I am here to announce an invasion. This land has been taken over by an alien army. The invaders are so numerous that all hope of turning them back is gone. It is useless to resist.
And not only are they here in massive numbers, these invaders, but also they know no fear. They are perfectly content to leave behind the blanching skeletons of their dead. By land and by air they have come, without regard to their own safety, abandoning the wrecked hulks of their vehicles and zeroing in on their mission.
Their sole mission is to propagate their own kind. They will do whatever it takes to assure their mastery of the entire land. They have no sense of decorum, as they will push into anyone who gets in their way. They care not at all for property, for convenience, or for comfort. All that matters is that they do what they came to do. We have been invaded. And all resistance is useless.
Now before you run for the doors, before you scream in panic, let me identify the invader. Let me tell you who they are, these numberless hosts. They are the cicadas of Brood X, who mysteriously, every seventeen years, in the months of May and June, rise up from the earth, chirp their mating songs until we think we can’t stand the noise anymore, and leave behind crisp skins for us to clean up. We have been invaded, not by Al Qaeda, but by cicadas, sometimes called locusts.
Now I do know there is a difference between cicadas and locusts. Locusts are insects which destroy crops in a way that cicadas do not. I will acknowledge that even though we have popularly called cicadas locusts, that is not quite accurate. But let me go with the popular language today. Never let it be said that mere facts should get in the way of a good sermon idea! Locusts, cicadas; cicadas, locusts. For the moment, let them be the same.
Because, you see, the invasion of the locusts – or cicadas, if you insist – reminds me of some very timely truths, first lifted up by the prophet Amos some 28 centuries ago.
I
This man Amos was a shepherd and a forester. Amos was an outdoorsman, and so Amos noticed what was going on in nature. Amos discovered that suddenly the locusts were multiplying, in huge numbers. Everywhere Amos looked he saw these ugly creatures. On his trees, in his fields, among his flocks, everywhere. Amos wondered where they came from and what this was all about. Wouldn’t you if you had never seen anything like this before and if you had not had the news media explaining it to you day after day?
But Amos was more than a shepherd and a forester. Amos was more than an outdoorsman. Amos was also a prophet. He was a man whom God had appointed to speak to Israel. Amos saw plenty to speak about in the nation’s life. Amos saw in Israel that many were ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-fed, but others were fat and sleek. Amos saw in Israel the exploitation of the poor. If you were poor in Israel and could not pay your debt, you could be trapped forever. If you were not of the elite class, and those in power didn’t want to be around you, they would push you out of the way. Everywhere Amos looked he saw arrogance, the abuse of power, pride. Amos even saw the hypocrisy of those who said that they loved the Lord and supported the Lord’s work, but then turned around and crushed the helpless. Amos saw plenty to preach about.
But remember, Amos not only saw the sins of Israel, he also saw those locusts out in that field, multiplying like crazy. So he brought those two things together. He saw in the locusts an image of God’s judgment. Amos preached to Israel about injustice, and pointed to the locusts as a sign of what God was doing to make them face up to that injustice.
“I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards; the locust devoured your fig trees and olive trees; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord. I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt ... yet you did not return to me.”
Now when Amos preached this message, he did a clever thing. Amos first preached about the sins of other nations, and got his listeners all revved up. Amos told them first about the sins of Damascus, and I’ll bet they said, “Amen”. Then Amos turned to the sins of Gaza, and once again, you can just hear his congregation shout, “Amen.” Nation after nation, Amos worked his way down the seacoast – Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab – sinful nations all of them. And I can imagine the place was rocking and rolling by then. Oh yes, Amos, give it to them. Sinners! Amen, amen, amen.
And then Amos hits one more nation. This time he preaches about the sins of Judah. Our blood kin, our neighbors. That’s getting a little close, but, go on, give it to them, Amos! Preach about the sins of Judah. Amen and amen again! Come on, Amos, whoop!
But when the whooping dies down, Amos bores in. For the sins of Israel ... for the sins of Israel, our own sins, God has a word of judgment. For Israel sells the righteous for silver. Israel sells the needy for a pair of sandals. Israel tramples the head of the poor into the dust. Israel pushes the afflicted out of the way. Israel segregates those who are not acceptable. Israel has abandoned God’s ways.
I don’t think there were many “Amens” then, do you? For we always find it hard to hear about our own sins. We always find it uncomfortable to learn that the very thing we said we were fighting against in others is has infected us as well. Here we were, in the 1940’s, Americans all, fighting Nazi Germany and its doctrine of racial purity, decrying anti-Semitism and Hitler’s “pure race” notions. Here we were, black Americans and white, bleeding in Europe to destroy racism. And when we came home, what did we find? We found a segregated America. We found an official doctrine of “separate but equal” that in reality meant “separate and unequal”. Here we were, Americans all, fighting imperial Japan and its land-grabbing plan to take all of Asia. Here we were, African and Asian and European and native American, struggling in the Pacific to push back violence. And when we came home, what did we find? Internment camps for Japanese Americans; squalid barrios for Hispanic Americans; and a complex system of “Jim Crow” laws that diminished us all.
Amos saw that Israel, with all its privileges, had thought that the rest of the world was wrong, but had not seen her own deep injustices. So Amos said that God would send the devouring locust, so that Israel might wake up. Can we not see that post-war America, with all its privileges, had defeated other nations gone wrong, but had not seen her own deep injustices? Was there any reason God would not now send a devouring locust, so that America might wake up?
II
I think we’ve had the devouring locust. Have we not had devastating losses in our nation? Consider for just a moment what it has meant to live in a racially divided land. The Lord reminded Israel, through Amos,
“I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards; the locust devoured your fig trees and your olive trees; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.”
Laid waste – racism has laid waste us all and has devoured us. How many young people have been made to feel as though they had nothing to contribute? We are all laid waste by that. How many are infected with low self-esteem and insecurity, and act it out by putting down those whose behavior is different? The segregated heart devours us all.
How many of us have been deprived of cultural benefits, simply because we were pushed into a world separate from others? A couple of weeks ago I visited with our children in Children’s Worship. I talked a little about my own life and where I came from. One boy asked me whether when I was growing up I had any African-American friends. I had to tell him that in the Kentucky of the 40’s and 50’s my neighborhood, my school, and my church were all entirely white. You know who got cheated by that, don’t you? We all did. We were all cheated, because as children we had no experience with people unlike ourselves. The Lord laid waste our gardens and our vineyards.
How many of us have been robbed of spiritual insights simply because we lived in our own cocoons? I grew up Southern Baptist, and we knew that we had the truth, and nobody else had it quite like we did. We Southern Baptists had it all together. We kept very aloof from the Catholics, the Jews, the Episcopalians – since we didn’t drink alcohol, and they did, we called them “Whiskeypalians.” We segregated ourselves. We stayed out of the National Council of Churches because they were supposedly “liberal”. We stayed away from the local black church, except that maybe once a year during“Race Relations Week” we would invite them to come and bring their choir. We were robbed of spiritual insights in our own cocoon, because we didn’t hear sermons about deliverance; we thought we thought we had nothing to be delivered from. We didn’t hear messages about trusting God for today’s groceries, because our fathers had jobs and we knew that’s where our daily bread was coming from. Oh, in my lily white Southern Baptist world we didn’t expect the preacher to get too excited, because, after all, we had our salvation all buttoned down. Nothing to get too excited about! Oh, we were spiritually laid waste, and we didn’t even know it!
But God, the God of justice, sent the locusts to devour and to lay waste, to show us that we had not done what we needed to do. We had not been who we needed to be.
III
Then came Brown vs. Board of Education. Then came the moment of truth. Some of us faced it and dealt with it head-on. I still remember one lady in our church, Mrs. Emma Hicks. Mrs. Hicks stood up in Baptist Training Union, and said, with tears in her eyes, “I am not comfortable with desegregation. I wasn’t raised with that. I don’t know if I am going to be able to handle it. But I do know it is the will of God! I do know it is God’s justice!” I really am not sure I had ever heard anybody speak about God’s justice before.
Maybe that’s because I had not read Amos. Maybe that’s because I had not heard the shepherd of Tekoa in all his stirring brilliance. Maybe I had never had anyone drive home to me the way Martin Luther King would the towering phrases of Amos:
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
Today, fifty years later, let justice roll down like waters. That needs to be our prayer today. Let justice be the hallmark of this nation, where tax codes are written to benefit the wealthy and where billions are exploded in the weapons of war. Let justice be the mark of this city, where whole departments of government have become so dysfunctional the courts have had to take them over. Let justice be the mark of this national capital, where contractors sell worthless things to dishonest people for questionable purposes! Let justice roll down like waters.
And let justice roll down in the church of Jesus Christ. Let justice be the landmark of the church, where children have been abused, where tithe dollars have been squandered on luxuries, and where women with great talents have been kept from ordination. Let justice be the mark of the church, where Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America, and too like it that way. Let justice roll down like waters.
And righteousness like an everflowing stream. Let righteousness be the goal of God’s people. Not so that we can carry our little report cards to the Lord and prattle about how we didn’t smoke, drink, or chew, but so that we can lead others to life and to life more abundant. Let righteousness be the aim of God’s people, the righteousness that elects honest leaders, builds strong schools, reaches out to guide young people, cares for the sick, the faltering, and the helpless. Let righteousness be the goal and the intention of God’s people, so that on this corner, for another five and eighty years, there may be a place where the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely find support.
Let justice roll down like waters, great baptismal waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream, a stream of giving and sharing and loving that includes all who enter these doors. All, without regard to race, language, economic circumstance, or background. It ought to be enough for Takoma that anyone who stops by here is made in the image of God. Justice and righteousness, in this place, forever, is my prayer.
In 1953, fifty-one years ago, my wife’s family immigrated to the United States, coming from England and finding themselves in the very strange world of Louisville, Kentucky. Everything was different. Margaret went to junior high school and found that student behavior was different from her boarding school in Wales. The teachers were different; when her American teacher called on her to do an assignment, she couldn’t even figure out what the teacher was talking about. More than that, she noticed that, whereas in her English school, there were African girls and Caribbean girls and Australian girls, girls from all over the world, here in Louisville, that was not the case. It was not a pleasant place to be.
But it got worse, much worse. Have you done your math? 1953 is fifty-one years ago. Three times seventeen is fifty-one. Within a few weeks after their arrival, the land came alive with ugly flying creatures. They were the cicadas of Brood X, who mysteriously, every seventeen years, in the months of May and June, rise up from the earth, chirp their mating songs until we think we can’t stand the noise anymore, and leave behind crisp skins for us to clean up. Margaret and her family wondered just what kind of place they had come to! The cicadas made an already difficult experience just about intolerable. And Margaret sometimes speaks about how lonely and frightened and unhappy and laid waste she was in those days.
But after 1953, 1954. After the cicadas, Brown. After the locusts, a court decision. After the laying waste, new hope. New options. New possibilities. After the cicadas, justice. After the locusts, God let justice roll down like waters, and God let righteousness flow like an everlasting stream. After judgment, redemption. After the cicadas, peace.
