Propers for Year C Proper 10... Amos 7:7-17, Luke 10:25-37
This fall our plan for our Wednesday evening forums is
to explore some of the Hebrew prophets. One
of my favorites is Amos who like many prophetic voices entered into the work
reluctantly and with feelings of inadequacy for the task, but who took on the role
because he felt God had called him out of obscurity to speak truth to power.
There is value I think in understanding who and what power
Amos was addressing. In the 8th
C BCE there were two kingdoms, Judah to the south and Israel to the north. Jeroboam II was king of Israel and both
feared and revered by the people. Israel
was strong and in the business of dominating the surrounding countries. The ruling class was wealthy and getting
wealthier at the expense of poor and marginalized communities. It was a time of power and prosperity, a time
when the people of Israel assumed their privilege and affluence were evidence
of God’s blessings to them as the chosen people. They had forgotten their
suffering as slaves in Egypt and neglected to share the fruits of their
prosperity with the poor. Their religious observance centered in the local
shrines such as Bethel rather than the temple in Jerusalem, was disconnected
from their social ethics and bereft of social justice. Amos was called by God from his life as a
shepherd in Judah (southern kingdom) to speak a word from the Lord, to call out
those who had fallen short of the covenant they had made with God.
Amos was likely, in his native Judah, a person of
social standing who traded in sheep and goats and other agricultural products. From his vantage point he saw a lack of
faithfulness in Jeroboam and in his people and Amos confronted the injustice of
their extravagant lives with stark accusations of faithlessness, by calling out
oppressors, by naming the sins, and with predictions of doom at the hands of
outside conquerors. He called Israel to
the same standard of conduct that God asks of all the nations, to rely on God
rather than military might, to unite their worship with concern and care for
the poor, to let their faithfulness in God be reflected in their faithfulness to
God’s people – friends and strangers alike.
The images in the visions of Amos are stark. Today we read a passage in which Amos says that
God’s judgment is illustrated through the image of the “plumb line,” a bit of
string with a weight used as a guide for measuring whether a wall has been
built straight or not. The Lord takes
the measure of a wall that represents the people of Israel. Amos is asked what
he sees and he minces no words. The Lord finds the wall is warped, no longer
straight and true. God warns the people of Israel, “I will never again pass
them by; no longer will they be spared, rather they will be judged severely. The
meaning of the prophet’s word of judgment is all too clear. Israel has not
tended to the straight and narrow teachings about justice, mercy, kindness and
faithfulness in Torah. God has reached
the end of his rope - or in this case string - and will no longer excuse
Israel’s behavior. According to Amos, the
Northern kingdom of Israel is under God’s judgment for its selfish,
self-centered ways and for its lack of faith and dependence on God.
Now for sure the ruling body of Israel would not have been happy with what Amos had to say. So the spokesperson for the king steps up. He is Amaziah, a priest from Bethel which was one of those “High Places” to be laid waste. Amos is commanded by Amaziah to return home and prophesy there. He is not welcome at Bethel. This does not deter Amos though. He announces judgment against the corrupt Jeroboam and the members of the priestly caste who have capitulated to the powers they serve. He spells out a dire vision of the future, including the queen becoming a prostitute, the royal children dying by the sword, and the people of Israel being taken into exile, and using some pretty colorful language he speaks truth to the opulent elite and predicts the comeuppance of Isreal. My personal favorites are “listen you cows of Bashan who oppress the helpless and crush the poor” and the very quotable; “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” But that’s for another day.
In The Women's Bible Commentary, biblical scholar Judith Sanderson writes that Amos' career as a prophet focused on two interrelated concerns: how wealthy the powerful people had become and the fact that they had amassed their wealth by exploiting the poor. For Amos this meant that the people had turned away from God's preferential option for the poor and the understanding that widows, orphans, and sojourners, among others, must be cared for as a matter of social justice. If Amos were living in the USA today, I believe he would be experiencing deja vue.
Amos’ vision of God’s justice does come true when in
721 the northern kingdom of Israel is overrun by the Assyrians and the leaders
are exiled. But it is his strength of
conviction that his message is given by God that invites us to consider the
impact of standing up to injustice anywhere we encounter it. The similarities
of context between the social injustices of Amos’ day and our own make an
uncomfortable link between the judgment Amos foresaw for his people and the
implications of the prophetic word for our day. We live in an age when power and greed and
spewed hatred are the driving forces for many policy makers. And it seems now in our country that to
oppose the ruling body by calling out injustice or oppression is to invite reprisal. It is no secret that members of our
congregation and I often stand on the margins in the public arena, standing in
solidarity with those whose lives our prevailing society discounts with obscene
mockery and disrespect, with cuts to freedom of life and liberty, and exclusion
from full participation in our common life.
Many will say that prayer and worship should not have anything to do
with the issues of the day. But I think
that if I read Amos correctly, and I believe I do, that is exactly where the
prophet is calling us. It is impossible
to separate our prayer and worship from our response to the needs of a
suffering world without leaving our prayer and worship hollow and empty.
And that brings me right to the Gospel lesson for
today. Jesus responds to the man who
asks what must I do to be saved with a story about getting involved. The message of Luke’s story of the Good
Samaritan, like the prophecy of Amos, is that God does not desire that we allow
ritually clean practices or prescribed codes of worship to govern how we
interact with God and neighbor as the priest and the Levite did or as the elite
ruling class of Israel in Amos’ day had done.
Rather we are to open ourselves up to the possibility that the least
likely person we encounter will be the one sent by God to show us the way and
that we are to emulate those merciful actions with each person we meet.
“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asks. Jesus’ answer breaks down the rules and
boundaries set down by the society in which he lived. The acknowledgment that the true neighbor was the one who sees, cares, and responds to the needs of each person as a child of God and exposes personal prejudices and institutional barriers that restrict, exclude,
or oppress as systemic injustices and which are in opposition to the realization of God’s kingdom. As children of God and as neighbors to each
other, we are to go and do likewise. May
God who gives us the will to love both God and neighbor, give us the power and
the grace to do so. Amen