“Woe to the complacent!” proclaims the prophet Amos in our first reading. He goes on to castigate the wealthy elites of Jerusalem for their lifestyles of complacent luxury, while an enemy is on the march. He foretells a grim end for the elites: defeat and exile.
What Amos is
doing here is what prophets do. The prophets
were sent by God during the days of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The job of the prophet was to speak the truth
– God’s truth – to the people, and especially to the leaders. Sometimes the words of a prophet were pleasant
to receive, as when Isaiah proclaimed words of comfort and peace. But prophets also are called to speak uncomfortable,
unwelcome truths to those who would rather not hear them. And on occasion, the prophets of the Old
Testament suffered for speaking those unwelcome words.
I happened
to hear a prophet speak, only the other day.
Have you heard of Greta Thunberg?
She’s a 16-year-old girl from Sweden who has risen to worldwide prominence
as an activist against climate change. When
you first see her, you think – or at least, I thought – “She’s just a kid,” a
normal-looking teen who wears normal teenager clothes and keeps her hair in a
long braid. But then she begins to speak, and you realize
that, if you thought, “She’s just a kid”, you’ve underestimated her. She recently spoke at a United Nations
Climate Action Summit in New York. When
you hear her speak, you realize that she has made it her mission to wake up those
of us who are living complacent lives. Here
are a few of her words: she said:
People are suffering.
People are dying. Entire ecosystems
are collapsing. We are in the beginning
of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money, and fairy tales of
eternal economic growth. How dare you?!
The entire
speech is less than five minutes long, and it’s widely available on YouTube
– just search for “Greta Thunberg UN speech”.
I encourage you to find the video clip and watch it – there is something
about her words, and her sincere, righteous anger, that is compelling. She left me examining my conscience for
complacency.
Greta’s
words surely are aimed at those of us who are wholly complacent about the prospect
of climate change – those of us who haven’t changed our lifestyles a single
iota in response to the looming threat. But
it seems that Greta Thunberg also has no patience for the adult activists and
politicians who were in the room with her at the UN conference. On the video, we see that her words elicited
some applause and scattered cheers from the room; but as a matter of fact, I
think she also was blasting everyone there for doing less than enough, for settling
for half measures when full measures are called for. In this, she is in the same tradition as Amos: prophets who speak difficult truths to power.
In our
Gospel reading, Jesus tells us a parable calculated to wake up those who are
complacent while injustice literally lies at our doors. It’s a story of the final destiny of two men:
a rich man, and a poor man named Lazarus.
If that parable doesn’t freeze your blood, you probably didn’t pay sufficient
attention to it. Lazarus, the
impoverished beggar whose body is covered in sores, lies in the doorway of the
rich man’s house; but it seems the rich man, in his complacency, is not
bothered enough by this poor man’s plight to feed him or tend to his needs, even though presumably he has to step over Lazarus – or perhaps he treads upon the beggar’s very body – whenever he goes in
and out. After the men die and the rich
man is suffering eternal torments, he begs Father Abraham to send Lazarus back
to the living world to warn his brothers to avoid his fate – to awaken them
from their lives of comfort and complacency.
Father Abraham’s reply is: your brothers are warned: they have the Law,
and they have the prophets. There is no
need to send Lazarus back: God has already provided all the warning they need.
And all I
can say is: we’re warned, too. If we’re
living lives of complacency ourselves, while shootings take a toll in Chicago
every weekend, while immigrants at our southern border are separated from their
children and incarcerated for months at a time, for simply wishing to come to the United States – if we’re complacent in the
face of injustices like that, none of us can claim we weren’t warned. Because we have Moses and the prophets,
too. And we have John the Baptist, and
Jesus himself; and we have St. Paul, and all the saints, and the
martyrs, and the Doctors of the church. We have the church’s social teaching. And we have Martin Luther King, and Mother
Teresa, and Greta Thunberg. And we have
God’s word proclaimed and preached here, Sunday after Sunday. And we have our own consciences, telling us what is right and wrong. We have all of this, warning us to wake up from our complacency.
We’ve been warned.
I’ve
mentioned before that I go to confession from time to time. But I must admit, I’ve never confessed the
sin of complacency – the sin of not paying attention to the injustice and
suffering around me, the sin of assuming that, because all is well in my little bubble,
it must all be well with everyone. I
need to wake up and notice. And then I
need to resolve to do something about what I’m noticing.
I’ve been
involved in our St. Edna Community Table, our SECT ministry, for several years. Through that ministry, I’ve learned that there
are several hundred homeless persons in our local area. Who are they?
Where are they all day? I lived
in this community for several decades without even being aware of their existence. Yet they are among us, living lives of hunger, personal risk
and suffering. How complacent I was, not
to know of them.
If we want
to be like Lazarus and make it to heaven, if we want to spend eternity with
Father Abraham, and the angels and saints, and the Blessed Mother and the Three
Persons of the Holy Trinity – if we want to do that, we can’t be complacent. We need to pay attention - to be aware that
there is suffering around us; and we need to be willing to do something about
it.
From Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf
ReplyDelete“I now embrace the theory of prophecy, which holds that prophetic voices of great clarity and with quality of insight equal to that of any age, are speaking cogently all the time. Men and women of a stature equal to the greatest of the past are with us now addressing the problems of the day and pointing to a better way and to a personality better able to live fully and serenely in these times. p.22
“It is seekers who make prophets and the initiative of any one of us in searching for and responding to the voice of contemporary prophets may mark the turning point in their growth and service… Then we choose those we elect to heed as prophets –both old and new – and meld their advice with our own leadings.” “But if one really believes that the ‘word’ has been given for all time, how can one be a seeker? p.23
“…if one is a servant, either a leader or a follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making. I am hopeful…because more natural servants are trying to see clearly the world as it is and are listening carefully to prophetic voices that are speaking now.” p.23
“the only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant statute of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather they will freely respond only to the individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants.” p.24
Greenleaf’s theory of prophecy is a profound integration of both persons and community. For both prophecy and leadership Greenleaf sees the important role of seekers and followers.
Nicely done, Jim. You tapped your inner Democrat, something the party of that name hasn't done in a couple of decades. We keep getting a little child to lead us, but do we follow? A few years ago it was Malala Yousafzai for education for women in (especially) Muslim countries. Malala was recogized by the Nobel committee and she continues her activism, but women's gains in Afghanistan -- and specificaly in education -- were explicitly ignored in the all-but-photo-oped agreement with the Taliban that blew up this month.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to stay comfortable when the liturgy brings up Amos.
Good one, Jim. I especially liked the part about the sin of complacency. That's one that kind of gets shoved to the back burner by most of us. I am as guilty as any.
ReplyDelete"5th Sunday" must be the deacons' weekend to preach. It was here as well. Since the second collection was to be for the local St. Vincent de Paul Society, my husband segued from the Gospel reading into a plug for them. Also St. Vinnie's feast day was Friday, so he worked a few details about his life into the homily.
It was deacon's weekend here, too. But that may have to do with the fact that this Sunday and for the next four, the homily will be on Bishop Robert Barron's "Letter to the Suffering Church." Deacon Pete, who had our Mass, brought in Amos for a cameo appearance. It is possible -- Pete didn't know -- that this is a diocesan idea and not a pastor's brainstorm. If it's the latter, we will no doubt be delated to the appropriate dicastery before it's over, but the GIRMophiles can't blame this one on Pope Francis.
DeleteAccording to this link, https://www.sufferingchurchbook.com, Letter to the Suffering Church has a 5 part video series for a parish to use. Sounds like they are pushing for it to be a whole parish thing, not just a series for a study group. I don't know anything about it other than what Tom mentioned, but I tend to be kind of allergic to these "latest and greatest" things which get foisted on parishes from time to time.
DeleteI haven't read it yet, but I have a copy of the book, $1 donation "suggested." (That means one guy puts in a $5, and at the end of the day six books are gone for every $5 voluntarily contributed, but let that go.) The deacons, who have read it, tell me that it is unusually candid for the upper clergy. Which means, if Barron doesn't get a see from Francis, that he will be an auxiliary for life,
DeleteI like Barron. I think he does good work in the communications and evangelizing realm. If he gets appointed to a see and it ends up bogging him down in paperwork and similar administrivia, I think that would be a loss for the church.
DeleteI guess I'm a GIRMophile. I think preaching should be on the appointed readings or liturgical texts for the day. Occasionally there is something going on in the community or the world of such gravity that that thing needs to be preached about from the pulpit. But even then, it's best to find *some* sort of connection with the readings or texts, if that's possible. It's usually possible. The guest preachers on Mission Sunday and the Sunday for the Religious Retirement Fund (or whatever it's called) usually take a stab at it. I'm a little - well, more than a little - skeptical of a five-week preaching program. But Tom, as you note, your Deacon Pete tried to make connect it up with Amos.
Katherine, it sounds like your husband hit the right notes. We have a group in our parish that formerly was a St. Vincent de Paul Society, and I thought about making it the theme of my homily, but I've talked about them quite a bit the last few years - I don't want to be a broken record.
DeleteOur SVDP is a hybrid of a local charity which was started years ago, and the official SVDP. We don't do things quite by the official group. For one thing, they have meetings. Lots of them, like every week. None of us wanted to do that, we figured the bottom line was helping people who needed it.
DeleteWould recommend that people read the reviews of Barron's latest on Amazon. The vast majority are fawning admiration from his fans. But read the 1*s too - it sounds as though he's still pretty much knee-jerk defensiveness, blaming the culture and, apparently, the laity too, for falling for the anti-Catholic media hype.
DeleteI tried watching Barron's Catholicism series. Excellent production quality from the technical standpoint. Beautiful videography. Good music to go with it.
If only you didn't have to either look at him or listen to him, it would have been great. When it descended into catechism class level Catholic apologetics I finally quit watching the series. His presentaion style grated on me the point that I would frequently have to look away from the screen, I finally had to just give up on getting through the whole series.
He is also pretty clueless in his ideas about how to stem the bleeding out of young adults from the church.
Barron said church leaders don't need to speculate about why people are leaving because there are plenty of studies and surveys that answer this. The No. 1 reason, he said, is that they simply no longer believe the church's teachings, primarily its doctrinal beliefs.
He's right so far. But then he goes off track as to why so many (not just the young, but oldsters like me) reject "doctrinal" beliefs. Including many basics - like transubtantiation, papal infallibility, the denial of a sacrament due to gender, the "need" to confess to a priest instead of to God. Etc. It's not just rejecting the church's stance on sex and sexuality.
In his opinion, he said, this is "a bitter fruit of the dumbing-down of our faith" as it has been presented in catechesis and apologetics.
Sigh.
Other reasons he said young people are leaving have to do with relativism, science and the church's teachings on sexuality.
Relativism? In what way? Whose definition?
Science and sexuality - definitely the young dissent - from the teachings on homosexuality, to those dealing with marriage (including contraception within marriage), and to the patriarchal teaching of a "complementarity" that essentially defines women as inferior "helpers" to men, who are willed by God to be the leaders and decision makers, in the family and in the church. This doesn't fly with today's educated young women, who are now the leaders who decide if to get married in the RCC (not so much now, even if grandma and mom push it)and whether or not to have babies baptized (again - not returning for that either).
FWIW, I got chewed out twice this weekend for that homily. Once by an elderly lady who told me that things like that shouldn't be talked about from the pulpit. (I assume she meant climate change and similar topics.) Another elderly lady told me that I had opened the door to letting everyone with a political opinion start expressing it in church. She also promised me that I hadn't heard the last from her - we'd be discussing this more. I attempted to tell both of them that, in point of fact, the church does speak up on issues like climate change and immigration. They were having none of that, though.
ReplyDeleteI assume that, if they hated it so much that they felt compelled to tell me about it face to face, there were any number of people who hated it who didn't bother to tell me. Early this morning, our pastor forwarded me an email from a guy who hated it. The pastor also played me a voicemail he had received from another guy who hated it - on that one, I was accused of watching MSNBC and CNN (to which I can only plead Not guilty). The pastor has been supportive, for which I'm grateful.
A number of people at all the masses I was at this weekend also told me they really liked it. One woman, a visitor as it turns out, introduced herself to me after mass as a NASA employee who works with climate scientists all day. She told me that she had been intending for some time to put together some sort of a presentation, intended for a general audience, that would attempt to present facts related to climate change, as objectively and dispassionately as possible, so people could see for themselves what the climate change situation actually is. I told her that, if she does that, and wants to come back to Illinois (she lives out of state), she could give it a test run at the parish. Although, I know how that would turn out. We would schedule the event, and publicize it. And then the people who already are concerned about climate change would come to the event, while the people who most need to be exposed to actual facts, wouldn't come. I wonder if we're in a truth crisis these days.
Jim, the Catholic Church does not approve of suicide and other forms of self abuse. I assume this includes mass suicide. If the Church condemns drug abuse, I assume fossil fuel addiction and the results of it also fall under that proscription. I think your sermon is quite legitimately Catholic.
DeleteJim, I'm sorry to hear that you got chewed out by the self appointed temple police. That stuff is tiresome. But good that your pastor is supportive. I'm afraid it is a symptom of our hyper-politicized state right now. I'm pretty sure that the same people criticizing your homily wouldn't have batted an eye if you had told them, for instance, to storm their state legislature with emails for some culture war cause. Because of course that isn't political.
DeleteKatherine, I think you're exactly right; and I told my pastor that we can't let crabby voices from the "temple police" silence us on important issues.
DeleteStanley, thanks for your support. What do you think of Greta?
Right now, she's my favorite person in the world. I'm wondering if Asperger's in her case works like color blindness. Camouflage is designed to fool trichromats. Someone who's a deuterope can often spot and see through camouflage. Maybe Greta's different mind can penetrate all the obfuscation people use to fool others and themselves.
DeleteP.S. One time I attended an Army technical meeting. The meeting coordinator said "Everyone is here but the camouflage people". I said "But maybe they are here".
The Boy is on the spectrum. From a practical standpoint, Asperger's allows her to be unfazed by emotional and irrational arguments. She knows the science, she trusts the science, anything outside the science is irrelevant and she will reject it. She doesn't "read" emotion well in others, so she can be insulting and blunt. She also likely has what looks to the rest of us as a one-track mind, so she stays relentlessly on message and may seem obsessive. These kids are exhausting. But they care very deeply.
DeleteGreta is a little harridan. Seeing a child telling them that they are big fat fossil-fuel-swilling planet killers hits people like Jim's Church Ladies viscerally. Nobody wants to admit that sanctimonious little sh*t is right.
ReplyDeleteBut, of course, she is.
They've criticized her because the sailboat cost millions of dollars and was probably made with the help of fossil fuel. Heck. She traded a seven hour trip for a two week sea voyage and a couple tons of CO2. If they can't find hypocrisy on the first pass, bring out the hydraulic press and squeeeeeze. It's the system that has to be changed. Individual behaviour helps, but it's not the ultimate solution.
DeleteWatching a lot of people who know better trash Thunberg (Fox sank so low with one of its future Trump appointees that it even apologized) was anything but edifying. This isn't falling for Exxon propaganda; this is a screw-you attitude to the world.
DeleteI don't like Greta's shame tactics; I don't think it helps people work together to solve a problem when one group is blaming another for the problem. And the ones who should be ashamed because they believe "it's in God's hands" or "science is wrong" are not shame-able.
DeleteBut the kid is trying to put her beliefs into practice and that's more than a lot of us do.
Jean and everyone - in addition to the "It's in God's hands" and "science is wrong" attitudes, I just think there are an awful lot of people around us whose basic attitude is, "I hope it's not true, and that nothing happens". They may not be particularly anti-science, nor particularly religious. They just know from life experience that some bad things that are predicted never come to pass.
DeleteI also think that there is information floating about that reinforces that "it may not happen" point of view. For example: the claim that the US is making progress toward its Paris Accord goals without trying very hard; that is a frequent conservative talking point. That attitude doesn't really deny the problem, nor science in general. But it calls into question the gravity of the required response.
I guess the term for that approach is "wishful thinking". My view is that prophets might be able to reach some of the wishful thinkers. Because really, wishful thinking is no way to run the world, and most reasonable and mature people understand that in the rational part of their brains. A bad thing may not come to pass; but then it again, it may; and the wise person prepares for worst-case scenarios.
But set against that wisdom is: disrupting our daily lives and routines is unpalatable to most of us, so we resist what is rational. Wishing things away can be powerful for a lot of people.
Those folks need to be awakened - called to wisdom. Hence the usefulness of prophets. Just my view.
The wishful thinkers can probably be persuaded to get on board. Another summer and fall like this one in Michigan should shake up a lot of folks.
DeleteWe're aero-spraying four counties because of EEE, for pity's sake. Scientists say we now need to learn to adapt to a changing array of insect- and water-bourne illnesses. Now. This stuff is already here.
The deniers and those who believe this is a God problem are the ones who are intractable.
The second 500 year flood in less than 10 years has gotten quite a few people's attention here. That and several hundred-year droughts. If we could average them out we might have a decent climate.
DeleteIsn't Houston on its third 100-year flood in four years?
DeleteI mean, it's one thing to sit in your New York tower sucking Diet Cokes and pooh-poohing the whole thing, but when you send your man out to do your Christmas shopping and he ends up in the hospital with heat stroke, you gotta think again. Don't you?
Torrential flooding in Scotland, and a tornado near Sacramento, CA. The tornado was an F0, which would barely count as a dust-devil here. But still, in CA?
DeleteHere's some more, out of this morning's Palm Beach Post: Historically only 2% of all hurricanes reach Category 5 level. Two out of five did this year, making six Cat 5's in four years. (Before he applied his Sharpie to an official hurricane map, our climate-challenged president claimed he had never seen a Cat 5.)
Delete