My Father's Sunday School Lesson

I went to church with my father today, mainly to watch him guest-teach his Sunday School class. The class generally just goes through the lectionary texts for the week, using the Upper Room Disciplines as a guide. This week's readings covered the book of Amos (the plumb line) and the Good Samaritan story from Luke. (The author of this week's devotionals, Doyle Burbank-Williams, provided scores of rich insights and questions.)

My father did a fantastic job. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy watching him work through scriptures and weave together a theme. His jumping-off point was Eugene Peterson's introduction to Amos from The Message (Peterson's paraphrastic translation of scripture). It's worth quoting at length:

More people are exploited and abused in the cause of religion than in any other way. Sex, money, and power all take a back seat to religion as a source of evil. Religion is the most dangerous energy source known to humankind. The moment a person (or government or religion or organization) is convinced that God is either ordering or sanctioning a cause or project, anything goes. The history, worldwide, of religion-fueled hate, killing, and oppression is staggering. The biblical prophets are in the front line of those doing something about it.

The biblical prophets continue to be the most powerful and effective voices ever heard on this earth for keeping religion honest, humble, and compassionate. Prophets sniff out injustice, especially injustice that is dressed up in religious garb. They sniff it out a mile away. Prophets see through hypocrisy, especially hypocrisy that assumes a religious pose. Prophets are not impressed by position or power or authority. They aren’t taken in by numbers, size, or appearances of success.

They pay little attention to what men and women say about God or do for God. They listen to God and rigorously test all human language and action against what they hear. Among these prophets, Amos towers as defender of the downtrodden poor and accuser of the powerful rich who use God’s name to legitimize their sin.

None of us can be trusted in this business. If we pray and worship God and associate with others who likewise pray and worship God, we absolutely must keep company with these biblical prophets. We are required to submit all our words and acts to their passionate scrutiny to prevent the perversion of our religion into something self-serving. A spiritual life that doesn’t give a large place to the prophet-articulated justice will end up making us worse instead of better, separating us from God’s ways instead of drawing us into them.

 That's fabulous. I'll want to circle back to the first paragraph in the piece I'm writing for an ATHE roundtable on religious belief. (A piece that won't be done by the deadline tomorrow, sigh).

My father used this notion--the prophet as necessary corrective to skewed morals cloaked in religious righteousness--to frame the reading. God promises bad things to the extant religious leaders. Said leaders get angry at the messenger. God says God is setting a plumb line, finding God's people askew even as they claim (loudly) how holy they are.

At that point Daddy donned a baseball cap. "Straight," he said. He canted it to one side, like a nineties teenager trying to be too cool. "Askew," he said. Everyone laughed. I meant to get a picture.

We are challenged, Daddy explain, to stand with prophets against a world--and sometimes a religion--skewed against the poor, the downtrodden, the stranger . . . [Daddy paused meaningfully] the migrant." What would the plumb line reveal about the current situation at the border. (At this point someone in class walked out.)

He turned to the Good Samaritan story. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" a religious leader asks Jesus. Note, my father said, that the question is self-centered. Jesus asks him what the scripture says. "Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus agrees. "But who is my neighbor?" asks the leader. Jesus answers with the story.

A man gets waylaid and beaten, left for dead. Along comes a priest--just the person you'd want in a situation like that, a professional helper of the destitute--and the priest leans away, veers to avoid him. And at that point my father dons the hat and turns it askew. This happens again with the next religious leader, again someone who knows the Law that ostensibly grants eternal life (in the Lucian context, at least). And only the Samaritan--the hated Samaritan, one who ostensibly does not follow the law--keeps straight to the neighbor in need (Burbank-Williams's devotional underlines this point).

Where, Daddy asked, are we walking askew, veering away from neighbors in need--the poor, the imprisoned, the sick, the migrant? Some problems, he allowed, can seem too big, too complicated or entrenched, for us to do anything about them singly. At such points all we can do, we feel, is pray. Isn't it funny, he reflected, how we pray as a last resort. After all else fails, when we don't know what else to do, we pray.

Yet prayer, he continued, isn't the end of action. It's the beginning. Often, he reflected, I find myself acting to help people in ways I would not have otherwise--all because I had prayed about it previously. Prayer turns our attention to problems, puts people and situations on our radar, gets us motivated to work on those problems. It prompts action, moves us to un-skew our walk to match God's plumb line.

I loved it. It's been years since I've heard my father preach. This wasn't a sermon, but it was homiletical. I saw Daddy's movement of thought, bringing the seemingly disparate into alignment. I saw things I had never noticed in these familiar passages. I'll carry these insights with me into my life and work.

I'm so proud and grateful for my father.

More tomorrow,

JF