Spirited Faith in Troubled Times

Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

October 13, 2024

Scripture: Amos 5:6–7, 10–15

By the time Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. approached the sacred desk of the historic Riverside Church to break his silence about the Vietnam War, anybody who’d paid enough attention to his work and witness would have remembered that he regularly invoked the prophet Amos in his dream about beloved community and multiracial democracy. At the beginning of his leadership of the Civil Rights Movement at the start of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, in his 1961 commencement address at Lincoln University, in his last address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, and in his last sermon the night before he was assassinated in 1968, King relied on the prophetic utterance of Amos to call people to a spirited faith in troubled times: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). King heard and understood Amos’s prophetic challenge for his troubled times, which included a deadly endless war in Vietnam and rampant militarism, racial discrimination and segregation, and grinding poverty and economic injustice, and he did not shrink from the call to tend to the welfare and well-being of others; he did not shrink from the active pursuit of justice and righteousness in a prosperous but deeply flawed and troubled nation. For Amos and for King, in a life with God, in the talk about God, in the call of God, it is all about justice and righteousness.

But King also faced the paradox of possessing a deep commitment to justice and righteousness in a powerful, prosperous nation that demanded his silence to help maintain order and the status quo. King would have recalled the prophet’s caution about the seduction of silence in troubled times. Amos declared it amid his oracles of judgment, “The prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time” (Amos 5:13). The commitment to justice and righteousness is a public commitment, which means when you fight for justice, you forgo the prudence of silence. When King broke his silence about materialism and militarism, when he abandoned the safety of prudence to talk about the need for justice and righteousness in matters of war and economics, he dared to show solidarity not only with poor and working-class American soldiers fighting in the jungles of Vietnam but also with the Vietnamese peasants being killed by American weapons of mass destruction. The backlash was swift and merciless.

Troubled times have a way of blowing back on those who dare speak about injustice when the nation only wants to hear about its goodness, prosperity, and benevolent power. In two years, King would go from being the fourth most admired man in the world to completely missing from the list altogether. He would be attacked by media and politicians and abandoned by many friends and supporters. He paid the price for establishing justice at the gate. But King knew that for God and anyone who wants to follow God, it’s all about justice and righteousness.

This is why King repeatedly invoked Amos in his own words. Amos’s message to God’s covenant people of Israel was to turn from injustice. Israel assumed that success and prosperity indicated a spirited faith and a good life. The people knew only that God had been a present help in times of trouble, so they became complacent in meeting their covenant obligations with God to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Comfort, privilege, and individualism had “dulled their spiritual vitality”[1], so they lost sight of the imperatives to enact and embody justice and righteousness. They lost their ability to see the humanity of the poor in their midst and to empathize with those on the margins. Amos accused them of trampling the poor and saddling them with exorbitant rents and taxes. His prophetic word called the people to put their focus back on justice. In crisis or prosperity, seek God—seek justice, seek the good, establish justice, and in doing so, they will experience a spirited faith and a good life.

But Amos also knew the seductive power of silence in a prosperous empire. “The prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time” (Amos 5:13). It is dangerous to speak out against injustice, especially when the status quo works in your favor. Amos knew how difficult it could be to counter national narratives of chosenness, prosperity, and exceptionalism with God’s imperative to care for and stand in solidarity with the poor. But God wants God’s people to live. And God’s people can live, truly live, by embodying and enacting justice and righteousness. Seek God and live; seek good, that you may live; love what is good, and establish justice in the gate. This is what a spirited faith in troubled times looks like—a focus always on justice.

And this is the challenge of our troubled times: enacting and embodying justice and righteousness in a world that demands and rewards our silence; establishing justice in the gate, in the public for all the world to see when it may be safer and more profitable to look the other way. Our times call for the public enactment and embodiment of justice and righteousness. Fear, politics, and ideology have fractured our institutions, communities, and relationships. We find ourselves in a somewhat ironic situation where increasing isolation and disconnection occur amid virtual and technological hyper-connection. We also see the social and political behavior of those susceptible to and mired in group threat, with an increasing number of people feeling they are losing their place at the top of the social and economic order. The hype and insidious lies about the menace of immigrants and transgender people, along with the perennially compelling dog whistles that stoke irrational fear of Black criminality and inferiority, prevent communities from coming together for the common good. A fearful ideology has taken hold of too many, causing them to reject and dehumanize the poor, the marginal, and the powerless. Too many have been seduced by a lying vision that tells us that we can move forward by going backward. Ours is a time of scorn and distrust, when faith seems old-fashioned and irrelevant.

Amos’s call to “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24) is a word to us for our troubled times. It is a word that calls us to refocus our time, our energy, and our faith on justice. We know what God desires and requires in the face of poverty, division, and violence. We know that a spirited faith prompts love in action to do justice. And yet, our problems seem so big that silence and complacency become the safest, least disruptive course of action. Is justice even possible? But establishing justice in the gate, in the public for all the world to see, begins simply seeking God. What does it mean to seek God? Where can one search to find God? Perhaps we find God where justice is done. Maybe the way to God and a good life is through establishing justice. It means the work of justice begins by seeking God out among those on the margins that God loves. It means we make room for those God loves in our hearts and communities. We see God’s presence always in the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. We see God in those we have ignored or others not thought of. This is not about going to church or going deeper into religion. No, this is about breaking our silence about injustice anywhere against anybody, embodying and enacting justice in public, and standing in solidarity with the most vulnerable.

But there is so much pressure to be reasonable, prudent, silent. As John Dominic Crossan maintains, there is so much temptation to allow the normalcy of civilization to overwhelm the radicality of God’s grace. This was the pressure on Dr. King when he broke his silence about the Vietnam War. Anyone who dares to break their silence about injustice is susceptible to what Christina Sharpe calls “the violence of reasonableness”[2] . . . that calm, institutional presence that protects the status quo of poverty, inequality, and violence in service to national order. It is the voice of lament at injustice but the persistent refusal to do anything about it lest the answer to injustice creates too much discomfort, heartache, or disruption.

Look around. The stakes have never been higher for our pursuit of justice and righteousness. Now is a time for spirited faith—public and focused on justice. Spirited faith knows that all is not well, so we live with an invitation to enact and embody justice and righteousness amid the trouble. To do that, we have to speak up and name some truths. Truths that puncture and penetrate the protective cover of self-serving narratives. Truths that don’t allow us to hide behind identities of blessing, chosenness, and entitlement. Truths that insist on doing justice and challenge the political and economic realities in which we are so embedded. But God is with us and sustains us in the work of justice. God’s spirit inspires, calls, and activates us to respond to the needs around us, to do justice publicly, and to tend to the welfare and well-being of the people. Embrace that spirit and call and hasten the day when justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. May it be so.

[1]Richard Lessing, “Upsetting the Status Quo,” 206.

[2]Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes.