We Need More Amoses

During the summer our Sunday morning readings bounce around from one book of the Old Testament to another.  Last week we were in Ezekiel, the week before that Wisdom of Solomon, and before that Job.  We don't stay long, only for one week.  We do this for thematic purposes--a theme in the Old Testament is then reflected in the Gospel for the day.  But this technique does not give us much time to assess what is going on in our Old Testament text.  So today I'd like us to take some time to get to know the prophet Amos.

The Holy Prophet Amos.

Amos is a pretty important person for a number of reasons.  He is the first literary prophet, which means that he is the first to have a book with his name attached to it; he begins the trend of prophetic witness actually being written down, somewhere around 750 BC.  He is a regular person, like you and me.  He’s not set aside for prophecy at an early age like Jeremiah or Samuel or John the Baptist.  Instead he’s a shepherd, called by God to preach.  

And he's called to preach in an interesting time. At this point in history the land that we call Israel today was split into two kingdoms.  There was the northern kingdom, called Israel, with its holy site in Bethel, the mountain where Jacob wrestled with God.  Meanwhile, there was the southern kingdom of Judah, with its holy site in Jerusalem, the temple that Solomon built for God to house the Ark of the Covenant.  The northern and southern kingdoms were not opposed to each other; in fact, King Jeroboam II in the north and King Uzziah in the south created a strong alliance with maximum taxation of trade and an increase in international relations.  History calls this the Second Golden Age--the first was the unified kingdom during David and Solomon's respective reigns. To put it simply:  things were pretty propsorous during this Second Golden Age.  

This is when Amos gets called by God while he’s living as a shepherd in the southern kingdom of Judah.  God taps him on the shoulder and tells him to go north, to Israel, to prophesy to King Jeroboam.  Think of Amos in this way:  he’s the crazy guy on the street of the major city, crying out to 'Repent!  Repent!' while all around him are folks in fancy clothes and businesses that are booming. Still, he keeps crying out all the louder that this is not the way things are supposed to be. 

Amos is a prophet of justice, one who felt that justice here on earth and the righteousness of God are one in the same because Amos knew that God is always moved by what happens in the world. Amos does not speak out against some kind of extraordinary evil like idolatry, but rather the everyday moral decay that goes on in people's regular lives.  While folks were walking around in those fancy clothes, they were neglecting the poor, forgetting the widows and orphans, the sick, the foreigners in their land.  Everyone that God had commanded them to remember and hold dear, they have abandoned for the sake of their own prosperity. 

Crazy Amos preaching repentance on the streets of a prosperous Israel.

So what do we usually do with the crazy guy on the street corner?  We ignore him.  And that is what King Jeroboam does when his priest, Amaziah, brings him word that Amos has preached that the king, will perish—King Jeroboam had winter and summer mansions and great riches that, according to Amos, called despised because they were obtained by the exploitation of the poor.  So even though Israel loved Jeroboam—the book of Kings actually praises him—Amos declares that he, and the whole kingdom of Israel, will be destroyed. Jeroboam has Amaziah simply tell Amos to go back to Judah, go back home to the south and earn his bread there. But Amos continues to speak out against Jeroboam and the northern kingdom.

And you know what?  He was right!  In 721 BC the northern kingdom is conquered by the Assyrians from the east, and in 587 the same fate happens to the southern kingdom, which is taken over by the Babylonians.  So what led to the downfall of these two kingdoms of God’s chosen people?  Well, if we heed the words of prophets like Amos, it was a lack of justice.

For Amos it was the little things that added up:  forgetting to take care of the poor, not welcoming the foreigner or stranger among us, the haves flaunting their wealth in front of the have nots. Amos was not preaching about theology.  He was preaching about people, about taking care of God’s people.  The sin that Amos spoke up so loudly against was pride in the worst sense—the kind of pride that builds up and looks out for only ourselves, instead of remembering that we are part of the larger family of the household of God.  I tell you what, we could use more Amoses today.  

Martin Luther King spoke with Amos’ voice when he said the arch of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.  Pope Francis spoke with Amos’ voice when he said a little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just. Nowadays the loudest religioust voices are  crying for us to do anything but be just.  All they do is keep making the walls that separate us higher and higher.  Amos took a sledgehammer and preached a breaking down of those walls, a call to our common life, a call to remember that we are in this thing together.  There should be no distinction between rich and poor, men and women, foreigner and natural-born citizen, Amos says. Today I suspect Amos would speak up against the growing chasm between denominations, he would speak up against preachers who create cults of the personality around themselves, to the point where you can’t tell where they end and the people in the pews begin, he would speak up against the wealthiest among us who keep accumulating because they think that somehow it’s a sign of God’s blessing, while they’re sharing none of it with those in need.  He would speak up for justice and equality for all God’s people, for all God’s creation.  We need a few more Amoses today.  

I don’t expect us to go on the street corners of the big cities and preach, 'Repent!  Repent!'  We are not called to be prophets. Prophets are a special breed, and very few get out of their job alive.  But we ARE called to bear witness to God's justice here on earth and to cry out for justice and do all that we can to work for a world that embodies God’s justice.  We are called to cry out for the chasms to shrink, for the respect and dignity of every human being to be honored, and for us to care for this creation that God has given into our care. We are called to do the little things in our day to day lives  that remember God’s justice. We are called to remember, as Amos would have us do, that we are in this thing together.  Thanks be to God for Amos, who reminds us of that fact, and let us be inspired by the spirit of the prophet to cry out with abandon for justice for all of God’s broken world. We need more Amoses.  Will you be one?