Worship, with its “meaning-laden symbols, repeating rituals, sacred texts, shared song, prescribed prayers, re-enacted narratives,” has a way of moving the worshiper away from what is proscribed to what is prescribed; in effect, from the vices of corruption to the virtues that promote the common good.
If we put Amos’ critique in more contemporary language, the “trampling” and “levies of grain” decried in 5:11 are the twin burdens of rents and fees, which often led to cycles of impoverishment and debt slavery. The lifestyles of the rich are financed by extracting from the poor.
God’s prophets are those who call us to recognize our limitations before the sovereignty of God. Indeed, Jeremiah reminds us of the relativity of human politics and that in God alone does the individual and human society find meaning and security.
If evil is the privation or perversion of a good, the real evil in the old-new Brazilian meaning of “corruption” is the dereliction of the divine goodness in the human neighbor and the nonfeasance neglect of God’s living presence amid the oppressed.
And so it was this past Easter Saturday that thousands of South Africans, supported by religious leaders, “evoke[d] the spirit of the 1980s, when the faith community intervened to promote and defend democracy.”[2] Leading the procession was the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba.