Grace is Amazing!!!
A new show, entitled
Amazing Grace recently opened on Broadway. The show's opening times nicely with
President Obama's singing of Amazing Grace at the funeral for the legislator
murdered in Charleston a few weeks ago. Some commentators have called it
America's national hymn. Others would beg to differ.
The story of the origin of
the hymn was the grace-filled conversion of a British slavetrader around the
year 1800. John Newton had a moment of grace in which he saw his personal
participation in the structural sin of the human slave trade. In the early part
of the nineteenth century, it was the French Revolution idea of liberty,
equality, fraternity, as well as Quakers' efforts at the end of slavery in the
British empire that caused many to receive the gift of amazing grace in the
recognition of the evil of the structural sin of human slavery.
Once again, this weekend,
we hear a nabi speak to us in the person of Amos of Tekoa around 750BC. Recall
that a biblical NabI was one thru whom YHWH was speaking as a Silent Witness to
reality. Folks, then and now, don't always like to hear what a Nabi has to say.
Amos was a herder/farmer on a business trip to the capital of Israel. He saw,
among other things, the growing gap of the affluent and the indigent. He
castigated the system for tolerating such injustice. In today's reading, the
official court prophet, Amaziah, rejects Amos' observation, viz., seeing
injustice from YHWH's point of view. Amaziah tells everyone else to do the same
in rejecting what this Amos is saying. Amaziah tells Amos to get out of Dodge.
As the king's prophet, Amaziah was an insider on the system, obviously telling
the ones in charge what they wanted to hear.
Interestingly, pope Francis
wrote about the inequity of the system, the vision of might makes right gas
engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the
majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hand of the first comer or
the most powerful; winner takes all (para 82). Neither Amos nor Jesus could
state the same anymore clearly.
As Jesus told us last
Sunday, prophets frequently are rejected because people don't want to hear
YHWH's spin of the scenario. Recently, an author spoke of his belief that
Amazing Grace might not be the national hymn because the presumption is that
the singer has received the amazing grace of conversion. The author opines that
might not be true for all Americans today.
Historians have listed four
original structural sins of which our nation have to respond. First and
foremost, the institution of slavery and the residual racism which obviously is
rampant in some quarters of our society. (They list American Indian genocide,
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII and finally, post WWII add-on
wars in East Asia and the Mid East which still continue.) Rather, in United
States history, we superficially accepted the nineteenth century idea of
manifest destiny, viz., the destiny of Americans was to go from sea to shining
sea. (Native Americans as well as Mexicans in the southwest which was
originally part of Mexico. (Please note Donald Trump, et al!!)) In the
twenty-first century, many speak of American exceptionalism. Because we are
número uno, and we have a higher church attendance record, we can play by
different rules. Seriously!
The author's point is that
many Americans have not taken seriously what the slavery system as well as the
racism during and after the abolition continues to do to society. Has there
ever been a national apology for the original structural structural sin of
slavery (back in 1619!!!!!!!) as well as the residual racism that still lurks
in our midst?
Amos received the bum's
rush from institutional religion back then because Amos said that YHWH saw
things differently. Despite the claim of some that Amazing Grace could be our
national hymn, some would say that the nation has first to acknowledge the sin
of racism and other structural sins still prevalent in our national psyche
before we can sing the words of Amazing Grace.
Is it correct to say that
amazing grace is our national hymn these days? 071215ADjfq
