What a powerful and disturbing message the Gospel of Luke and the reading from Amos presents to us this 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time! In our first reading, Amos is speaking to his world in the 8th century B. C. And like in our Old Testament reading last week, Amos powerfully comments on how indifferent people are to one another, and especially how indifferent the rich are to the plight of the poor. Amos says to his community –
Woe for those who are at ease in Zion.
Woe for those who lie upon beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs taken from the flock and calves from the stall!
Who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
like David, they improvise on instruments of music :
who drink wine from bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils;
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Those were disturbing words, and his community would certainly would have been challenged by them. After almost 3000 years, we can hear the words as if reading from a history text. So, permit me give you a different experience of those words ……..
Woe to the complacent in Newmarket,
Woe to those lying upon memory foam mattresses,
stretched comfortably on their La-Z-Boy couches watching TV,
eating their lamb souvlaki lunches and prime rib dinners,
listening to their smartphones and playing video games,
drinking fancy coffees and anointing themselves with the best all-natural, non-GMO skin care products
yet care nothing for what happens to their brothers and sisters.
Who care nothing for those who are refugees and migrants.
Ouch.
A challenging and upsetting message … yes? Moses and the prophets were pretty consistent in what they had to say about helping the poor. Jesus picks up that theme as he tells the parable of Lazarus, where Abraham says that even if someone came back from dead, like Lazarus, it wouldn’t help. People just don’t listen. People just don’t care. They have become indifferent. Over and over again, Scripture tells us how to behave and how to act toward our fellow men and women. How to act toward those who seek shelter and a safe home.
The sin of the community in the time of Amos was not the fact that they were rich but that they were Indifferent.
The sin of the rich man in the parable was not that he was rich, but rather that he was indifferent.
They didn’t listen to God’s message and didn’t care about the poor.
They were indifferent to the face of poverty even at their very door step.
The risk for you and I is that we too can become indifferent to the needs of those around us. Which begs the question –
Are you indifferent to the poverty on your own doorstep?
Are you indifferent to the suffering and injustice in our world?
Do you hear what God is saying to you today in the readings?
More importantly – Do you care ?
We despoil and pillage the resources of the earth, ripping the precious gifts from land and ocean without a care of how the future generations will be able to survive. Do you care ?
In Ontario we have over 860,000 people barely surviving on social assistance. We see the homeless on the streets. We hear the plight of those who have been laid off and evicted from their homes because they are unable to pay the rent – Do you care ?
We shop for best bargains, the cheapest prices, wondering why our factories and stores close down and people lose their jobs, as we spend our money for goods manufactured elsewhere by people paid barely enough to survive on, and then we brag about what a good deal we got. If we visited the homes of these workers, either those laid off here, or those we take advantage of in other countries, could we still look them in the face and brag?
And after Mass, do you recall seeing the members of Saint Vincent De Paul who would smile and say thanks for the pennies that a few will drop in the poor box, or do you just walk right past the poor box and head off to Starbucks to drop $5.00 for a Grande Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino.
We sit on our ivory couches in the comfort of our homes, and when we see the faces of suffering and hungry families and children on the TV, when we see images of war and vast crowds of refugees suffering in camps awaiting a chance to leave …. we change channels. We don’t want to see it.
We don’t even care enough to let those images touch us, to tug at our heartstrings and remind us that we have received so many blessings and yet we are so unwilling to share a portion of the gifts we have received
………
Our God knows poverty and suffering. Not just as creator God, but firsthand being incarnate as Jesus the Christ, a human being, growing up in a time and place where work was hard and food was scarce. Jesus lived in poverty, Jesus knew hunger and suffering, and also knew firsthand the consequences of the indifference of those who had received so much in this world. Our God is indeed a God of the poor and powerless.
And even today, our God not far from us – God is here at our doorstep before our very eyes. God reaches out to us in every empty hand, in every hungry person, every call for help. And on this day of Migrants and Refugees, God is particularly present in each person who has come to our country to escape ruthless persecution, torture, and death.
How can we claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ and not care for those he loved. How can we not open our eyes to see God, and our hands to serve God, in everyone we meet, and especially in the faces of our suffering brothers and sisters. How can we not respond to the call to help the poor, the marginalized, the abused, the forgotten, the suffering.
Or have we, like the people of Amos’s time, become
indifferent.