Prophets come in all shapes and sizes. Last week we met Ezekiel, in many ways the strangest of all the Old Testament prophets, a priest who preached against the political elite in Jerusalem in the period just before the Exile in Babylon and who, himself, was one of those carried off by Nebuchadnezzar in 598 BC. He saw this disaster as the inevitable result of the political ambitions of those who held power in Jerusalem at the time, but, in Babylon, where he continued to prophesy, his message of doom gradually changed as he began to discover grounds for hope in the midst of what had seemed like a complete disaster.
And now, today, we meet the prophet Amos, the first of the prophets whose sayings have come down to us in the form of a book, a man who lived two hundred years before Ezekiel, in the middle of the seventh century BC. Amos, as he told us himself this morning, was a shepherd in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, called by God to preach against the abuses and injustices being perpetrated in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. His message against those who feasted lavishly and indulged themselves constantly while the poor starved was uncompromising and has earned him in our own day the title of the Prophet of Social Justice. But, of course, his message did not go down well at the time and the reading we heard just now put into words the response of people in every age to those who speak unwelcome truths and say things they prefer not to hear. ‘Go away seer; get back to the land of Judah... Do your prophesying there. We want no more prophesying in Bethel. And it’s no different today. Our modern world is filled with prophetic voices. Some are politicians, some are scientists, some are angry and disillusioned young people, but the most recent example has been the publication last Tuesday of Pope Benedict’s third Encyclical, called, in Latin, Caritas in Veritate or, in English, Charity in Truth. It’s the latest in a long line of papal Encyclicals on social and economic matters going back to Pope Leo XXIII’ Rerum Novarum in 1898. In particular, it builds on Pope Paul’s VI’s 1967 Encyclical Populorum Progressio, a document so challenging that it has been gathering dust on shelves all over the world for more than forty years. And so, in the week where the Pope has added to this rich prophetic tradition, the obvious question is: Will we pay the slightest bit of attention or will we treat this Encyclical the way we have treated all the others? Well, the least we can do today, on this first Sunday after its publication, is take a look at what it says.
That, of course, is easier said than done. Encyclicals are never easy reading. This one is full of the kind of stuff which makes most people reach for the remote control and change over to Coronation Street or East-Enders. It engages with economic questions, philosophical question and political questions and makes no apology for doing so. We live in complex world. The publication of this Encyclical has been delayed for more than a year to enable the Pope to respond to the financial crisis facing the world. And so it is a serious document addressing serious issues. But there are three things I would say about it today which I hope will help us understand better what the Pope is talking about. And the first is in the title itself.
All Encyclicals take their name from the opening words of the original Latin text. They are designed to give, right at the very beginning, a sense of what is to come. And in this case, veritas/truth is the key to understanding the mind of Benedict XVI. For years he has been arguing against the idea that truth is relative, that it is what we think it is, that each person has their own truth and so on. The truth he is speaking about here is the truth that God is love; that every human being is created in the image and likeness of this God and so is called to love as God loves; and that that any attempt to address the great issues of our day must begin from this position. Love must be the basis of all political and economic thinking, the Pope says. It must direct everything we do and this understanding of the purpose of all human activity is, for him, the unique and specific contribution that Christianity has to offer the world at this time. The Pope questions, for example, the doctrine that a company’s first duty is to its share-holders. It also, he says, has duties and obligations to God, to the environment, to its employees, to the local community and so on, an interesting idea given the current situation at Johnnie Walker’s.
But the Pope goes on to say something very important about the nature of love. To love someone, he says, is to desire that person’s good AND to take effective steps to secure it. It is not enough to wish the poor well. We must do something about it. We cannot wish the end if we do not wish the means, and for the world of our time, facing things like poverty, global warming and the current financial crisis, this means change. We cannot go on doing what we are doing and behind the change he is speaking about lies, not just an economic or a political imperative, but a theological and spiritual imperative which arise from who we are in relation both to God and to his creation. What is required is not just economic or political change, but deep and profound spiritual change.
But what does that mean for the man or woman in the street? What does it mean for you and me? Well, one of things Pope Benedict says which has huge implications for the way we go about our business each day and which we could put into practice without becoming experts on economics, is that every purchase we make is a moral and not just an economic act. And so, no matter what we buy, there are certain questions we could or should be learning to ask. Who made this? If it is cheap, why is it cheap? Where does it come from and how much were those who made it paid for their labour? There is, as the saying goes, no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere is always paying for it and, with so many of the things we use each day, it is the world’s poor who are picking up the bill.
But read the Encyclical yourself. Just go onto the parish website where the full text is just two clicks away.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The modern world does what those before us have always done. It persecutes the prophets and rejects their message because it disturbs us and demands that we make changes in the way we live that we are unwilling to make. And so we pray for the prophets of the 21st century, men and women who can see that our current lifestyle in the developed world is unsustainable, that they will continue to challenge us no matter how badly we treat them and how often we reject them..................Lord hear us
The Social Teaching of the Church is often called our ‘best kept secret.’ Rich in wisdom and in a spirituality fit for our modern age, it lies on book shelves gathering dust while the world struggles to make sense of the great issues facing it. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to know this teaching and to implement it in our lives. We pray especially that this latest Encyclical from Pope Benedict will find a place in the hearts and minds of people everywhere...........Lord hear us
The message which we have to offer to the world at this moment in our history is that the problems facing humanity will not ultimately be solved by politicians or economists. What we need most of all is a change of heart, a spiritual revolution, a recognition of the fact that, since we are created by God and for God, only God will ultimately satisfy us. And so we ask the Spirit to move deeply in our world so that, in time, we may recognize this truth........Lord hear us
The issue of truth is central to all that is going on in our world at this time. There are so many versions of it on offer that we have become confused about what it actually is. And yet, as the Pope says in his new Encyclical, no attempt to make sense of the great questions facing us today can possibly succeed if the truth that lies behind it is not valid. And so we ask God to guide the men and women of our time into the fullness of truth found in Jesus and in his teaching............Lord hear us
If every purchase we make in the course of our lives is a moral as well as an economic act, then the implications are far-reaching. What we do with our money, what we buy or don’t buy, becomes part of our spirituality. It affects what we eat, what we wear, how we travel and so on. God truly is in all things and there is no part of our lives untouched by him. And so we ask God to lead us more deeply into this relationship with himself, with his creation and with other people.....Lord hear us
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the twelve that, if people do not listen to them or do not accept their message, then they are to shake the dust from their feet and move on. Their job is to proclaim the Gospel. What happens after that is for God to deal with. And so we pray in a special way this week for those in the Church who worry and fret about the state of the world that they will do what they can and leave the worrying to God...Lord hear us
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