out of their comfort zones, and into groups in which they become the outsiders, the church learns how to see things it couldn’t see before. Then, and only then, does the church have prophetic vision, seeing God’s world through the lens of justice. And then, only then, can we get to work on making things right.

In the words of John Wesley,

Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.
(as quoted by Jim Wallis in On God’s Side, p. 277)

And now may the grace of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and the peace of Christ go with you today and forevermore. Amen.