15th Sunday in
Ordinary Time, year B. Amos 7:12-15; Mark 6:7-13
AIM: To show the
nature and need of prophecy, and of repentance.
Should the Church get involved in
politics? Many people say, ANo way. Religion and politics don=t mix.@ Others disagree. A religion, they
say, that is unwilling to leave the four walls of the church and go out into
the public square is irrelevant to real life. Whenever fundamental moral issues
are at stake, these people maintain, the Church must get involved. Otherwise
the Church risks being untrue to its Lord and his message.
But which political issues actually
do involve moral issues important enough to justify the Church=s involvement? Is capital punishment
such an issue? What about the decision of our government to invade Iraq Iraq
Our first reading today introduces a
religious figure who was severely condemned for involvement in politics. Like
his countryman, Jesus, centuries later, Amos was a layman with no professional
training for religious office. AI was no prophet nor have I belonged to the company of
prophets,@ Amos told the priest in charge of
the sanctuary at Bethel Israel
God gave Amos no crystal ball to
predict the future. That is not the prophet=s task. Instead Amos, like all true
prophets, was summoned to speak Aa word of the Lord@ to the people of his day: to warn,
to admonish, to rebuke, and to encourage. As a simple countryman, living close
to nature, Amos was scandalized by his glimpses of city life during his visits
to market. He records what he saw there: wealthy, callous plutocrats, overfed
and over-housed, spending their time thinking up new ways to amuse and enrich
themselves. Meanwhile poor peasants like Amos, burdened with debt, could be
sold into slavery for the price of a pair of sandals.
Amos saw this glaring social
injustice compounded at the religious sanctuaries. There he found prosperous
worshipers rejoicing in their good fortune, which they interpreted as proof of
God=s favor. To this rotten and decaying
society the official prophets and priests had nothing to say but what a later
prophet, Isaiah, would call Asmooth words and seductive visions@ (Is. 30:10) C rather like certain religious
speakers at prayer breakfasts of political and business leaders today.
Without mincing his words, Amos
pronounced his society ripe for God=s judgment. Here is a sample of his
message: AHear this, you who trample upon the
needy ... >When will the new moon be over,= you ask, >that we may sell our grain? ...We
will fix our scales for cheating! We will buy the poor man for a pair of
sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!= The Lord has sworn ... Never will I
forget a thing they have done! ... I will turn your feasts into mourning and
all your songs into lamentation.@ (Amos 8:4-10) Those are strong
words. No wonder that the priest, Amaziah, roundly condemned Amos for this
unwelcome message, and for daring to speak at all in a place of religious
pilgrimage without permission. With the contempt of the religious functionary
for the upstart outsider Amaziah tells Amos: AOff with you, visionary ... Never
again prophesy in Bethel
In the gospel we heard Jesus telling
his disciples they would face similar rejection, and how to behave when they
did: AWhatever place does not welcome you
or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony
against them.@ Rejection was sure to come because
of the message Jesus gave them. AThey went off,@ the gospel says, Aand preached repentance.@ Repentance is never a popular
message. In the Bible the word means more than regret for past actions which we
see, by hindsight, were wrong. Repentance means a fundamental change of
direction. It means turning around from self to God. Repentance means putting
God at the center of life rather than somewhere out on the fringe.
If Amos were to come back today, what
are some of the things he would denounce in our society and tell us we needed
to repent of? Here is a short list.
One which was often mentioned by our
recent Holy Fathers, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict, and by Pope Francis
today, is consumerism. This is the false idea that we can buy happiness
by amassing more and more possessions. A whole industry exists to promote this
idea: advertising. Advertising which tells us where we can get things we need,
at prices we can afford, is useful. But advertising designed to kindle desire
for things we never knew we needed until we saw the ad is questionable at
least.
Something else which cries out for
repentance is hedonism: the mindless philosophy that says, AIf it feels good, do it.@ Hedonism wrecks lives,
relationships, and marriages, every day. And it is hedonism which lies at the
heart of the recent Supreme Court decision, that marriage can mean whatever we
choose it to mean.
We need to repent also of the hard-hearted
selfishness which ignores the needs of the poor and oppressed in our midst;
or which thinks that our obligation to them can be discharged by gifts to
charity from our surplus goods, with no examination of unjust conditions in
society that cause poverty and oppression.
We need to repent too of an over-spiritualized
religion which is concerned only with saying prayers and getting into
heaven; and which ignores the challenge which Jesus gave us in his model
prayer: AYour will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.@ Those words challenge us to build
colonies of heaven here on earth C by living not just for ourselves,
but for God and for others.
That is a short though incomplete
list of the demons mentioned at the end of our gospel reading against which
Jesus sends us today. Demons so powerful, and so pervasive, can be driven out by
one thing alone: repentance. And the repentance to which Jesus summons us is
not somewhere else, tomorrow. It is here, and it is now. And repentance begins
not with someone else. If it is begin at all, repentance must begin with
ourselves.
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