Scripture text: Amos 5:18-24
“Why do you want the day of the Lord?”
I’ve always found it funny this rather large contingent of the Church is just starving for the end
of the world. They want the end times. They want Jesus to come back tomorrow so badly it’s pretty much all they talk about. Go into any Christian bookstore and there are volume after volume of books on how Jesus is going to show up again next week.
I am not one of these types of Christian. I’ll be honest. I like it here. I like my life. I like the things I have in this world: my wife, my daughter, my friends, my Church, my toys, my family, happiness, love, joy. Even some of the bad things have their upsides. You saw me in grief last week over the death of my friend Dan. In the days since, as I’ve worked through all that, I’ve come out of it with a renewed sense of purpose. That’s a good thing. I like this life. I like this world. I am not eager to see it end.
Some might say that makes me a bad Christian; that I am not in any hurry to meet our Lord at his coming. Maybe it does, but I’m also in some good company. Amos, the Old Testament prophet who wrote our first lesson, doesn’t seem so eager either. In a lot of ways his words could be summed up in the old cliché “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”
You really want the end of the world? You really want the day of the Lord? Are you sure about that?
I am. I am sure that I don’t want it. We’re not ready for it and if it comes upon us now, it will not be what we think it is. “Be careful what you wish for...”
There are a lot of stories in the Bible where that phrase applies. You see, far too often, we humans want to rewrite God’s plan in accord with our human impulses, our human desires, our human prejudices. There’s that famous story in the Gospels where James and John come up to Jesus. “Hey, Jesus, make us to sit at your right hand and your left in your glory.” They ask him. What are they thinking? Oh, this is the Messiah. This is the son of God. This is the King of the Jews. If we’re #2 and #3 in his kingdom, then we’ll be top dogs. We’ll have wine, women, and songs, power and glory and riches and all those good things that come from being best buds with the king.
But God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. Christ’s glory comes not on a throne, but on a cross. The one at his left and his right in his moment of triumph? Two thieves, dying on crosses next to him. “Be careful what you wish for...”
We think, far too often, that the end times will play out like this. Christ will return and he will cast into hell everyone we don’t like. He will damn all those horrible sinners: the lazy, the sexually deviant, those who didn’t vote for the right people, those who don’t believe the right things, all those who aren’t us. And he’ll whisk all of us good people into heaven, where there’ll be wine, women, songs, power, glory, and riches, and all those good things that come from being best buds with the king. The good people will get what they deserve and the bad people will get what they deserve.
Is that really how it’s going to be?
God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. Neither is his definition of sin, or of good and bad. We are in for a rude surprise if we think this is going to be about the things we did right and others did wrong. When we stand before his throne, we will not be praised for how hard we worked, or for sleeping with the right people, or for electing the right candidates for office, or for how many church services we attended, or for how solid our doctrine and dogma were.
No, he will ask us: One in five children in your country, the richest in the world, go hungry. What did you do about it? The elderly in your nation, the richest in the world, often must choose between food or medicine. What did you do about it? Ebola ravages through my children in Africa. What did you do about it? Far too many of your veterans, whom you claim to honor, sleep under bridges at night. What did you do about it? There are the sick and the hungry and the desperate and the hurting and the lost and the despairing. What did you do for them?
If this is to be about what we deserve, we are, for lack of a more delicate way of putting it, screwed. Be careful of what you wish for...
This is the point Amos is making. Despite all our delusions and selective memory, we are truly not doing what God has called us to do. We are not letting “justice roll down like waters,” because there is a lot still very wrong in our world, a lot that we can fix, but we choose not to. Hunger and poverty and disease and injustice are NOT invincible. There is food enough to feed the world if we only shared it. There are more than enough resources for all the people of the world to have a decent living if we only shared it. We can defeat any disease but we have to commit to it. We can end injustice, but we have to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.
But we don’t do these things or we don’t do them enough. We are far too content with the status quo, far too content with leaving well enough alone. God is not. And do we truly want him to hold us and the rest of the world accountable for all the things he has called us to do that we have not done?
God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. God’s definition of sin is not the human definition of sin. Compared to his standard, we simply do not measure up.
But here’s the thing. When the Day of the Lord comes, when the day of judgment is upon us, it is not we who will be held to that standard. It is Christ who will be. The son, perfectly obedient to the Father, even unto death and the grave, who will stand in our stead. In the end, we will not get what we deserve. We will get what he deserved.
And we’ve seen what that is. On the third day, Christ rose again from the grave. His reward, our reward, is resurrection from the dead and life eternal. We don’t deserve that. We deserve just about anything BUT that. But that’s what we get. That’s grace. That’s mercy. That’s God’s gift, and it is a gift, something given without merit.
When I realize that, when I realize how much I receive that I truly do not deserve, I’m dumbfounded. I’m dumbfounded. I’m astonished and I’m also motivated. I’ve been given far more than I deserve. I’ve got more than I need, God’s abundance is overflowing. It’s freeing. It’s liberating. And then I look to the world at all those still in bondage to the evils of this world and I ask myself “What am I going to do about that?” God’s given so much. I can share. You can share. And from his mercy to us, justice can roll down like waters upon them and we can take a few steps to set the world right. Not enough, but a start. Amen.
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