Amos 6:1a, 4-7 1^st Timothy 6:11-16 Luke 16:19-31

This Sunday’s scripture lessons comprise an exhortation to those who have been greatly blessed with much by way of comfort, but who’s response to blessedness has been a serious social blindness and insensitivity to both the needs of others and to genuine justice. It is curious how the very good things for which we all yearn and work can become the very tools of our own destruction. How is it that new-found wealth and ease can make us forget our former poverty and original humility? We even forget to be grateful! Likewise, medication can mask or even remove pain, and we can soon heal and be without sympathy to the sufferings of others. This text from Amos (preached between 760 and 750 BC) predicts the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and connects that future destruction (by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC) to the failure of the most blessed and wealthy of Israel to care for their needier countrymen. This is the reality of tough issues of every era, i.e., that a failure to act definitively in one generation has tragic and needlessly painful consequences in the next. We’ve lived through (and are still well within) the largest global economic and financial crisis in 80 years, and yet many fail to appreciate that it has now and has had all along at it’s own foundation nothing other than greed, personal irresponsibility and thoughtlessness about the good of others. Wall Street financiers (and their global colleagues); government leaders who failed to regulate the financial industry or to enforce the law; corporate investors along with many small-time investors looking for an excessive profit; home buyers who “overbought” what they could not really afford; mortgage lenders who knowingly approved loans to those reasonably unable to repay . . . almost none among us are innocent is seems. And, now, a kind of economic collapse has arrived and cannot be ignored. Remember that famous line from the cartoon, Pogo, from the 1960s or 70s: “We have met the enemy and he is us!” It is to us in our own generation that Amos preaches! It is to us that Jesus’ parallel of the Rich Man and Lazarus is addressed. The Gospel obligation to care for the needy is absolute and unavoidable. Even the needy are expected to share among themselves. But, the moral of the story in both Amos’ text and in Jesus’ parable is that there will be profound and dire consequences for neglecting our needy neighbors.

Paul’s exhortation to Timothy as a young, but prominent, church leader was that he be proactive and “Lay hold of eternal life” by engaging life fully. Passive religious faith, whether among leaders or general members, amounts to irresponsible thoughtlessness and lazy complacency. There is always something more to do by way of engaging the Gospel. Remember the principle we began with last Advent: Culture incarnates Gospel while Gospel critiques Culture. Here we are in an election year in the USA and the debate over the national and global economy is serious. But, so many have no intelligent idea how the macro-economy of the nation and the globe really works. The ignorant and the angry demand that the government solve the nation’s problems, but without spending money and incurring national debt or taking any realistic action by way of helping people in need! They pretend in their overly simplistic and angry self-righteousness that a national budget works like their own household budgets. This demand is simply not an effective grasp upon reality. Eternal life is best and most fully appreciated in the present by engaging and working at the present reality as fully as one is able, with wisdom, competence and insight. Your neighbor is next to you. Help each other in concrete ways! Elections are crucially important, but beware of the seductions of extremists or of those who pander to your own fears and worries by agreeing with the fearful in ignorance and lack of insight. Terrorism in the preservation of liberty is . . . terrorism. It is not virtuous behavior. It is simply another form of extremism and it is always destructive. Being against prudent and necessary government action (including prudent public debt) is foolish, destructive and irresponsible. A nation’s big population requires a proportionately-sized government staff to service that population. Our government is us; government-haters hate themselves and the rest of us. A society is by definition social, so social justice and social services are crucial to the justice of our society. Such is the way in which the government assists the needy. Jobs programs, stimulus funding, and healthy and transparent regulatory legislation, and the like are how the government challenges the powerful to be accountable while creating jobs for the unemployed, and while providing the services and infrastructure too large for any other person or entity to provide. Politicians who are simply shout “no” against all needs and ideas are immoral and anti-gospel in their selfish and destructive ideological and political strategies. Paul exhorts us to “Lay hold of eternal life” by engaging this current life with truth, knowledge, enthusiasm, compassion, creativity and discovery. Let us be thoughtful and brave, full of cooperative zeal. Let us not retreat into fearful selfishness and self-destruction. Let us, rather, boldly be just, farsighted, intelligent and generous.

Amos, Paul and Jesus would be tremendously disappointed in Catholics and Christians of the 21^st Century who choose not to engage life fully. An election year is a good time to allow the Gospel to critique the political cultures as well as our own individual behaviors. So as Paul exhorted Timothy, “pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience and gentleness ... keep the commandment ...” What commandment is that? The consistent Gospel message exhortation that we embrace the Gospel and live life fully!