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<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Essay by Rev. Gretta Vosper<br>
February 13, 2020</span></span>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><strong>Oscar Buzz</strong><br>
Late in December, just as Oscar buzz begins, I choose five or six movies to explore during the five or six weeks leading up to the awards. Originally, the films, chosen long before the nominations are announced, were all ones I believed would receive a nomination for Best Picture. Only once had I chosen a movie that wasn’t and I swear, if I’d known it was a musical, it would never have been on the billing!<br>
<br>
More recently, we’ve branched out into movies that <em>should</em> have received Best Picture, or, as in this year, movies I thought would be nominated for a variety of things – best supporting actor or screenwriter, for instance. Part of that shift was motivated by the consistent and problematic whiteness of the awards. The only way to get around that was to make our own list. Having done so, only two of the films we watched received nominations at all. Which may or may not say something significant.<br>
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The first three films we watched had subtitles: <em>The Farewell</em>, <em>Parasite</em>, and <em>For Sama</em>.<a name="_ftnref1" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftn1" rel="noopener noreferrer">[1]</a> Often few have seen the film and I am adamant about not giving out spoilers (though <em>For Sama</em> spoilers, a documentary film about Aleppo and the war in Syria, play themselves out on our nightly news). But I’ll have to be more careful: when I spoke about <em>Parasite</em>, the only spoiler-ish thing I said was that if you cover your eyes, you can’t read the subtitles. Unfortunately, many took that to mean the movie is a brutal bloodbath, which it really isn’t, and avoided it completely, missing one of the best films ever made, in my opinion.<br>
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<em>The Farewell</em>, with comic brilliance, displayed the challenges of two worlds trying to be one. <em>Parasite</em> – well, you’re just going to have to see it. Layer after layer of storyline, all of it believable, all of it offering shades of truths we may or may not want to explore. <em>For Sama</em>, a powerful documentary made for Sama, a child born into the war in Aleppo, turns our eyes toward the simplicity of heroism, the tragedy of death, and the idiocy of some of the things that demand them both.<br>
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<strong>Black History Month</strong><br>
We entered Black History Month with <em>Queen and Slim</em>, as powerful a film about the disaster that is race relations in the United States (and elsewhere) as you will ever find. Had we no title for the movie, we would not have known the names of the characters until very late in the film, tying the worn truths to a universalism that is as stunning as it is disgraceful. Perhaps it wasn’t nominated for any awards because it lays those truths bare. Perhaps, as others will argue, there were just too many great films this year. Whatever….<br>
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Each week, I write a piece to read as the “Focused Moment”. It’s not really a reading; I guess you could call it spoken word. Scott improvises on the piano as I read and continues to play once I’ve taken my seat, providing a meditative moment. On the Sunday we looked at <em>Queen and Slim</em>, my challenge was to get in underneath the privilege I have experienced my whole life, privilege that even makes me oblivious to its enormous power. Not only do I know that privilege, because of it, I cannot accurately see the price it exacts. Still, I tried to bring my ignorance up against the truths laid bare in the movie and reported in too many (or too few?) nightly news updates.</span></span><br>
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<div style="text-align:center;margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;"><em><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">I know my mother held me<br>
through those bright afternoons<br>
when I was too sick to go to school.<br>
She held me close, up against her breast,<br>
pillows stuffed under her arm<br>
so she could hold me longer,<br>
steady me until I fell asleep sitting upright,<br>
the only way to still my heaving chest.<br>
<br>
But I wonder what she thought about<br>
as she sat there:<br>
the day she’d had;<br>
when I’d get well;<br>
the meals she’d make tomorrow;<br>
next week’s visit to the eye doctor;<br>
or when my sisters would get home from school.<br>
<br>
I know she didn’t wonder<br>
if my sisters would come home at all.<br>
I know she didn’t worry for their safety<br>
except, perhaps, from rubber balls they threw too hard,<br>
skipping ropes they swung too fast,<br>
boys they might be kissing far too soon.<br>
<br>
We were children<br>
and we glowed. <br>
<br>
White.<br>
<br>
Not brown, or black, or in between.<br>
Not already scarred inside<br>
by words learned at kitchen tables,<br>
shared in playgrounds,<br>
embedded in “the norm”.<br>
<br>
White.<br>
<br>
Not fighting an uphill battle<br>
every single day<br>
on the gravel of the playground,<br>
torn knees from play,<br>
and blackened eyes from not.<br>
<br>
White.<br>
<br>
Not afraid to use the washroom,<br>
running home and back<br>
so fast you’d not get caught,<br>
avoiding hatred, hard edges,<br>
and fists that didn’t clench ‘til you arrived.<br>
<br>
White.<br>
<br>
Not met halfway home<br>
by a mother frantic that an hour has gone<br>
and you just playing in the schoolyard<br>
working to overcoming the bruises<br>
you’d tell her happened while you played.<br>
<br>
My mother’s arms around me,<br>
I slept,<br>
no greater problem for her to bear<br>
than the complication of a common cold;<br>
no greater fear for her to quell<br>
than any mother with a child<br>
who glowed<br>
<br>
white.<a name="_ftnref2" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftn2" rel="noopener noreferrer">[2]</a></span></span></em></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><strong>Another Poem</strong><br>
There was already a poem, of sorts, in <em>Queen and Slim</em> that pulls the movie beyond race to a wider audience, inviting all in the audience to connect. Powerfully. Slim, who met Queen on a Tinder date, asks Queen what it is she is looking for in a guy. Her response is exquisitely considered and plucks the strings of the universal heart.</span></span><br>
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<div style="text-align:center;margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><em>I want a guy to show me myself.<br>
I want him to love me so deeply,<br>
I'm not afraid to show him how ugly I can be.<br>
I want him to show me scars I never knew I had.<br>
But I don't want him to make them go away.<br>
I want him to hold my hand while I nurse them myself.<br>
And I want him to cherish the bruises they leave behind.<a name="_ftnref3" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftn3" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>[3]</strong></a></em></span></span><br>
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<div style="text-align:left;margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Sigh. Can’t you just feel that? Wow. (p.s. If you have that sort of partner, don’t gloat.)<br>
<br>
On Sunday morning, rather than building on Queen’s relationship ideals, I teased her response into the cultural need for white to see black, and black, alongside white, to take responsibility for healing. To challenge white people to learn to love a population they too often fear. To let that love be so deep, that the insidious white demand upon black for social perfection, non-confrontational engagement, ongoing submission, and a politeness too-reminiscent of slavery, might evaporate, allowing for real conversations, real interactions to take place, possible simply because no one feels uneasy anymore. An atmosphere of trust could unfold in <em>that</em> kind of love. I stretched Queen’s dreamy relationship hopes beyond the very white need to fix everything; though there is much that is systemic that whites need to fix, there is much out of which whites must keep their noses and simply stand back as the space for healing opens up within the black community itself, graced by the simple fact that it can. In the middle of such a relationship, truth can go both ways, scars will be uncovered but not universalized; not ever universalized. And each will find their own ways to heal, bearing their scars forward with humility.<br>
<br>
Not a bad message, I suppose.<br>
<br>
<strong>Deeper Truths; Bigger Challenges</strong><br>
When I read the quote the next day, however, it spoke deeper truths to me. It spoke of our quest for the kind of perfection we have only ever cast up to the heavens or into the depths of the sea, sought in the forest, or heard in the screams of one we’ve believed possessed. Have we not long wanted a god that sees our every flaw and failure and loves us anyway? To find a way to stand humbly before that god and still be loved in all our ugliness? Wanted the guidance such a god would provide, steering us toward truths we might otherwise feel compelled to outrun? Feel the strength of such a god in our effort to heal ourselves, incorporating that god’s courage, wisdom, and love into that much needed undertaking? And, at the end of it, don’t we still want to carry the remnant bruises forward, reminding ourselves of the work we did with the help of that powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving god?<br>
<br>
Of course, it is not just a racial issue that hammers at the foundations of our social order. Or a gender identity or sexuality issue. Or political, social, or familial. It is an issue that is experienced by all of us and that undermines our self-confidence, and our willingness to be vulnerable, our ability to see what is really before us, something Queen and Slim are finally able to do.<br>
<br>
At the heart of our deepest despair is the pandemic issue of <em>not being seen</em>.<br>
<br>
When we stand before one another, we are each clothed with our social or professional standings, our gender, race, sexuality, religion, or any of the myriad decorations by which the human brain sorts and categorizes those it meets. Indeed, we are cloaked in these attributes even as we stand before our own bathroom mirrors. What would it take to be seen? What would it take to create a world in which being seen was a serious undertaking, the prime directive, perhaps?<br>
<br>
<strong>No Help from Our Brains</strong><br>
I believe our brains fail us in this work, prejudiced as they are toward their millisecond analysis of what stands before them and which results in a barely evolved assessment of whether to flee, fight, freeze, or f*&k. We need to get beyond these basic drives and our brains won’t help us if we don’t help them.<br>
<br>
As we face the most critical challenge humanity has ever faced – climate and ecosystem disaster and the subsequent breakdown of civilization as we know it – falling back on our evolutionary four f’s will be the instinctual choice. Not doing so will require that we will already have prepared for these coming challenges and through far more than the use of advanced scientific and ecological breakthroughs. Not doing so will depend upon our providing our brains with credible options. It is my belief that addressing the issue of not being seen can be one of the most potent means through which we can find and trust one another into the unknown future humanity will face. Seeing one another is one of the most important things we can train our brains to do.<br>
<br>
<strong>Really Seeing; Really Being Seen</strong><br>
How do we do that? We get our heads out of the mud and muck of our religious traditions and into the work of engagement, of bringing people together so that they can fall in love with one another in the deeply honest, deeply accepting way that Queen offers us. Creating space for intimacy, inviting and exhibiting vulnerability, laying out the spectrum of beingness that community offers, and the space and patience it can provide for healing to happen. Our brains may not know how to do this intuitively, but our experience, our fear, and our longing can teach us, beginning with the stories of our childhoods and the accretions through which we learned to hide our truths from both ourselves and others.<br>
<br>
It is not easy to be vulnerable. It is not easy to expose our scars, our ugliness to one another. Sometimes, it is not even easy for us to accept we have scars or ugliness at all, so strong has been our habituation to the social constructs in which we live and by which we calculate our “success”. But we are more alike than we often remember – our scars, our shames, our weaknesses, our addictions, our disasters. In our beauty and our ugliness, we can reflect one another’s truths and learn to embrace both theirs and our own.<br>
<br>
Let me see you. Let us see one another.</span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align:left;margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">~ Rev. Gretta Vosper</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><strong>About the Author</strong><br>
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=eb7bbf2938&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe</em></a>, and <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=3e0a3be323&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief</em></a>. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Visit her website<a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=084629dc98&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> here</a>.</span></span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Read online <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=50211c9aad&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a></span></span></div>
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<div id="yiv3942516173ftn1" style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><a name="_ftn1" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftnref1" rel="noopener noreferrer">[1]</a> I admired one reviewer who referred to doing the work of getting over the two-inch high wall at the bottom of the screen; brilliant way to nudge people past the perception that subtitles are an obstruction!</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv3942516173ftn2" style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><a name="_ftn2" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftnref2" rel="noopener noreferrer">[2]</a> White, ©2020 gretta vosper</span></span></div>
<div id="yiv3942516173ftn3" style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><a name="_ftn3" title="" style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="#_ftnref3" rel="noopener noreferrer">[3]</a> Queen, <em>Queen and Slim</em>, © 2019, Universal Pictures; Lena Waithe, Screenwriter; Director, Melina Matsoukas</span></span></div>
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<h1 style="display:block;margin:0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:26px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Question & Answer</span></h1>
<h3 style="display:block;margin:0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:20px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;"> </h3>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size:18px;">Q: By A Reader</span></strong><br>
<span style="font-size:14px;"><em>I recently read that a team of astrophysicists have concluded that there are over a trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Given what we know and given the photos of the universe available today, how can I possibly conceive of God?</em></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-size:18px;">A: By Carl Krieg</span></strong></span></h3>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=d3ac42dc35&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img width="150" height="154" align="left" style="border:0px;width:150px;min-height:154px;margin:0px 10px 0px 0px;outline:none;text-decoration:none;" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/d24d54ed-08dd-412b-8dc5-ec8c488d06d3.png"></a><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Dear Reader,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">During biblical times the three-tiered universe provided a place for God and for us: God was up, the nether world was down, and we stood on the plane in the middle. Thinking he had disproven a religious hypothesis, the first Russian cosmonaut went up in space and reported that he found no god up there. Today, not only do we know the world is a sphere, with no up and down, but also that the universe “out there” is literally beyond imagination. There may be a trillion galaxies that we can see in theory- the observable universe- but then there exists what can never be known because it is accelerating in its moving away, and its light will never reach us. We will remain in total and eternal ignorance of that unknowable part of the universe. We are, alas, a tiny speck in this ocean of infinity. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">And yet, the presence of God is as near to us as our neighbor. Remembering one of Jesus’ most famous parables, a man approached Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life? Jesus responded quoting the Shema: You know the answer. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And the man asked: who is my neighbor? “A man was walking…” Jesus tells us, and was beaten and robbed, “and then a Samaritan came along…”. We all know the story. When we love, we make God real in our own life, and this experience is so much more than conceiving God, it is manifesting God. God is love, and that is something we can experience and know right here and right now.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">There continue to be many attempts to find a place for God to be in the universe. Some say God can be identified as the consciousness of the universe. Some say God may be found in extra dimensions that exist right alongside us. Some say in the dark energy inhering space-time. Perhaps. But we need not look any further than the fullness of God’s creation that surrounds us and the love that upholds us. And when we in turn reach out in love, we do better than conceive of God. We make God incarnate in our own life.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Most people today in our culture do not even use the word “God”, and that trend continues and increases. Many in the church decry the trend toward secularism, but the movement seems not only inevitable, but is, I think, beneficial, and beneficial in the sense that it focuses on the essence of who God is and what God wants. The Hebrew prophet Amos put it starkly, teaching us that God hates and despises the festivals and takes no delight in the solemn assemblies of religious institution, but instead desires that “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”. Jesus echoed that sentiment exactly, and secularists are as capable of fighting for justice as are religious folk. We don’t need to use the word “God” when we have the word “love”. And we don’t need to conceive of God in the abstract when we can love our neighbor. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">As we gaze into the infinity of the stars out there, we have three options for the attitude we can take. One is to believe that the universe is amoral. It cares not about anything, just moving along. The second is the thought that evil runs the show. The last is to see everything as imbued with love, and that really is the message of Jesus’ life, death and new life, that ultimately, death and destruction are overcome, and love rules the day.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">~ Carl Krieg<br>
<br>
Read and share online <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=65e95c6ae6&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a><br>
<br>
<strong>About the Author</strong><br>
Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7ecd7f920b&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith</em></a>, and <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=f20034d236&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Void and the Vision</em></a>. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Norwich, VT.</span></span></div>
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<a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=d0d575709b&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img width="200" height="94" style="border:0px;width:200px;min-height:94px;margin:0px 10px 0px 0px;float:left;outline:none;text-decoration:none;" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/8ed29638-a2b1-4726-a447-e37e219fab85.png"></a><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Please continue to <a style="color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;" href="https://ProgressiveChristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=6212d61f6a&e=db34daa597" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">send us your feedback</a>… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.</span></span>
<div style="text-align:center;"><strong><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Thank you for being a part of this community!</span></span></strong></div>
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<h1 style="text-align:center;display:block;margin:0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:26px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;"><span style="font-size:22px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited</span></span></h1>
<h3 style="text-align:center;display:block;margin:0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:20px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;"><br>
<span style="font-size:18px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">The Origins of the Bible, Part XVIII:<br>
Amos, The Prophet Who Transformed God Into Justice</span></span></h3>
<br>
<span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><span style="font-size:14px;">Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong<br>
December 18, 2008</span></span>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;"><img width="125" height="132" align="left" style="border:0px;width:125px;min-height:132px;margin:0px 10px 0px 0px;outline:none;text-decoration:none;" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/84fbd945-363f-48e0-97f1-129010755fed.jpg">Not every character in the Bible starts out to be a hero. Indeed, one of the great themes of biblical literature is that it is the meek and the lowly who become the channels through which God is known in new ways. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is portrayed as expressing this theme in the Magnificat when she is made to utter these words, “For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden,” but later generations “will call me blessed.” The Old Testament prophet who makes this truth powerfully real is named Amos. Today we turn to his story.<br>
<br>
Amos was a citizen of the Southern Kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BCE. He lived in the village of Tekoa where he was a herdsman and a keeper of sycamore trees, employment that hardly demanded high academic achievements or the credentials that produced great expectations. In those days Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam II was on the throne of the Northern Kingdom. The major powers of the world were preoccupied with their own problems and with each other, which allowed these two small Jewish states to bask in an Indian summer of prosperity, peace and wealth. The distribution of that wealth was, however, hardly balanced. The worship places of the Jewish world were crowded on holy days and religion was popular among the greedy ones who dominated the social order. There thus appeared to be little relationship between the words of the popular religion and the practices of people’s lives in the public arena. In many ways that is not dissimilar from the current situation in the United States, where a few have achieved fortunes by greed and manipulation of the markets, creating a situation in which the wealthy are increasingly wealthy and the poor are increasingly poor and people even now seem not to be concerned. This dichotomy, however, burned itself into the consciousness of this simple herdsman named Amos and, like the proverbial “Hound of Heaven,” it allowed him no rest until he had addressed this issue overtly and publicly. Amos packed his suitcase and journeyed from Tekoa in the land of Judah to the shrine of Bethel in the Northern Kingdom to make his witness.<br>
<br>
When he arrived Amos entered the courtyard of this holy place, where all of his suspicions were confirmed. He saw the crowds dressed in their finery busily attending to holy things while the poor outside the city gates were largely ignored. Amos wondered how he might get the crowd’s attention. He was a clever man, however, and knew how to appeal to the instincts of the people. He found a corner in the courtyard, set up a soap box and then, using one of the oldest tricks in human history, he began to solicit first the curiosity and later the full attention of the crowd. Let me try to recreate the story.<br>
<br>
“Come closer,” Amos shouted from his makeshift pulpit, “Let me tell you about the sins of the people of the city of Damascus.” Amos knew that everyone likes to hear gossip about the moral weaknesses of their neighbors and so as he excoriated the Damascans the crowds grew. Next he turned his judgment first on the people of Gaza and then on Tyre, condemning the sinful practices found in both cities. The crowd, loving it, grew even larger as Amos continued to appeal to their prejudices about and suspicions of their neighbors. This strange looking rube from the south said the things they wanted to hear. Then Amos moved to larger targets and his oratory rose to new heights as he focused on the nation states surrounding the Northern Kingdom. First it was the Edomites and about their sins Amos got more specific. The Edomites had pursued “their brothers with a sword, showing them no pity and they had allowed anger to tear perpetually” at the fabric of their society. The ecstatic crowd began to shout, “You tell ’em, preacher.” With every loud voice of encouragement, the people gathered in ever greater numbers. Next it was the Amorites’ turn. According to Amos, they had attacked Gilead and “ripped up the women with child in order to enlarge their borders.” As Amos pronounced his message of doom on these nations, the people gathered around him roared their approval. When he turned to the very unpopular Moabites the frenzy of the crowd exploded.<br>
<br>
Next Amos, with the crowd in the palm of his hand and fully attentive, spoke in a bare whisper. “Now let me tell you about the sins of the Southern Jews,” he said. These Southern Jews were the people with whom the Jews of the North were the most competitive and with whom they had the deepest rivalry. The relationship between Judah in the South and Israel in the North was like that of New Zealand and Australia today. Signs in shops in New Zealand announce that “New Zealanders have two favorite teams, the All Blacks (the name of New Zealand’s national team) and anyone who is playing Australia.” So to hear their Jewish rivals in the south be condemned was music to the ears of the Northern Jews. The crowd pressed closer to this strange messenger and its size continued to increase dramatically. Those Southern Jews, Amos said, “despised the Torah; they did not keep God’s commandments. Their lies caused them to err constantly,” but God’s justice is sure, he promised, and so Jerusalem will be “devoured by the fire of God.” The crowd was ecstatic with enthusiasm, clapping and cheering. No one budged as this crowd-pleasing evangelist reached his climax. Now with every ear straining to hear, this herdsman arrived at the conclusion for which he had journeyed from Tekoa to the King’s chapel in Bethel. His message was ready and so Amos turned to his climax.<br>
<br>
“Now,” he said, “let me tell you about the worst people in the world.” The crowd could hardly wait to hear who that would be. They were not prepared, however, for what was to come. “You Jews of the Northern Kingdom,” he said, “are the ultimate culprits in God’s world. You are the ones who worship ostentatiously in the sacred shrines, but even as you worship, you sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. You trample the poor in the dust of the earth. You violate one another sexually. You worship at every altar in garments stolen from the labor of the poor. You profane holy places with heavy drinking of wine purchased with fines levied against the meek. You corrupt holy people, encouraging them to violate their sacred vows. You even silence the prophets.” The crowd was suddenly silent and the smiles disappeared from their faces. Then Amos spoke of the punishment that God would send. “This judgment is inevitable,” he screamed. It was a devastating message. The stunned crowd took a while to recover from shock, so Amos continued to drive home his key insights. “Worship isolated from life is of no value. Worship is nothing but justice being offered to God, and justice is nothing but worship being lived out. If worship and justice are ever separated, idolatry is the inevitable result.” It was a stirring message, but suddenly it was not a popular one.<br>
<br>
When the members of the crowd recovered sufficiently to respond, they sent for a priest from the Shrine at Bethel named Amaziah and asked him to come to their defense, for they said, “Amos has conspired against you and the land and we are not able to bear his words.” Amaziah was the voice of the established religion. He would brook no more of this interference with worship at the King’s Shrine and so to Amos he said: “O, Seer, go home, flee away to your land in Judah. Prophesy there if you must, but you are never again to come again to Bethel for this is the king’s sanctuary. This is the temple of our nation. Your words are not welcome here.”<br>
<br>
Amos responded to Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor even a prophet’s son. I am a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees, yet the Lord took me from my flocks and called me to prophesy to the people of Israel.” Once again, he repeated his charges. “The songs of your holy places will become nothing but wailing to the Lord. You cannot worship while you trample the poor. You cannot wring money from the poor to line your pockets with greed. God will turn your sacred feasts into mourning and your pious songs into lamentations.” The preaching of Amos was now more than the people were willing to tolerate and so Amos was physically driven from the shrine. Rejected and defeated he returned to his humble life in Tekoa. In this newly imposed exile he wrote out his prophetic message, and that message became known as the words of Amos the Prophet. In time people heard transcendent truth in his words and finally these words were added to the sacred text of the Jewish people and were thus read in worship settings in the temples, synagogues and holy places. That was when people began to recognize that in the words of Amos, they were beginning to hear the “Word of the Lord.” That is how the words of Amos came to echo through the centuries. In that process, God was inevitably redefined as justice. Worship and justice could never again be separated in true Judaism and worship came to be viewed, as Amos had suggested, as human justice offered to God while justice was seen as divine worship being acted out. In this context justice became another name for God.<br>
<br>
It was through the work of the prophets primarily that God was redefined in Jewish history. Love became the name for God through the writings of Hosea. Justice became the name for God through the writings of Amos. The prophets really do matter, not because they were the predictors of the future as so many of us were once taught, but because they were able to see more deeply into the meaning of God. The prophets more than anyone else made it possible some eight hundred years later for people to see and to hear the presence of God in the life of a crucified one named Jesus of Nazareth. The life of Jesus pointed to a divine nature marked by the dimension of love that Hosea had added to the meaning of God and the dimension of justice that Amos had added to the meaning of God. That resulted in a new understanding of consciousness in which divinity and humanity seemed to flow together as one.<br>
<br>
The biblical story was never static, nor is the human understanding of God. It is idolatry and an act of faithlessness that is being expressed when any one thinks that all truth has finally been revealed and that someone or some institution actually possesses it.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0;padding:0;color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia, times, times new roman, serif;">~ John Shelby Spong</span></span></div>
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