The thing about us in America is that we miss the point of a lot of the Old Testament. After all Israel was a people that was on the short end of the stick often, escaping from slavery, but then time and time again being conquered by outside forces, but the superpowers of their day. And us. we are the superpower of our day, so we often can miss the point. Which is why the Minor Prophets should be preached all the time in America, because they were, mainly written to Israel in good times about their failings when strong. Three weeks ago we began in Hosea and talked about our unfaithfulness. Two weeks ago we talked about Joel and about the overt hate, bigotry, and prejudice in Charlottesville, and the underbelly of hate, bigotry, and prejudice that plagues our nation as a whole. This week we find ourselves in Amos, and this one will be a bit more uncomfortable for us.
I am going to start by reading an introduction to Amos from the NIV and then we are going to listen to a song.
"The northern kingdom of Israel reached its greatest heights in the first half of the 8th century BC during the forty-one-year reign of the powerful Jeroboam II. Confident in their nation's victories, their worship, and their heritage, the people adopted a motto, "God is with us!" They were anticipating the
day of the Lord, when God would strike down all their enemies and establish Israel as the undisputed ruler of the region.
Into this atmosphere of overconfident nationalism steps Amos, a shepherd from the southern kingdom of Judah, He stands in the great royal temple at Bethel and announces that God is stirring up a nation to conquer Israel.
The day of the Lord, he insisted,
will be darkness, not light. God isn't impressed with Israel's wealth, military might, or self-indulgent way of life. [God] is looking for justice, while the rich and powerful are taking advantage of the poor. God is calling Israel to repentance as the only way to avoid destruction
The message cause an uproar. Amaziah, the high priest at Bethel, accuses Amos of treason. Amos is banished from the kingdom, but his oracles are recorded, creating one of the earliest collections we have from any Hebrew prophet. The book consists of roughly three dozen separate oracles, plus the story of his expulsion. Most of the book is loosely assembled, but it conveys one strong and consistent message:
Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream."
Jon Foreman - Instead of a Show
The beauty of Amos is that it starts with this list of cities that God will be judging and it starts with the cities "out there", the ones that Israel thinks are its enemies, the ones that Israel has problems with. And it says, not for three sins, not for four sins, I will judge them. And then as it goes on one city after the next city and the next city and the next city and then Amos does a rope-a-dope. He gets people thinking that "God is going to get them, they're the bad guys, they're the ones Gods going to get" but then Amos goes, um, and Judah, not for three sins or four sins but God will judge them, and then, Israel. For the three sins, for the four sins, God will judge them.
I was driving to Half Price Books and then shoe shopping because Henry had shoes that we bought like two months ago, Sketchers, nice shoes, that have holes in the top of them already. And he's gone to school the past few days with shoes with holes in the top. So he needed new shoes, and new socks and underwear because he's growing, sometimes it seems he's already to my height some days. So, we have to go shopping for that stuff and we are driving down the road and there was a pick up truck and on the back of the truck there was an icthus, you know, the Jesus fish, and in the middle of the Jesus fish was an American flag. And sometimes its like we're saying its not Christianity, its American Christianity. It's not just God's church, its our church.
And so I'm reading Amos and I read that introduction, that "God is with us" and I turn on the news and we have arguments about whether the pledge should have "One Nation Under God" and we pull out our money and it says "In God We Trust" and I think thousands of years have passed and we are still in the same place that Israel was. Because we think that God is for us, every speech every president ends with "God Bless America." And we say God bless America and we literally mean God bless America, but in the Bible, and we've talked about this multiple times, starting with Abraham, God tells Abraham"I will bless you and through you bless all the nations of the world." But we don't talk about God bless America, bless us so we can bless everyone else. It's bless us so we can beat everyone else. It's bless us so we can raise ourselves above everyone else. It's bless us so we can feel better about ourselves. It's bless us so our politics, whoevers politics it is, is shown to be the right politics.
In Amos it goes on and talks about Israel fighting wars and winning wars and thinking that God was behind them because they were winning wars. There are wars in the Bible where it says that God is on the side of Israel and that Israel wins because God is with them and those times Israel is the weaker force and they triumph over the larger one. There's one time, ridiculously, where God tells Gideon to send away people, because if they have too many people fighting they might think they did it themselves. And he keeps sending numbers away and goes from 32,000 to 300 and that 300 win the day over a force it should not have defeated. But then there's times when Israel fights wars and they win them because they are bigger and stronger and more powerful and they assume that because they win that God is still on their side, that everything is going right for them because God wants it to go right for them. In reality they are fighting wars that they shouldn't fight, beating people they should have problems with, and not helping the people that they should. The widow. The orphan. The poor. The sick. The left out. The hopeless. The unloved.
You know, you hear that song and think "Wow, that's crazy, who came up with that."
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
That's Amos 5:22-24 [NIV], we have become a religion, a tradition, a Church [large C] that thinks that if we have more we are automatically blessed. If we have more money in the budget. If we have more butts in the seats. If we have more news clippings in the newspaper. If we have more people saying good things about us. Then God is blessing us. And sometimes, that's not true, sometimes it's just more because you have more. There is a strand of Christianity, called the Prosperity Gospel, and the concept is that if you follow God you will GET, if you pray to God you will RECEIVE, that you will become wealthy and powerful and wise. And, that's not the way it works because God makes the weak the strong, the dumb the prophet, Amos was a shepherd, a pruner of trees, and God called him.
What's interesting, in Amos is that God has tried multiple ways to get Israel to wake up. It says that 'I made food difficult to come by and yet you didn't turn to me, I brought a drought and yet you did not turn to me, I let you lose a few things and yet you did not turn to me. And because I have done these minor things and it did not wake you up, I need to do something more to make sure you understand what your true calling is. As opposed to what you want it to be.' And so, Amos tells them, here's what's coming.
If you look historically every, every, not some, not most, every, every empire sooner or later falls, every single one. There was a time where there was a saying "The sun does not set on the Roman Empire." And the Ottomans thought the same thing, and the British thought the same thing and the Russians thought the same thing and we think the same thing. Yet, sooner or later it crumbles. Maybe by our nature we make things bigger and they can't sustain. Or maybe by our nature we rebel against the bigger, sooner or later. Or we become so prideful that we think nothing can stop us until something does.
So, historically it happen all the time, all the time, so sooner or later it will happen to us as well and when it does the question will be what were we doing at the time, were we doing the right things or the wrong things. Were we making sure we had the right stockpile of weapons so that way if anyone else had a weapon we could go ahead and destroy them, interestingly enough there is one country to ever use a nuclear bomb, and we're them. Is it because we've decided that we need as much wealth as possible and so we watch the stock market every day, hour, minute, second. Or does it happen because we care how we look. Or instead do we lift up those who can't lift themselves up. Is it how we sit with those who just need someone to be there in that moment. Is it because we do something about the poor and the homeless and the 22 vets that commit suicide all the time, and its probably going to take more than just some push-ups.
It's not a matter of how much money is in the bank if no one else has anything in the bank. We can sing our songs, we can pray our prayers, we can read our Bibles, we can do all that stuff and if all we care about is where we go after we die...not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord will be there. If we show up on Sunday and we put our hand over our hearts and we sing the right songs at the right times, on July 4th and Memorial Day and whenever but we only pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and who cares if anyone else even has shoes on their feet. If we only care about how much food is on our plates, even if those around us are starving...we already know how God feels about that, but we might not want to think about that. We can raise our signs and say "God hates fags." But what God hates, what God hates is people who praise him with their voices and can't care less about his children. We have been fighting about the wrong things and have been caring about the wrong things and we have been dying on the wrong hills.
Israel was rich and powerful and failed to look after those that were not. They were blessed but refused to be a blessing to others. They paid attention to how they looked, not how others lived.
The thing about the prophets, every single one of them, stand up and say "The Judgements Coming", but to a number, that's not how they end. That's not the end of the story. It doesn't have to be the end of the story, because God knows that while the vast majority is doing one thing, that not everyone is. Those that are faithful and caring. Those who know the songs and reach out their hands. Those who pray and worry about others. Those ones are never forgotten, those ones are never left out, those ones are always a remnant. And the remnant is always taken care of, and not only that the remnant grows and grows and grows and on the other side of the judgement is stronger than on this side of the judgment.
We talked about, with Hosea, that God's judgement is not about punishing, it's not about slapping you on the wrist just to smack you on the wrist. It's about smacking you on the wrist in hopes that you might wake up, in hopes that you might change, in hopes that you might come back, in hopes that you might do what you were asked to do in the first place. God's judgement isn't like our judgement, it's not just about punishing the sin, it's about waking you up to the fact that you didn't need to sin. It's about waking you up to the fact that you didn't need what you thought you needed, or thought you wanted, but that God had it all along.
It is a better world when we care about our neighbor, because if we care about our neighbor than our neighbor cares about us. It is a better world when we care about our enemies, because its a whole lot harder to smack someone in the face who has been sacrificing for you. The world is a better place when we care about the hungry and the hopeless, and the unloved, and the unloved, and the unaccepted. And yet, yet we don't do that so often. So often we worry about ourselves, ourselves and ours. Our spouses, our kids, our grandkids, our friends. It's like, I only got so much love to give, right? Except that's not the case, because the strange thing about love is that when you give love away you find you have more of it. It's when you hold it in that you find that you don't have that much.
Thousands of years ago Amos stood up in a place he had no business of being and told people who were much more powerful than him that they needed to wake up and listen. And me, I get paid to be here, and give you these wonderful pearl of wisdom, and I find it difficult to say it in this group, of people I am fairly certain won't stone me afterwards. Luckily there are only pebbles our there, so I could probably get away even if you did. But Amos and the prophets, they had courage, and that's what we need. Me saying it in this place, the worst that can happen, the worst is that you could fire me, and that would hurt the bank account, don't get me wrong, but that's the worst. I suppose that if you really wanted to take it a step further you could go on Facebook and say "This guy's a crackpot" but most of the people on Facebook already know I'm a crackpot, nothing much could happen. You might even be able to go to Indiana ministries and have try to have my credentials revoked, but whatever, no big deal, and that's the worst that could happen.
If I talk, that's the worst that could happen. But if I don't talk the worst that could happen is that your neighbor could starve to death because you didn't realize you should care. The worst that could happen is that someone you know could run away, whether that means physically, spiritually, emotionally, suicidally because you were the one person they needed in that moment and you didn't realize that you needed to be there. Because you thought that singing the song was enough. Or you thought that praying the prayer was enough. Or you thought that reading the Bible was enough.
I'm reading a book at the moment and it was talking about how a lot of people nowadays say that the thing to get into heaven is that you have to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and what's interesting is that in the Bible there is no comment about having a person relationship with Jesus Christ, its just not there. I'm not saying you don't need one, it's important, but it's not on the list of things you have to do, and yet we made it THE thing you have to do. What is on the list is to love mercy, seek justice, and walk humbly with your God. What is on the list is to treat others as you would have them treat you. The things on the list is to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. The things on the list are to love your enemy, to do good to those who persecute you, to pray for those who harm you. Those things are on the list, and those are the things that we don't do. Not generally.
We've missed the point. Its in black and white and so we shouldn't have, but we stopped paying attention to what's in black and white and instead let's add a little bit. We'll add to it because we know better. And we don't. God knows better. It's not about ISIS or North Korea or whatever the enemy is, it's not about what they do to us, it's about what we do to them. And not just to them, what we do to our allies, what we do to our friends, what we do to our coworkers, what we do to our neighbors, what we do to those we see on the street. We can either lift up or walk away. Lift up or tear down. Lift up or just sing noisy songs. I want my worship to be a sweet incense to God, I want my prayer to not just be 'get me out of this fix I'm in today' but 'God help everyone else with their fixes as well'.
I think it was Pope Francis, but it might have been the guy before him or the guy before him, I'm not Catholic so sometimes I confuse Popes, but one of them said "Pray that God will feed the hungry and then go out and give them food, that is how prayer works." That's how prayer works, because we are called to be the hands and feet of God, and if we are the hands and feet of God and we aren't doing it, who do we expect to do it? If we are the ones who are supposed to reach out and we are not reaching out, who do we expect to do it? If we are not the ones going to places where people are hurting, who do we expect to do it?
We sing our songs. We pledge our allegiance. We can do what we do. But if we do all that and we don't give a rip about all the things we need to it doesn't matter what we do.
Let's pray.
Holy God,
In this moment I would first pray that we would repent. Repent from all our selfishness, repent of all of our nationalism, repent of all the times where we've decided that might makes right, that wealth means blessing. That we would repent that we have sung the songs and prayed the prayers and left your people on the side of the road. That we would repent of all the times when our worship has just been noisy. And then Lord, after we repent I would pray that we would try to be better, that we would sing our songs and reach our our hands, that we would pray our prayers and sit with someone who needs us, love someone who feels unloved, accept someone who is unaccepted, give hope to the hopeless. That we would remember completely that we are blessed so that we can bless. And more importantly that we are blessed so that you can bless through us. That we signed up to be your hands and feet and that we may be your hands and feet. And Lord, not just us in this room, but us in every church around this country Lord, may we have open eyes to what you are telling us and may we have the strength the power the guts to move forward in your name. Loving you people, caring for your people, realizing that our neighbor is yours, the stranger is yours, the enemy is yours and we are called to love.
In the precious name of Jesus we pray, Amen.
