This week's thinking bit... |
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This week's thinking bit... |
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WORDS
ARE IMPORTANT...TERRIBLE JOKE...
A guy sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog for Sale."
He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black mutt just sitting there.
"You talk?" he asks.
"Sure do." the dog replies.
"So, what's your story?"
The dog looks up and says, "Well, I discovered my gift of talking pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the MI5 about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."
The guy is amazed. He goes
back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
The owner says, "Ten Quid."
The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"
"Cause he's a liar........He's never done any of that stuff"
Words are important... even when they’re the difficult sort of words that Amos and John the Baptizer had to speak...
The eighth century prophet Amos functioned during the time of the divided kingdom. Israel has just about had it’s political heyday: king David has been and gone, and king Solomon had died - after Solomon his sons fought and divided Israel into two kingdoms with two kings, and this is all before Israel is taken into Exile in Babylon.
Just to confuse matters the kingdoms were called Judah in the south, and Israel in the north. The capital of Israel is Samaria, the capital of Judah is Jerusalem. Amos came from the south but worked in the north and was probably active about 760BC. The standard of living is quite high, trading has enriched certain sectors of society, but had also created poverty by neglecting the peasant class who have been the backbone of the economy - there is tension and a rising disparity between the haves and have nots. In religious terms the people have lost sight of the way God wanted their society to function. They are nicely cushioned and in this comfortable existence it’s easy for their religion to become an outward show only. This is the calm before the storm of Exile (Samaria fell in 721BC).
Into this arena of officially tolerated injustice, steps a herdsman who also
tenders sycamore fig trees, the foreigner Amos. To make matters worse he is not
an official prophet from the Guild of Prophets. Religion was quite a sewn up
affair then: even the prophets had become institutionalised... the raw edge of
speaking God’s word (often a difficult or judgemental word) had been blunted by
the comfort and security of becoming part of the establishment.
So when a southerner who’s not one of the club comes to the shrine at Bethel with a message that Israel is being measured and found wanting and that the sword of judgement will fall, unsurprisingly he is not welcomed with open arms. These are words that the establishment don’t want to hear. Amos is rocking the boat! Because he’s not one of the club Amos is making it clear that his prophecy has come from God - he’s not towing a party line, nor is he for hire, prophecy is not a family trade. God has called him to speak.
In the vision that Amos sees, Yahweh is the Master Builder, come to inspect the work done by his labour force. And he will examine the build using the very standards that the builders were supposed to be using - the plumb line. The metaphor is about the religion of Israel - they have God’s law, they know what God wants (this is their plumb line for construction), so what kind of society, what kind of religion, what kind of lives have they constructed using God’s Law? To possess understanding of God’s requirements places the people under the obligation to use them. (James later right: blessed is the one who looks into the perfect law and does what it says [James 1.25]) In other words if you’ve got the pattern for a dress you could be justly criticised for producing a pair of earmuffs or a scarf...
Amos’ big accusation is that there is no social justice - the poor are being
exploited, justice can be bought if you have the money. If the other nations are
bad because of the way they treat their neighbours, then Israel is worse because
they are mistreating their own people!
For Amos it is not enough to drop a coin into the beggar's palm; you must ask yourself, 'How far am I responsible for his being a beggar at all?' [Robinson E. Historical Background xviii to Phillips]
As you may have twigged the OT readings we’re following in Ordinary Time are related to the gospel - that’s why we seem to be hopping all over the OT! So why is this passage twinned with the beheading of J the B? Answer: because both involve speaking God’s difficult words of judgement, and the consequences of doing that.
For John he publicly spoke out against the way Herod was behaving in illegally marrying his brother’s wife; Amos was criticising the establishment, he was questioning what was going on in the name of religion.
John lost his life for his preaching; Amos was expelled from the shrine at Bethel because he was an irritant.
Faithfulness is often painful. God’s word is not always palatable or popular, and we as the people of God need tender hearts but often thick skin!
There is at least a double challenge placed before us by Amos: first how are we responding to God’s word? And secondly are we prepared to speak God’s words when they are difficult and unpalatable?
The force of Amos’s arguments was that these people claimed to be God’s
friends, they claimed to understand what God wanted, they were custodians of the
Law, they knew how Yahweh had revealed himself to Israel; they knew what was
required of them - in the words of the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord
require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your
God” [Micah 6.8]... And yet they weren’t doing what God asked of them, and they
didn’t like that being pointed out.
Today those of us who come to Church, who claim to be Christians, who claim to be God’s friends imply that we know what God’s about and what God wants. Just as the people of Amos’ day had the Law and knew what God was requiring they were judged by that standard. So what of us? What sort of a community are we building? What kind of lives are we constructing? Are we being true to the gospel of Jesus? What are our relationships like? How are we treating others?
Well here are a few pointers we could use to assess our discipleship:
Jesus summed up the requirements of God by saying that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and love our neighbours as ourselves... [Mt 22.37]
He also taught what’s been called the golden rule: do to others as you would have them do to you [Mt 7.12]. (Notice the theme of love running through this?)
And St Paul in that famous passage talked about the nature of love... It’s an oft quoted passage, especially at weddings, but there’s a challenge to us if we substitute the word “love” for “I”...
And the second challenge is for us to be willing to speak the words of Christ
when they are difficult ones. Words that may lead to the sort of persecution
that Amos or J the B experienced for being irritants to the establishment.
And of course people who have spoken out have very often found themselves in very deep water; whether that has been Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela, more recently an America country music group called the Dixie Chicks - the biggest-selling female group in history, having sold more than 30 million CDs - got into hot water for criticising George Bush and the war in Iraq, and they were banned from many radio stations and people dropped them like hot cakes before the tide turned.
In one sense all Christians everywhere have always been swimming against a cultural tide. As a royal priesthood, as a holy nation we the Church are called to be different. Jesus talked about us as salt and light in our society. Our lifestyles, our choices, our actions, our support for people and causes ought to be different to those of our friends neighbours and family who wouldn’t claim to be Christian - they are different because we start from a different perspective, we serve a different goal, we are not trying to curry favour or be popular but speak of the God who has touched our lives and is transforming us.
A few years ago an evangelical named Graham Tomlin wrote a book called The
Provocative Church, and in it he makes this comment:
Like Amos or John the Baptist, our words and our actions may not be popular, but we are called to be faithful to the God who is faithful to us, and for our actions to match those words. Without actions no one listens, without words no one understands [ibid p63]
Amos has much to teach us and challenges us with much - his fidelity to the God who speaks should remind us of our task as God’s people of this age and in this place: may God give us grace to follow that calling!
Fr. Andrew Perry
Rector,
St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea
Picture Credits on this page
Spy Dog picture from cover of a book by Andrew Cope
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| 9th July 2006 | Why doesn't God behave? |
| 25th June 2006 | Swamped! |
| 18th June 2006 | Ezekiel's Challenge |
| 11th June 2006 | Three in One & One in Three |
| 4th June 2006 | Disturbing the Comfortable |
| 28th May 2006 | Reviewing our Preparations |
| 21st May 2006 | Eucharist and... Mystery |
| 14th May 2006 | Children & Communion? |
| 30th April 2006 | Passover and Eucharist |
| 23rd April 2006 | Dear Diary.. |
| 16th April 2006 | Look at the evidence... |
| 2nd April 2006 | Sir! We would see Jesus |
| 26March 2006 | The Act of Mothering |
| 19th March 2006 | All about Rules |
| 12th March 2006 | All about Covenants |
| 26th February 2006 | Change, Endurance & Challenge |
| 19th February 2006 | God's Involvement |
| 12th February 2006 | God's Perspective |
| 5th February 2006 | Don't despair! |
| 29th January 2006 | Why Candlemas? |
| 22nd January 2006 | The Wedding at Cana |
| 15th January 2006 | Revealing the true nature of Jesus |
| 1st January 2006 | The naming & circumcision of Jesus |
| All 2005 Sermons | Click here to see the full list |
