Stand-your-Ground or Audacity Sunday
Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13
Very few Christians want to be recognized as such today. Among Christians, very few Catholics can stand in public places and among friends to so much as make the sign of the Cross or to pray publicly. They are shy or lack conviction about their faith or they claim political correctness, that is, they don’t want to give any offense to anyone! As a matter of fact, “a coward dies a thousand times before his/her death”!
This Sunday is “stand-your-ground” Sunday! “Stand-your-ground” is the law, in some countries, that emboldens someone that the law of the Nation/State/Province protects him/her in what he/she is doing. For a Christian, the Supreme Law and Law Giver authorizes stand-your-ground today to proclaim the gospel of Christ before the threat of death!
The fight between the priest, Amaziah, and the prophet, Amos, calls our attention to the legitimacy of stand-your-ground. Amaziah was a priest employed by King Jeroboam, the King of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. As a priest of the King, Amaziah sought and defended the interests of King Jeroboam. He was well paid for his job and he was famous for his position as the priest-in-charge of the royal Sanctuary. No wonder Amaziah readily had access to the King, so he could report an “intruder”, Amos.
On the contrary, Amos was nobody. In fact, he just lost his jobs as lumberjack and shepherd. Amos had no famous pedigree, he was the very first prophet of his family. Probably God didn’t find any living prophet to be worthy of the job entrusted to Amos; the Amaziahs had hijacked the truth! Most essentially, God called Amos to become his prophet, God’s employee. He left everything behind him, in order to become God’s prophet. All Amos had left was his life. Accusing him of treasonable felony is tantamount to Amaziah threatening to take the only thing Amos had left, his life!
The fight between Amaziah and Amos shows two foundations of law or stand-your-ground principle. To expel Amos from the Northern Kingdom, Israel, Amaziah invoked royal (Jeroboamic) authority. Amos, on his part, convoked the authority of God (Yahweh) as the reason why he wasn’t going to move an inch, and why he must prophesy the destruction of Israel. At the end of the day, the power of God, Yahweh, and the audacity of Amos, paid off: Israel was exiled to Assyria. Amos had the superior stand-your-grand backing from God, instead of Amaziah who put his trust in a human being like himself (King Jeroboam) and was put to shame!
The best stand-your-ground law is the audacity that comes from God himself. Amos was convinced that God had got his back, since he chose and sent him as his prophet, so he was ready to die for his faith and he was determined to see to the realization of his prophetic mission against the Northern Kingdom. Today, God seeks stand-your-ground children, those who will transform our society with prophetic audacity!
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus provides his twelve apostles with stand-your-ground audacity by sending them out to preach repentance. Like Yahweh who sent Amos to challenge the Northern Kingdom, Jesus sent his apostles to challenge both the human and the spirit kingdoms. While Amos’ job was limited to human beings, Jesus’ apostles’ mission extends to the spirit world. For a Christian, stand-your-ground is established as the superiority of God over every created reality by imposing the authority of God over them!
The first criterion for representing God is absolute surrender. The apostles must be financially poor (“no money in their belts”), experts in fasting (“no food”) and no material possession (“no sack”, “no second tunic”). But they must take a stick/staff like Moses, the sign that authority comes from God and not human beings. Unlike Moses, they should wear sandals (Moses took off his sandals in the presence of God) because they represent God and his authority. The message of repentance and the powers for healing and exorcism demonstrate the presence of God in those he sends forth to stand-your-ground against human authorities!
Our second reading emboldens every Christian to stand-your-ground because, whether you and I are Amos and the apostles or not, it is every Christian that God sends into the world to preach repentance of sin and to subdue the power of evil spirits. God has two irrevocable missions for everyone: “to be holy and without blemish before God. In love God destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ”. In other words, a Christian is unafraid and stands-his/her-ground because we are children of God (the mission to be God’s children), our citizenship is God’s and divine. As a proof of our citizenship, we keep ourselves holy (the mission of holiness), because God is holy.
If we fail to be holy ourselves and refuse to help others to be holy, we become like Amaziah the priest, who preferred wealth and prestige over God’s destiny to make every human being a child of God, with the mission of holiness, because God is holy. As children of God, we have the audacity to confront the sinfulness of the world by challenging the world to the realization of its divine identity and destiny. The bad priests, who are like Amaziah, must be confronted with the truth of the prophetic word of God.
A Christian must be audacious! Stand-your-ground Sunday is the realization that temptations come in two forms, from within and outside our circles! Imagine a priest and a prophet fighting about who has the rights to preach and whose knowledge of God is accurate! That is, the society can be so corrupt and evil that sin is committed in the name of God as Amaziah has shown us. The quest for wealth and power sometimes blind us to holiness of life, and make us masquerade lies for truth. Today, we must stand-our-ground against the ills of our societies, the way Amos did. We must oppose bad and evil leadership, at the cost of our lives. We most opt to do the will of God, rather than join forces with the world against God.
Assignment for the Week:
Advise someone you know to be in the wrong this week.