Sermon on Amos, on the Gospel, and on the News that All of Us May Be Prophets of God and Ambassadors of the Good News

Grace to you and peace from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It behooves me to begin the proclamation today by saying that Amos, and John the Baptist, and the Psalm all have words to offer us after the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life. We may well have core disagreements with our leaders, and they may even be faithful and righteous objections. But the way to steward them is, as Amos did, by way of candid speech rather than cowardly violence. God is not a God of hate nor of viciousness, and therefore those who follow God are not either. Instead, as the Psalm for today says, we “speak peace to God’s faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to God.” May we as a nation become far more inclined to peace, may we as Christians model that peace, and may former President Trump and the others touched by yesterday’s violence and ensuing grief be restored to health in every way. With that: WHAT an honor to be here today, and, if you’ll take me back after today, for the next two Sundays to boot! We’re going to get to these texts, especially the Amos text, but before we do, it seems a good idea to introduce you a bit to how I theologically tick. I’m what’s called a systematic theologian. My passion, the thing that makes me vocationally giddy, is to help people think about what they believe, why they believe it, and what difference their beliefs make in their lives and the greater world. Often, this process isn’t about learning something new. Instead, it’s about reconsidering something you thought you knew. Faith words or concepts or traditions that are familiar might, in fact, have very different meanings for different people, and might not mean what we’ve assumed they do. It turns out that fussing with and sussing out definitions helpfully centers theological conversations and claims. As luck would have it, there are several basic terms and frameworks relevant to the texts for today to keep me happy all day long. I promise I won’t keep you here all day long. Let’s start with the two most basic ones: Gospel and salvation. The word “gospel” is the English translation of “eu-angellion,” namely good (eu) and angellion (message, or news—think ‘angel,’ for this is where we get that word.) News is something that happened, and which makes a difference in someone’s life. Today, for example, we have news in our family! It is Karl’s birthday today! [Karl suffered a traumatic brain injury at 3]. The big 2-3 for him! Happy birthday sweet man! Now, because none of you knew me when Karl was born, July 14 2001 was not a newsy day for anyone here, but it sure was for me! And yet, while only a few of you have known me, now to one degree or another you all do. Insofar as that’s true, it’s news now to you to. Of course, there are more substantive ways in which news affects us: water mains break in town, tornados rip through communities, the election or defeat of politicians, deaths of those we love. News, you see, is news only if it is an event which matters. Christians say that we have good news. Moreover, we say that the good news is the very gospel. But when I ask people what the gospel is, they will often say “Jesus loves you,” or “Your sins are forgiven,” both of which, for the record, are holy and true. Neither, though, are the gospel. They are statements rather than an event. So what’s the gospel event?? The resurrection. We are Christians because we believe that Jesus is risen from the dead. That news, this crazy notion that Jesus did not stay dead, as dead people are wont to do, mattered not just “then” back in Jesus’ day, but even now! Because we believe that Jesus is risen, we believe that no death—as in no death, a la Paul: neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord—lays claim over us. Death might like to think it still has power over us. It might be a fan of trying to make us think it does. But it does not. The gospel, then, is that Jesus is risen. Death has a word, but it is no longer the last one. So second, salvation. For a mess of reasons, not least of all because our Good News, the Gospel, has an obvious fixation about death, the word ‘salvation’ has tended to be associated with what happens after we die. But that’s not the meaning of the Greek word we translate as ‘salvation.’ That word is ‘soteria.’ The definition of soteria, in Greek, is not “what you get in heaven,” or, for our more conservative Christian siblings, what happens to you, as in “being saved,” after you accept Jesus into your heart. Nope. Soteria means ‘health, healing, and wholeness.’ As in right now. This is why you hear Jesus say things such as “Today salvation has come to this house. He wasn’t announcing that anyone in that abode was going to tip over. He was saying that in him, one can find health, healing, and wholeness. Jesus the Christ: he’d be our third notion for this Sunday. The word ‘Christ’ is actually the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Mesach” or “messiah.” Often, I fear and joke, people think that “Christ” is Jesus’ last name, like we had Joseph Christ, Mary Christ, and then along came little baby Jesus Christ. Instead, the word ‘Christ’ is a title, meaning the Chosen One, the One For Whom We Have Been Waiting, the Anointed One of God. It matters to notice that the New Testament reveals that that title, Christ, was given to Jesus only after his resurrection. That means that the early believers grounded Jesus as the Christ in the event of his resurrection. But that also means that for those early believers, Jesus’ resurrection confirmed not only that he was the chosen one of God, but that what he was up to when he walked this world was utterly aligned with God’s vision, God’s mission, and God’s agenda for this world. Second to last term? Christian. We call ourselves Christians. Not Jesusians. That means that we pay attention to Jesus because we believe that he is the Christ because we believe that he is risen from the dead. Christ-ians believe that Jesus was the messiah. That means that what Jesus was up to is what God is up to, and that Jesus’ agenda was God’s agenda, and so if we go to all the trouble to call ourselves Christ-ians, it is therefore what we, who publicly identify as followers of Jesus the Christ, are up to too. Last baseline concept for today: The First Commandment: I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me. Now, actually, this is more complicated than it sounds. Notice that God did not say, “There are no other gods,” but rather “You shall have no other gods before me.” God, that is, knew that there are options. This might shock us, because when we think of the word “God,” we tend to think of something or someone otherworldly, or some sort of supernatural superpower. Martin Luther would like here to enter the chat. In his definition of the First Commandment, he defines God not as something hyper pious, or overtly religious being. Instead, he said that God is that in which or in whom you put your ultimate trust. Whatever you trust most is your god. This can be a being believed to be divine, of course, like trusting Zeus or, as the Hindus believe, trusting in many and various gods. But it can also be a passing thing, like trusting in your safe position in a social group so that you say nothing when inappropriate and harmful gossip comes up; trusting in your security over your solidarity with those who could really use your voice; trusting in the values of wealth and privilege over God’s consistent and persistent concern for the least of these; trusting in your own regrettable deeds over God’s abundant grace. The First Commandment, then, summons us to reflect upon and identify who or what our real god actually is, as opposed to who or what we say or think our real god actually is. So, to review: The Gospel is that Jesus is risen, which means we no longer need to fear death of any sort. Salvation is health, healing, and wholeness now. The word “Christ” is a title rather than a name, and means the Messiah, the one chosen by God for whom the faithful await. Jesus’ resurrection confirms him both as the Christ, and confirms his ministry and his way of life as the way of God. Christian means those of us who believe that Jesus is the Christ, that his ministry and his way of life is the way of God, and that as his followers it is now our way of life too, not least of all by way of being ambassadors of the same sort of salvation—health, healing, and wholeness—that Jesus was. The First Commandment reminds us that there are options for gods, there are alternatives. The question is in what or in whom we really trust, and if we say we trust it, with all my Lutheran colors flying, what does this mean? With those notions in mind and heart, you might want me to say Amen, and I suppose I could, but we haven’t gotten to our texts of the day. With this crash theological course behind us, let’s turn quickly to the Amos text of the day.. There’s this weird reference to plumb lines. Truth is, no one, not even the scholars, is exactly sure of what the heck this precisely even means. What does seem clear is that there is a a metric, a gauge, a measuring stick that God has dropped down. God’s people have fallen short. This plumb line is not the same standard to which the powers that be calibrate themselves. Amos, not known for his tact, held—as does all of Scripture, which speaks of nothing (not prayer not sexuality not worship practices no really nothing)—more central to God’s concern for God’s people than economic equity. You see Amos’ fixation on the poor in chapters 2, 5, and 8. Amos was compelled by God to speak to the wealthy and powerful, to recall them from their small-g gods, and to remind them of the identity of their capital-G God, and their yoked identity with this God. It wasn’t only his concern for the poor that moved Amos so urgently. It was rather that Amos could see that if the people did not evidence a change in heart and in allegiance, then disaster would ensue. At this point, the priest/king Amaziah called him a dastardly slur: Amos was accused of being a *gasp* prophet. Prophets are the absolute worst, of course, because a prophet, biblically understood, is not some soothsayer or a fortune teller, but rather one who, as a spokesperson of God, knows God, perceptively sees the present, and its relationship to the future, and has the courage to say what is seen. But listen to how Amos responds: “Yeah, see, I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” This isn’t my gig, he says. I’m just an aggie, a laborer of livestock and trees. But then he says, basically, “Alllllsssso, it is the case that the LORD did take me from following the flock, and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel, so…yeah. I am speaking on behalf of God, which sorta makes me a prophet.” Siblings in Christ, here’s the thing. We are all called to be, and in fact are baptized to be, prophets. We believe that Jesus is the Christ because we believe that he is risen. That not just allows us but compels us to notice where death lurks and where it makes itself known, and then we become compelled to make Christ known in that place instead. We know what death is, and what life is, because we know Jesus, who, as the late Father Robert Capon said, ministered to the last, the lost, and the losers. Those on the margins were re-centered. Those who were wealthy and privileged were invited to re-center themselves. Those who were condemned are forgiven. And baptized in Christ as we are, Jesus’ ministry—which stands in the legacy of Amos’ ministry—becomes our ministry, and so prophets that we are, we do the same. Prophets are nothing but ambassadors of salvation, bearers of health, healing, and wholeness understood in the light of the gospel, the good news of an empty tomb. What, I ask you, does this world need more than that right now? What, I ask you, does this world need more than us right now? Baptized prophets, summoned and sent to spread the gospel word that Jesus is risen, that salvation can be found in word and deed by those who follow Jesus, the Christ, the son of the God who envisions health, healing, and wholeness for the whole world. Get full access to Anna Madsen at revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe