Article
- Date:
- Sunday 12th November 2023
Year A, The Third Sunday before Advent - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Hurstpierpoint
- Service:
- Eucharist
- Readings:
- Amos 5.18-24
Matthew 25.1-13
It is just one of those Lectionary accidents that on the rare occasion of a Choral Eucharist our Reading from Amos should be so dismissive of worship singing but on this day in particular we need to be aware of the cardinal importance of justice in Old Testament writing for two reasons: first, the rhetoric of Remembrance Sunday concentrates on freedom; and secondly, because Amos's central point is that worship and justice are symbiotic.
On the first point, of course it is important to defend freedom if it is threatened but, as that great intellectual Isiah berlin noted, there are essentially two kinds of freedom: the freedom to do things and the freedom from unfavourable things. The rich and powerful are all in favour of the freedom to do things because there are so many things they can do; but the freedom from homelessness and starvation are, in the end, more important but less highly regarded. It is far more central to civilisation and Christian living to be free from starvation than it is to be free to eat as much chocolate as you like. Those volunteer regiments of Pals who fell at the Somme or Ypres thought they were fighting for freedom from want; they were promised a land fit for heroes, but they got the great Depression. Meanwhile, the revels of the rich continued unabated.
On the second point, and by far the more important one for Christians, loving God through worship and loving our neighbour through sacrificial action are totally symbiotic, or interlocking; you just can't have one without the other, which is at the heart of the message of Amos. Yes, we can and must worship God but if we come to worship having overlooked our neighbour the worship will be hollow.
The challenge for all of us is the exercise of an informed conscience in determining the degree of sacrificial love that we will exercise. We are all familiar with the myriad of small choices we make - how much to drop into a street collecting box, how much to give for Christian Aid, what to buy for the food bank - but we are, I suspect, less good at deciding on an overall budget for our charitable giving, an overall judgment about which political party is most likely to pursue social justice on our behalf, and how to organise our time so that we give more of it to the lonely and the miserable. Improvisation can be good and spontaneity can be very rewarding for the giver and the receiver but the scale of want and loneliness that confronts us demands deliberative commitment.
Perhaps you are sorry that you are hearing this for the second time in two weeks but this only goes to show that a deep concern for social justice is not a recent socialist imposition, it is an Old Testament obsession; indeed the provisions made for the poor in the Book of Deuteronomy alone are more generous than anything we achieved in this country before 1910; and it is certainly true that in the Medieval period the monasteries constituted the spine of Christian philanthropy but Reformation theology, with its suspicion of "works of the law" and its emphasis on personal faith and piety somewhat undermined the charitable impulse. Interestingly, referring back to my point about considering major issues, those most likely to oppose state intervention in the lives of people on the grounds that it encourages dependence are most often the same people who emphasise their freedom to do what they please while overlooking the importance to the disadvantaged of freedom from want.
The argument will not improve with repetition, so let me end with one simple point: whenever we do the right thing for God's children, we do it for God; only then can we approach his altar with a joyful step.