As I said to you at the prayer time, if the church's first two responses in the face of this catastrophe are expressions of grief and prayers of intercession, the third is to ask how God would want us to be engaged as people of faith. In order to figure that out, we must ask ourselves what God must be saying to us. This event seems like an apocalypse to us. But you know, the meaning of the word "apocalypse" is not the coming of destruction but the occasion for uncovering. Is it possible that out of the grief we express and the intercession that we offer that there can be an uncovering -- that we may in fact hear something that God is saying to us? So, I looked for the uncovering this week, through the aftermath of the terrible events on the 11^th, a bold but arrogant speech by President Bush, and the lectionary scripture that was before me.

How many times and in how many ways does Jesus try to tell us, I wondered -- "You cannot serve two masters -- you cannot serve God and wealth"? You would have noticed this theme in several of our readings in the gospel of Luke this year. Today's lectionary readings emphasize this same principle again. In fact, the free market economy comes in for a kick in the pants in today's readings -- and in good time. In the devastating events of September 11^th, where our nation's prime symbols of wealth and military power were destroyed, God was trying to get our attention, yet again. But judging from the reactions I read in the newspapers, hear on the TV and radio, and hear in the President's speech, it doesn't look like God is getting through.

We, Christians in the western world, have a serious problem. We are so brain-washed -- our thoughts so controlled by CNN -- that we do not even know how to listen to scripture when it speaks to us from outside our world, as it always does. But that suits us just fine because it allows us to live the lifestyle we live. That is, until our world is suddenly shattered on an otherwise beautiful Tuesday morning by a carefully planned and coordinated attack by suicidal maniacs. Now suddenly, the thoughtful people among us and those who are attuned to the spiritual realities of this world are asking questions that we never asked before. But others like our President, motivated at least partly by his need to score political points, lead us headlong into war. So, I wonder. Can we hear these scriptures today with fresh ears? Can we find in them some way of application? "Listen up, you who grind the destitute and plunder the humble, and who say, 'When will the markets reopen that we may sell?' . . . that we may buy the poor for a dollar bill and the destitute for a pair of Nikes?"

There are several usual responses to such an invitation. The first response, the traditional one in the church, is to make this rather simple and clear statement of an economic fact into a 'spiritual' matter. Those whom Amos saw as 'poor and needy 'or 'destitute and humble,' they turn into a spiritual category. They are the "spiritually humble," they say. It is more threatening to think of them as the economic underclass of the world, as Amos obviously intended. And when he says, "Hear this, you who trample on needy people" he was talking about ordinary people who engaged in business, who couldn't wait for a holiday weekend to end. To heck with the holy days, to heck with the Sabbath, to heck with waiting for time to grieve after a terrorist attack -- "When will the new moon be over," they ask, " that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we can sell futures in wheat?"

Then he mentions deceitful packaging. The 'ephah' was about eight gallons. Some of the merchants put false bottoms in such baskets, so they could sell six gallons that looked like eight. Nowadays they sell a twelve ounce package of breakfast bacon in the same package that used to hold a pound, and charge the same price. The tricks of the trade haven't changed! Amos says they make the 'ephah' small, so there is less of quantity in the package-- but they make the shekel, the currency, great. It’s a double whammy! In the multinational garment industry in Sri Lanka, sweatshop factory workers barely notice how their quotas increase, salaries stay the same and the rupee devalues against the dollar, until suddenly they wake up one day and discover that they are in debt up to their ears. But of course this is good for business. The poor are themselves made into commodities and their lives and labor can be cheaply bought and sold. In our time, "the needy for a pair of shoes" is no mere hyperbole. You and I will pay $100 for a pair of Nikes, and that is what a schoolteacher is paid in Afghanistan for a month's wages.

Amos says he has heard God "swear by the pride of Jacob: I will not forget any of these transactions. I have kept a record of all these accounts." Amos has not spiritualized his analysis of the market place. He has seen pretty clearly what laissez-faire economics does to the poor and the needy. "Let the buyer beware" -- is the slogan of the market place, but "let the seller beware" is the word of the Prophet. "I will not forget your transactions," says the God of the poor.

Amos goes on. "Look! the days are coming," says the Lord God, "When I will send a famine on the land--not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord." These days people are flocking to houses of worship. They are trying to find out what scripture has to say about the horror and the grief that they are experiencing. People have a real spiritual hunger and thirst for God's liberating word. So they watch intently, like I did, our President and our Ex Presidents and Cabinet Ministers go to the National Cathedral to hear the word of God. And can you believe it -- what they heard from most of the preachers was nothing more than an endorsement of our baser instinct to go out to get revenge. They said it in much nicer language. But they did not do what the Psalmist, the author of Lamentations, or other biblical authors and prophets did across the board -- that is, at the time of national calamity to look inward at themselves and ask what did we do wrong, where did we turn away from God. That's the liberating, hunger satisfying, thirst-quenching word of the Lord.

This then gets to our second typical response. If our first response is to spiritualize the Bible when it talks about rich and poor, the second response is avoidance: to refuse to see ourselves in the mirror. None of this applies to us. It's all about them.

But when it comes to the famine of the word that Amos talks about, the churches are in a real bind. We are part of the problem, I said to a group of pastors gathered at the UC Divinity School this week. Western theology has so bought into the capitalist world-view that we have lost our ability to hear the scriptural critique. We constantly adjust our theology to suit the capitalistic worldview. But when scripture speaks to us, it speaks from a different worldview -- from a different set of assumptions. But we don't hear that, because we don't want our lifestyle to be threatened. This is why we never saw ourselves as part of the problem. We never saw that that there is a connection between our luxurious lifestyle and the destitution of the Third World -- and this despite the fact that scripture is very clear about our responsibility toward our neighbors and our relationship with money. And now we are awakening to find most of the world outraged.

What would Jesus have us to do about all of this? His parable, if we can unravel it enough, gives us some clues. He tells the story of a shrewd employee who learns that he is about to be sacked by the wealthy merchant whom he serves as bookkeeper. So, this shrewd accountant runs around to all the people who owe the boss money for various items, which they've bought on credit. And he says to the first one, "the ledger says you owe my boss for a hundred measures of oil. That's a year's production of seventy five olive trees. Why don't we doctor the books and say those trees didn't produce that much oil. . How's that? Are we friends now?" And then he goes to the miller and reminds him of his debt for a hundred measures of wheat, a year's production of fifty acres. "Let's doctor the books again" and now the debt is only for only eighty measures of wheat. You keep the rest for a profit. One hand washes the other. I'll be looking out for a way to help you now. All of this sounds very much like Chicago politics doesn’t it?

Now here's the real interesting part. Jesus then says that even the owner was impressed by this doctoring of the books, for he saw that his dishonest manager had acted shrewdly. "For the children of this age are more shrewd in making deals than are the children of light." What is Jesus saying here? Hang loose to money and its value. Don't use your friends to make money; instead, use money to make friends. Ben Franklin, on the hundred dollar bill, won't be there at heaven's portal to welcome you--but your friends will be there, if you have valued them more. Be as clever in looking after true wealth as the world is in looking after false wealth. The employee was arranging things so that when his pink slip came, he'd have some friends left in the world. He could then go round to them and remind them of the favors he had done them. Yes, even the crooked old capitalist himself, hard hearted as he was, was impressed by the shrewdness of his dishonest bookkeeper.

Now let me make sure you understand: Jesus is not here commending us to be crooked, or to cheat, or get ahead by dishonesty, or to use wicked ways to enrich ourselves. But Jesus functions on a worldview that we in this society find it very hard to function on -- that everything belongs to God. This is a constant biblical assertion. You would remember that Psalmist unequivocally points this out in Psalm 24, "The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the people and those who dwell in it." Where Jesus was concerned, all that the rich man had, belonged to God anyway. I wonder how a capitalistic society would work if it had Jesus' worldview.

But like the shrewd manager, we have to live in it. And we have to answer to bosses that would be ready to fire us at the drop of a hat. So we worry, get anxious and want to accumulate wealth, so we can put food on the table. Jesus knows that. What he is commending to us is not withdrawal from this society, but shrewdness is dealing with it. Not allowing ourselves to be blinded and brainwashed by this system of domination, but to be clever in our dealings with it. Shrewdness in making friends for ourselves even now, in the midst of a world that is passing away, amongst the very ones we have helped the system to exploit in the name of the accumulation of wealth. Shrewdness in seeing that the imbalances of the unjust system are redressed, having foresight to see that the tables may be turned at any moment, and that what will survive the destruction of the system is friendship and community, which ought to be for us a higher value than money.

So, what do Amos and Jesus have to teach us to day, to those of us who sit here on the brink of a war against an unknown enemy? I think, it has three parts.

First, God's judgement is coming and is in fact upon us. It is a judgement against our idolatry of wealth and military power. I said to you last Sunday that we cannot expect our politicians to take us to God's kingdom, but I say to you today, neither can we expect our media people to take us to God's kingdom: because they don't see what we see through the eyes of faith. If this is an apocalypse or an uncovering, it is an uncovering of our idolatry. We have a sin to confess -- a sin that is manifest in our personal lives as well as in our life together as a nation. And now as our leaders are flexing our military muscle again without thinking through its ramifications, without understanding its folly, without the humility that is required to seek God's will, we have to confess our corporate sin for our participation in that system as well.

Second, God's children have to live in this fallen world. We have to work, earn money, save, invest and participate in the capitalistic economy. But you can't serve God and wealth. If we do start a military operation, we will all be drawn into it whether we like it or not. But you cannot serve God and military power. So, you have to be shrewd in dealing with the system. You must know that your values are different from the values of the system. That people are more valuable than money and communities and nations more than smart bombs. Friendship and community are more valuable than our participation in the system. So, we need to pray for wisdom to be shrewd servants of God, knowing how to deal with the system.

Third, building community across barriers that divide us is critically important. We who stand for celebrating diversity and building community in Christ, must take the lead in building relationships with our Muslim neighbors, with Arabic, Pakistani, Afghan people. We must learn about what is going on in other parts of the world -- and about what US foreign policy and economic practices are doing to people in other parts of the world. And we need to make sure that we communicate with strength to our legislators know how people of faith feel about justice. By ourselves we do not have power but if we were to join with other people of faith, we can be very strong voice. It could be our patriotic duty. Just think about how people across the world will begin to love and respect us rather than hate us if our economic policies are just and our foreign policies are even handed. And if that's the case, may be, we will take the wind off the terrorists' sails. Remember, even the old capitalist master was impressed with the shrewd manager -- because by that man's actions, in the eyes of the debtors, the people in that village, the rich man came off looking like a good guy.

So, let's pray together to confess our sin of idolatry, to seek wisdom to live with kingdom values even while we live in this world, and to seek to powerfully to impact our nation so that it could be God's instrument for peace and justice across the world