PLAYING church!  How many of us here this morning never get beyond the stage of a four-year-old?  How many of us PLAY AT church, rather than ever really get around to BEING the Church?
                            
    Our First Lesson for today, from Amos, chapter 5, is vitally concerned with this whole matter of PLAYING church.  Indeed, the strange Prophet Amos from Tekoa, in Judah, the southern Jewish Kingdom, here BITTERLY CONDEMNS playing church as terribly hypocritical!  "I HATE, I DESPISE your festivals," cries the Lord through the mouth of Amos to the outwardly very religious folks of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  "And I take no delight in your solemn assemblies!  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them . . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps!  BUT let JUSTICE ROLL DOWN LIKE WATERS, and RIGHTEOUSNESS like an everflowing STREAM!"

    Well, what's Amos RAVING about here?  What's so wrong here with the worship of the Israelites? -- In and by itself, nothing much, really.  The prosperous upper classes crowd the sanctuary at Bethel.   Richly dressed priests dramatically preside over sacrifices to God--slaying bulls and goats, and offering the carcasses on the altars, amid pageantry and ceremony.  And the people LOVE IT!  They LOVE the special holy days when they can meet in solemn assembly and pray loudly to the Lord, whom, they're confident, is making their nation safe and wealthy because God SMILES on all that they do.  They love to sing the great ol' hymns--their chants of praise to God--accompanied by the harps and trumpets.

    Indeed, here at the First Church of Bethel stands a great golden bull, erected by King Jeroboam I himself!  And upon the bull's back rests invisibly the ARK-- THE VERY THRONE OF THE LORD--who, though unseen, SITS there and GLORIES in all the sacrifices MADE on God's behalf-- or so the Israelites believe!

    Now onto this scene, one day, strides Amos of Tekoa, from way down south in Judah.  PICTURE it!  On his sandals is dried sheep dung, for Amos is no rich man, but only a humble shepherd.  Amos's fingers are stained like those of a cigarette addict, for by profession he's also a dresser of so-called sycamore trees.  And the JUICE of the fig-like sycamore fruit has left its mark on his gnarled hands.

    Straight to Bethel Amos marches, and his message totally SHOCKS the crowds who've come to worship there.  For the prophet cries that they and their nation are DOOMED for their sin  "because [among other things] [you] sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals--" [because you] trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way . . . ."

    Therefore, Amos goes on to say, God will let the cities and great temples and fine mansions of Israel be DESTROYED by FIRE, along with most of the people--and the remainder will  be taken away into exile by their enemy."

    Well, it would be an understatement to say that these good church folks at Bethel dislike Amos and his message.  Indeed, Amaziah, the haughty priest there, regards him as a country bumpkin, an itinerant, jack-leg evangelist--and tries to send him PACKING-- revival tent, sawdust, drum, tambourine, collection plate, loud-speaker, pick-up truck, house trailer, and all!

    What is it that tees off Amos so? -- That tees off the Lord so?  What's WRONG with the Israelites?  Why is all their worship at Bethel just PLAYING CHURCH?

    Well, basically it's because of the Israelites' terribly LOW view of God.  Like many folks of our own day, the Israelites believe the Lord is more pleased by cult than by conduct.  --More pleased by public ritual than by public AND private rescue and protection of the poor and the most vulnerable around us!

    As I said before, Israel, in Amos' time, is a wealthy nation. She sits astride the major overland trade routes through the Fertile Crescent. And her tax offices ring with TRIBUTE money.  Indeed, the Dow is UP.  The national budget enjoys a SURPLUS.  A rich merchant class has arisen, addicted to luxury and leisure.  And the wealthy have DISPOSSESSED the small farmers and shop owners.  Many of the poor are left hungry, naked, suffering, at the mercy of the special interests. CORRUPTION penetrates Israel's commerce--and even her courts of law! Sound FAMILIAR?

    And yet the prosperous Israelites are MOST RELIGIOUS!  At the Bethel shrine they sit on the front pews, and dedicate stained-glass windows, and post the Ten Commandments on public property where even idol worshipers have to view them, and hold old-fashioned revivals and belt out loudly the hymns and donate their costly gifts and sacrifices.

    But they utterly divorce MERCY, ACTIVE COMPASSION, JUSTICE, and LOVE from religion!   THAT'S why ol' Amos here SCREAMS OUT God's words, "I TAKE NO DELIGHT in your SOLEMN ASSEMBLIES. . .your OFFERINGS . . .your SONGS . . .!"

    Well, friends, what IS it that the Lord really LOVES from us instead of all this? --Listen again:  "BUT let JUSTICE ROLL DOWN LIKE WATERS, and RIGHTEOUSNESS like an everflowing STREAM!"

    Now tell me, how can this congregation, here in this place, at this time,  avoid merely PLAYING church and, instead, promote REAL justice and righteousness and peace and well-being in the larger community, all around us?   Let me be clear:  when Amos cries out for "justice," PLEASE don't think he's only talking about equality in the courts of law!  To you and me "justice" is something STATIC.  In our courthouses the figure of "justice" is a seated WOMAN, BLIND-FOLDED, holding in her hand a scale of balance.  But that's not the BIBLE'S picture of justice at all!  Biblical "justice" is DYNAMIC, constantly MOVING, CHURNING like a cool, mountain torrent, RELIEVING the drought of injustice and suffering, QUENCHING the deepest of thirsts, REFRESHING the land and its people with the goodness and mercy of God and of God's people!  Turning the parched, dry valleys into lush, green basins!

    What a beautiful image!  Martin Luther King, Jr., so often in his moving speeches and sermons would cry these wonderful words, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream!"  I can never read this without thinking of the way they are carved into the granite and marble of the moving sculpture that stands before Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Alabama, just a stone's thrown from both the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King once was pastor, and from the State Capitol of Alabama.  Maya Lin, the same artist who designed the interactive sculpture of the Vietnam Memorial, on the Mall, in Washington, where many of you have stood, I'm sure, and perhaps traced with your finger the inscribed name of a fallen American whom you knew, also made this work of art there in Montgomery.  At the Southern Poverty Law Center, water continually runs down a wall with the verse inscribed on it-and then sinks beneath the surface, only to come up again and flow over a round, table-like structure with the names of the fallen heroes of the U.S. Civil Rights struggle inscribed on it.  And through that flowing water you can, with your finger, trace the names of King, of Medger Evers, and so many others.
 
    Yes, "justice" doesn't mean just PRAYING (as important as that is), but it ALWAYS means ACTING!   In those glorious words of Prophet Micah,  "what does the LORD require of you but to DO justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

    To Amos and to ALL the so-called "Minor Prophets," whose writings so often make us feel uncomfortable and conscious of our own failings in this regard, "justice" ALWAYS means fulfilling the demands of a RELATIONSHIP, whether that relationship be with GOD or with one's fellow HUMAN BEINGS!  "Justice" means attempting in every way possible to LOVE the Lord with all one's heart and one's neighbor -- yes, even one's neighbor who is STRANGE, who is DIFFERENT, who is UNlovely, who is FOREIGN, who is perhaps UNGRATEFUL--to love that neighbor as ONESELF.

    And, to the prophets, IF believers DON'T work actively for THAT kind of justice, then all their worship amounts to BLASPHEMY, though they may go to the shrine (their church) or to the Temple at Jerusalem every day of the year!

    All right, what does all this have to do with you and me?  With this historic CONGREGATION, now on a quest to find your next permanent pastor? Anything? --After all, this isn't Israel in the 8th Century B.C. but Deerfield Beach, U.S.A., in A.D. the year 2009.

    Simply THIS:  You and I stand on the threshold of surely the year's richest seasons for Christian worship.  Like the Israelites at Bethel, how we LOVE these festivals! --Even beginning with annual World Communion, next Sunday--and continuing with Reformation Sunday, at the END of October, with ALL SAINTS', THANKSGIVING, ADVENT, and CHRISTMAS soon following, we'll CROWD this place for special services and ceremonies. We'll sing beloved hymns and carols; offer fervent prayers; hear glorious anthems by our choir, soloists, and instrumentalists.  We'll even make here our SACRIFICES--in terms of special offerings for combating HUNGER, for CHRISTMAS JOY (to relieve aged  church professionals and their survivors and support our schools and colleges for minority persons).

    But, friends, with ALL this, are we just PLAYING CHURCH?   Will God say to you and me, too, "I take no delight in your solemn assemblies!"? Do you and I just TALK about, just PRAY about, justice in our community, our region, our world--or do we really DO it?

    Back in the 1970s, in Kentucky, an elderly lady and faithful church member died.  Upon the reading of her will everyone was AMAZED for TWO reasons:

    At FIRST the LEADERS of the denomination were PUZZLED, BEWILDERED.  "What can we do with this BEQUEST?" they wondered.  But then they turned to their BIBLES and, studying both Old Testament and New, and especially the teachings of Jesus, they realized that THROUGHOUT the sacred volume God summons us Christians to BE peaceMAKERS-in every way possible!  So they used the lady's bequest to start, in 1980, the PEACEMAKING program that has become such an important emphasis of our nationwide Presbyterian Church (U.S.A).  UNDER it each Session and Presbytery is asked to sign the COMMITMENT to Peacemaking that, among other things, pledges believers, through WORSHIP and BIBLE STUDY and ACTION, to come to grips with God's great call to peacemaking; to work to resolve conflict in the CHURCH, in FAMILIES, in the COMMUNITY, and in the WORLD AT LARGE; to receive, on each World Communion Sunday, the Peacemaking special OFFERING that continues to under gird the program; and to work with and to continue to support with money and volunteers COMMUNITY MINISTRIES that promote justice, peace, reconciliation, and relief locally.

    During the past nearly 30 years, God has achieved WONDERS through Presbyterian congregations just like THIS one, in bringing about peace and justice!  One example:  here in FLORIDA, to our west and northwest is Peace River Presbytery.  For many years individual churches in Sarasota, Bradenton, Fort Myers, and elsewhere in that area had supported with their money a ministry to the migrant workers who come seasonally to labor in the vast fields picking TOMATOES and OTHER crops to supply fast-food places like Taco-Bell and the supermarket chains.  These church folk already knew that these laborers received so little pay that only a pittance remained to feed themselves and their families.  But then southeast Florida Presbyterians learned that SOME of the BOSSES in the fields were locking the workers inside a cargo box truck each night, CHAINING, and BEATING them, and virtually ENSLAVING them.

    So individual churches and the presbytery worked with federal government prosecutors, and they pressured Taco-Bell, Publix, and other restaurants and super markers, until FINALLY not only were the slave bosses, last December, CONVICTED of their crimes, but the workers now, for the most part, receive decent, fair wages!

    Where in THIS community (north Broward County) does THIS church need, through Christ, to enable justice to roll down like waters? -Here's one POSSIBILITY: A huge number of RETIREES live in this area, and the senior adult population of the whole U.S.A. will increase DRAMATICALLY over the next decade or so.  Already more than half a million reports of ABUSE against elderly Americans reach authorities each year, and millions of cases of elder abuse go UNreported.  Yes, senior citizens RIGHT HERE, living in both institutions and in their own homes, EVERY DAY, suffer psychological and physical and even sexual harm by caregivers and even members of their own families, Others are victimized by unscrupulous crooks who gain their confidence and claim to be their friends-but are really only after their MONEY.

    This very church, with OTHER congregations, especially if your Session feels led to review and to sign the Covenant for Peacemaking, might prepare itself prayerfully and carefully by studying the EXCELLENT Bible studies and sociological studies of our denomination CONCERNING domestic abuse. And then, led by God, become a collective ADVOCATE for those who suffer from these outrages.
 
    Indeed, friends, PLAYING church?  Occupying pews for an hour each Sunday? --  Or really BEING church?  DOING justice?

    How SAD that the Israelites in our lesson don't HEED Prophet Amos at all, but continue on their way, including their religious ROUTINE, until their nation finally FALLS--and they are  utterly OBLITERATED from history!  The "lost tribes" we still call them.

    What about YOU and ME?

Prayers:
    O God, you have founded your church and have revealed your loving-kindness and truth from age to age.  So deliver us from PLAYING church, and help us, for our own age, to BE the Church.  Enrich not only this congregation, and those represented here, but your people everywhere with your heavenly grace, through the faithful witness of your church (including ourselves).  By our bold actions, in your name, cause justice and righteousness, love and mercy, plenty and peace, to prevail for ALL people--and especially for the poor and vulnerable and needy who are PARTICULARLY dear to you.

    Bless our NATION, and every commonwealth on earth, that your truth may prevail.  And deliver us, by the grace of Christ our Savior, from all who would promote WAR, BLOODSHED, and VIOLENCE.

    Healing God, deliver ALL who labor and are heavy-laden--particularly those in this place of worship today who HURT in any way.  Comfort those who MOURN.  Restore those who are sick.

    Eternal God, both of the living and of the dead, receive our thanks for each of your faithful servants who have gone before us, and who now sit at table with your victorious, reigning Son in heaven.  Keep us in fellowship with them, and cause us, in your good time, to be reunited forevermore around your throne; for we make these our prayers in his holy name.  Amen.