Trampling the Needy

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
   and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
⁵ saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
   so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
   so that we may offer wheat for sale?...

¹¹ The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
   when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
   but of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² They shall wander from sea to sea,
   and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
   but they shall not find it.

Amos 8

It was heart-breaking to read that eight senior citizens died in their assisted living home in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Florida. It wasn't the storm that killed them, nor floodwaters, but the heat when the electrical power failed and there was no air-conditioning. Millions were without electricity and more than a hundred nursing homes and residences were either evacuated or being monitored by authorities. We also saw Houston seniors sitting in water up to their waists, waiting for someone to save them.

This situation hit home in a personal way because my grandfather lived out his last days in a Florida nursing home. He's been gone for a couple of decades but what if this had happened to him. My mother is now is a nursing home and so frail she can't move about without assistance. How could we respond if there was a catastrophic event such as Irma? What if we couldn't reach her to provide help? We might claim it couldn't happen here, but with changing weather patterns all previous assumptions no longer apply.

What we are seeing with both Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is that the poor and the frail suffer most. There was a state-wide evacuation order in Florida, but many did not have the financial means to simply pick up and leave. They couldn't afford gas or a place to stay. Now we're hearing that those same people are facing eviction from their damaged apartments and homes, and they have no income because businesses are closed. This is in the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet. Consider the millions in Bangladesh and India who have been displaced by floods, or the people on Caribbean islands whose homes and communities have been destroyed.

We saw the photos of billionaire Richard Branson with his family and team, hunkered down in his wine cellar playing games as Irma was about to hit his personal Caribbean island. Obviously Branson couldn't do much for others in the path of such a powerful hurricane. Yet there is something of a "let them eat cake" feel to a very wealthy man cheerily riding out the storm while others have nowhere to hide.

And of course the climate-change denying president of the United States was not at his luxury golf course in Florida when Irma hit. Nor was the execrable Rush Limbaugh who claimed that the hurricane warnings were left-wing alarmism, then fled his Florida home for safer ground.




What is happening to our planetary home will affect every living creature, including both rich and poor humans, the powerful and the frail. But the wealthy will find ways to mitigate the effect of changing climate for themselves. It is the equivalent of a gated community where the privileged few  live with protection against the rabble.

As Christians we must appreciate that along with the obvious destruction of  the complex and precious systems which sustain life this is a matter of justice for the marginalized. When we read the prophets they often use environmental imagery to describe God's disfavour with the injustices of income disparity and the trampling of the needy. Jesus also warned about this kind of injustice and his message of God's love for the "least of these."

What are your thoughts about what has unfolded?