The Lord Hears The Cry Of The Poor
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle C
The year 1992 marked the quincentenary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World, an event which initiated the greatest transformation of life in the common era of human history. Columbus' great discovery is remembered for what the age of exploration brought to human society through the expansion of the world -- geographically, culturally, religiously, and economically. The quincentenary, however, was also marked by major protests that attempted to focus world attention on the significant errors made by the conquistadors, some out of zeal, others from ignorance, and far too many out of a lust for power and possessions. The rape of the lands of the New World and the destruction of peoples and their cultures were realities that cannot be side-stepped nor denied.
Columbus' discovery set in motion the age of exploration that did many good things for many peoples. Both Europe and the New World benefited greatly from the agricultural exchange with each land receiving new and important products from the other. Both regions also eventually benefited from the broadening of learning that came about from the cross study of cultures.
When the Spanish came to the New World their purposes were twofold: to bring the message of Christ to the pagan peoples of the New World and to achieve economic gain. In their zeal to achieve both ends, the people whom they encountered, namely the native peoples of the region, suffered greatly. The assumption was made by Church and State officials that the Indians were by nature inferior to the Spanish. Few if any gave credence to the highly-developed cultures present in the Aztec and Inca civilizations of contemporary Mexico and Peru. No appreciation was given to native religion. On the contrary, zealous Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit missionaries treated the native peoples as children and believed fervently that unless these people were converted to Spanish Catholicism they had no chance for salvation and eternal life. Thus, these zealous churchmen sought conversions at almost any cost, often coercing the Indians into acceptance of the faith.
The desire for economic profit directly affected the manner in which Indians were treated as well. Sugar quickly arose as a cash crop on the Caribbean islands and in Brazil and Indians were almost immediately pressed into service on the sugar plantations. In western South America and New Spain (Mexico), Indians were sent to the silver and gold mines. Labor was necessary for these operations and Indians were readily available and abundant. The Encomienda System was initiated, a program that placed Indians in camps where their basic needs were provided while they worked for Spanish profit. This system of virtual slavery, in different forms, lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century.
There were prophetic voices who spoke out against the injustices present and who were advocates for the Indians, but they were in many ways a lone cry in the desert. Antonio Montesinos and Bartolome de Las Casas, two Dominican friars (priests) were advocates for the Indians. Their polemics, raised to both State and Church officials, led to changes and some alleviation of the suffering of the native peoples. Yet, the suffering and abuses continued.
It has taken the world too long to acknowledge the errors, even though many were not intended, of many who were pioneers in the age of discovery. Peoples were oppressed and the earth was raped in order to line the pockets of nations and individuals with monies that came from the riches of the land. The situation of the discovery of the New World demonstrates, unfortunately, that human civilization continues to struggle with oppression of the poor and personal greed, problems against which Amos prophesied to the Northern Kingdom of Israel many centuries before Christ.
Amos presents a hard and profound message to the ruling classes of Israel for their failures to lead properly and care for those whom God had placed in their charge. In today's lesson the prophet uses the image of summer fruit to tell the Hebrews that the time of their judgment is near; God will bring ruin to the people of Israel and will never pass by again. Why has God made such a harsh sentence upon the nation of Israel? Amos enumerates for the people and for us the many transgressions of abuse of power and greed that have placed the ruling classes at odds with God. The rich and powerful in Jewish society have abused the people by trampling on the needs of the less fortunate and bringing to ruin the poor of the land. Amos charges the merchants with cheating their customers. They fix scales and balances to their own favor. They measure out less than a full ephah in produce when sold, but use more than a shekel of weight to determine the price. The rich mix the refuse of the wheat with the good grain to stretch their profits even more. Finally, Amos accuses the rich and ruling classes of selling the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Amos has not finished his polemic, however, as he aims to show why these people oppress the poor so badly. He cries out against the greed of the rich and shows how it is manifest in their manner of life. These people cannot wait until the new moon feast, a day that allowed no work by Hebrew law, is over so they can continue their sordid business dealings. In a similar way, the merchants want the Sabbath to pass quickly so they can again sell their wheat.
The prophet holds no punches in his accusations nor in his prophetic prediction of what these practices will gain for the nation of Israel. He forcefully proclaims that God will punish the people for their improper treatment of the poor and the greed that motivates their action and pervades their attitude. The sun will go down at noon, great feasts will be turned into occasions of mourning, and songs will be transformed into lamentations in punishment for the peoples' actions. Even worse Amos predicts how God will abandon the people. A famine will come upon the land, not a lack of food and drink, but more importantly the dearth of God's word. The people will look high and low, east and west for God, but the Lord will not be found. Amos' words, as we know, came true for the entire nation of Israel, as the ten northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrians more than 700 years before Christ.
The problem of greed and how it manifests itself in the oppression of the poor, experienced by the rich Hebrews in Israel and the conquistadores in the New World of the sixteenth century, is, unfortunately, present in our contemporary society as well. Society today in different ways is constantly subjugating and suppressing the poor in all their cases -- the economically poor, the intellectually less gifted, the socially and culturally backward, the physically or mentally challenged, the religiously ignorant. Society wants and is friendly to winners and we are told in many ways that the poor are losers. Thus, we shy away from those who will not advance our cause. The poor do not possess sufficient money, intellect, influence, class, or physical prowess to meet our needs. We, therefore, possibly unconsciously, do precisely what the priest and the Levite in the familiar "Parable of the Good Samaritan" did; we simply pass them by. One cannot possess such an attitude and be a true Christian. We must not hold an attitude that estranges or keeps at a distance others who through possibly no fault or action of their own are poor. Rather, we must draw people closer, take the attitude of the despised Samaritan, and make sufficient time to meet the needs of the poor. The Lord hears the cry of the poor and so must we!
Contemporary business surely needs to hear the message of Amos. Understandably profit is the bottom line in business, but in the drive to achieve economic success in the dog-eat-dog world in which we live, there is a tendency to cut corners or do things in ways that often shortchange others. In order to get ahead financially, we may fix the scales or intentionally measure inaccurately at the expense of another. Too often today the daily newspapers report instances of companies that have conducted business in an unethical manner and those on the bottom of the ladder are the ones who suffer most.
Amos speaks of how people in his day could not wait until the Sabbath ended so they could continue to practice their business. Civil law today has no restrictions on the days we conduct business, but we, like our ancestors in the faith, do not consider the meaning and value of the Lord's Day and the need to do something different than our usual work on this special day given us by God. Yes, it is true, as Jesus says, "The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath," but we must seriously consider our need to spend more time with God and a bit less with our day-to-day work.
Contemporary society is also plagued with the sin of greed. We never seem to have enough of anything or the right type of the things we actually possess. We are not content with that which will suffice; we want more and better of all things. There are times when the length we will go in order to obtain what we want is truly remarkable. Sometimes we are so greedy, especially in business, that we place others, but seldom ourselves, in jeopardy. Having sufficient economic resources is important in today's world, but when business goes bad who suffers? We seldom hear of high management or stockholders taking cuts or losing their positions. On the contrary, the owners and managers maintain their livelihood and the workers, those who can least afford to compromise what they have, lose everything.
Greed in all its manifestations leads only to doom as it leads only to the detriment of others and eventually to the loss of our souls. Russian novelist Fydor Dostoyevsky's tale "The Onion" expresses succinctly but clearly where greed leads: Once upon a time there was a peasant woman, and a very wicked woman she was. One day she died leaving not a single good deed behind. The devils caught hold of her and plunged her into the Lake of Hades. Her guardian angel stood by and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to inform God. The angel told God, "Once she pulled up an onion from her garden and gave it to a beggar woman." God replied, "Take that onion and hold it out to her in the lake and let her take hold of it and be pulled out by it. If you can pull her out of the Lake of Hades, she may enter paradise. But if the onion breaks, she must stay where she is." The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. "Come and catch hold," cried the angel, "and I will pull you out." And the angel began cautiously to pull the woman out. He had almost pulled her out when other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being saved, began clutching hold of her legs so they too could be pulled out. However, the woman was wicked and began to kick at them saying, "I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours. Let go." As soon as she uttered these words, the onion broke. The woman fell back into the Lake of Hades where she remains to this day. And the guardian angel wept as he went away.
The Hebrews were given the Law and the land and they failed to use them wisely by using them for all. Their greed and oppression of the poor led them into exile. The Spanish had good intentions, but they too allowed greed and poor choices to throw them off stride. One Spanish traveler, Cabeza de Vaca, after an eight-year sojourn from Florida to Mexico City, wrote to the King of Spain about his experience. He concluded his letter in an apologetic tone for the failures of his contemporaries:
We had come to conquer, to enslave, and to use the people and the land and all therein, yet I learned so profoundly while barefoot and possessing nothing that it is not ours to own, that it is all the land of the Lord alone, and we are simply given it as caretakers. How much suffering will come from our greed and selfishness I cannot tell. Among the Christians there was very little desire to even assist one another, yet we called ourselves gentlemen. What kind of world will come from this I do not know, but this I can say: That greed and possession is not the way; that enslavement and destruction of the land will bring nothing but great sufferings and that in creating a new world all things are possible but these things must be done from the spirit of the Christian heart. In no other way can we honor Christ on this earth.
My friends, let us listen to the words of Amos, heed the lessons of history, hear the cry of the poor, and respond in love!
Columbus' discovery set in motion the age of exploration that did many good things for many peoples. Both Europe and the New World benefited greatly from the agricultural exchange with each land receiving new and important products from the other. Both regions also eventually benefited from the broadening of learning that came about from the cross study of cultures.
When the Spanish came to the New World their purposes were twofold: to bring the message of Christ to the pagan peoples of the New World and to achieve economic gain. In their zeal to achieve both ends, the people whom they encountered, namely the native peoples of the region, suffered greatly. The assumption was made by Church and State officials that the Indians were by nature inferior to the Spanish. Few if any gave credence to the highly-developed cultures present in the Aztec and Inca civilizations of contemporary Mexico and Peru. No appreciation was given to native religion. On the contrary, zealous Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit missionaries treated the native peoples as children and believed fervently that unless these people were converted to Spanish Catholicism they had no chance for salvation and eternal life. Thus, these zealous churchmen sought conversions at almost any cost, often coercing the Indians into acceptance of the faith.
The desire for economic profit directly affected the manner in which Indians were treated as well. Sugar quickly arose as a cash crop on the Caribbean islands and in Brazil and Indians were almost immediately pressed into service on the sugar plantations. In western South America and New Spain (Mexico), Indians were sent to the silver and gold mines. Labor was necessary for these operations and Indians were readily available and abundant. The Encomienda System was initiated, a program that placed Indians in camps where their basic needs were provided while they worked for Spanish profit. This system of virtual slavery, in different forms, lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century.
There were prophetic voices who spoke out against the injustices present and who were advocates for the Indians, but they were in many ways a lone cry in the desert. Antonio Montesinos and Bartolome de Las Casas, two Dominican friars (priests) were advocates for the Indians. Their polemics, raised to both State and Church officials, led to changes and some alleviation of the suffering of the native peoples. Yet, the suffering and abuses continued.
It has taken the world too long to acknowledge the errors, even though many were not intended, of many who were pioneers in the age of discovery. Peoples were oppressed and the earth was raped in order to line the pockets of nations and individuals with monies that came from the riches of the land. The situation of the discovery of the New World demonstrates, unfortunately, that human civilization continues to struggle with oppression of the poor and personal greed, problems against which Amos prophesied to the Northern Kingdom of Israel many centuries before Christ.
Amos presents a hard and profound message to the ruling classes of Israel for their failures to lead properly and care for those whom God had placed in their charge. In today's lesson the prophet uses the image of summer fruit to tell the Hebrews that the time of their judgment is near; God will bring ruin to the people of Israel and will never pass by again. Why has God made such a harsh sentence upon the nation of Israel? Amos enumerates for the people and for us the many transgressions of abuse of power and greed that have placed the ruling classes at odds with God. The rich and powerful in Jewish society have abused the people by trampling on the needs of the less fortunate and bringing to ruin the poor of the land. Amos charges the merchants with cheating their customers. They fix scales and balances to their own favor. They measure out less than a full ephah in produce when sold, but use more than a shekel of weight to determine the price. The rich mix the refuse of the wheat with the good grain to stretch their profits even more. Finally, Amos accuses the rich and ruling classes of selling the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Amos has not finished his polemic, however, as he aims to show why these people oppress the poor so badly. He cries out against the greed of the rich and shows how it is manifest in their manner of life. These people cannot wait until the new moon feast, a day that allowed no work by Hebrew law, is over so they can continue their sordid business dealings. In a similar way, the merchants want the Sabbath to pass quickly so they can again sell their wheat.
The prophet holds no punches in his accusations nor in his prophetic prediction of what these practices will gain for the nation of Israel. He forcefully proclaims that God will punish the people for their improper treatment of the poor and the greed that motivates their action and pervades their attitude. The sun will go down at noon, great feasts will be turned into occasions of mourning, and songs will be transformed into lamentations in punishment for the peoples' actions. Even worse Amos predicts how God will abandon the people. A famine will come upon the land, not a lack of food and drink, but more importantly the dearth of God's word. The people will look high and low, east and west for God, but the Lord will not be found. Amos' words, as we know, came true for the entire nation of Israel, as the ten northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrians more than 700 years before Christ.
The problem of greed and how it manifests itself in the oppression of the poor, experienced by the rich Hebrews in Israel and the conquistadores in the New World of the sixteenth century, is, unfortunately, present in our contemporary society as well. Society today in different ways is constantly subjugating and suppressing the poor in all their cases -- the economically poor, the intellectually less gifted, the socially and culturally backward, the physically or mentally challenged, the religiously ignorant. Society wants and is friendly to winners and we are told in many ways that the poor are losers. Thus, we shy away from those who will not advance our cause. The poor do not possess sufficient money, intellect, influence, class, or physical prowess to meet our needs. We, therefore, possibly unconsciously, do precisely what the priest and the Levite in the familiar "Parable of the Good Samaritan" did; we simply pass them by. One cannot possess such an attitude and be a true Christian. We must not hold an attitude that estranges or keeps at a distance others who through possibly no fault or action of their own are poor. Rather, we must draw people closer, take the attitude of the despised Samaritan, and make sufficient time to meet the needs of the poor. The Lord hears the cry of the poor and so must we!
Contemporary business surely needs to hear the message of Amos. Understandably profit is the bottom line in business, but in the drive to achieve economic success in the dog-eat-dog world in which we live, there is a tendency to cut corners or do things in ways that often shortchange others. In order to get ahead financially, we may fix the scales or intentionally measure inaccurately at the expense of another. Too often today the daily newspapers report instances of companies that have conducted business in an unethical manner and those on the bottom of the ladder are the ones who suffer most.
Amos speaks of how people in his day could not wait until the Sabbath ended so they could continue to practice their business. Civil law today has no restrictions on the days we conduct business, but we, like our ancestors in the faith, do not consider the meaning and value of the Lord's Day and the need to do something different than our usual work on this special day given us by God. Yes, it is true, as Jesus says, "The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath," but we must seriously consider our need to spend more time with God and a bit less with our day-to-day work.
Contemporary society is also plagued with the sin of greed. We never seem to have enough of anything or the right type of the things we actually possess. We are not content with that which will suffice; we want more and better of all things. There are times when the length we will go in order to obtain what we want is truly remarkable. Sometimes we are so greedy, especially in business, that we place others, but seldom ourselves, in jeopardy. Having sufficient economic resources is important in today's world, but when business goes bad who suffers? We seldom hear of high management or stockholders taking cuts or losing their positions. On the contrary, the owners and managers maintain their livelihood and the workers, those who can least afford to compromise what they have, lose everything.
Greed in all its manifestations leads only to doom as it leads only to the detriment of others and eventually to the loss of our souls. Russian novelist Fydor Dostoyevsky's tale "The Onion" expresses succinctly but clearly where greed leads: Once upon a time there was a peasant woman, and a very wicked woman she was. One day she died leaving not a single good deed behind. The devils caught hold of her and plunged her into the Lake of Hades. Her guardian angel stood by and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to inform God. The angel told God, "Once she pulled up an onion from her garden and gave it to a beggar woman." God replied, "Take that onion and hold it out to her in the lake and let her take hold of it and be pulled out by it. If you can pull her out of the Lake of Hades, she may enter paradise. But if the onion breaks, she must stay where she is." The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. "Come and catch hold," cried the angel, "and I will pull you out." And the angel began cautiously to pull the woman out. He had almost pulled her out when other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being saved, began clutching hold of her legs so they too could be pulled out. However, the woman was wicked and began to kick at them saying, "I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours. Let go." As soon as she uttered these words, the onion broke. The woman fell back into the Lake of Hades where she remains to this day. And the guardian angel wept as he went away.
The Hebrews were given the Law and the land and they failed to use them wisely by using them for all. Their greed and oppression of the poor led them into exile. The Spanish had good intentions, but they too allowed greed and poor choices to throw them off stride. One Spanish traveler, Cabeza de Vaca, after an eight-year sojourn from Florida to Mexico City, wrote to the King of Spain about his experience. He concluded his letter in an apologetic tone for the failures of his contemporaries:
We had come to conquer, to enslave, and to use the people and the land and all therein, yet I learned so profoundly while barefoot and possessing nothing that it is not ours to own, that it is all the land of the Lord alone, and we are simply given it as caretakers. How much suffering will come from our greed and selfishness I cannot tell. Among the Christians there was very little desire to even assist one another, yet we called ourselves gentlemen. What kind of world will come from this I do not know, but this I can say: That greed and possession is not the way; that enslavement and destruction of the land will bring nothing but great sufferings and that in creating a new world all things are possible but these things must be done from the spirit of the Christian heart. In no other way can we honor Christ on this earth.
My friends, let us listen to the words of Amos, heed the lessons of history, hear the cry of the poor, and respond in love!
