Amos 7:7-17; 8:1-12
July 18, 2010
Sometimes the bible is like a punch in the gut. In the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to convey in the sermons that the texts we were reading point not to judgment but to new ways of looking at things and new possibilities. Too often we think we hear judgment in a passage of scripture but it’s not there when you read closely enough. Stories that have come to make us feel guilty because we’re not doing enough, good enough, Christian enough aren’t meant to make us feel guilty at all. They’re meant to free us from guilt and judgment.
Then, along comes Amos – and to me, it feels like a punch in the gut. As you just heard, this passage drips with judgment. And the closer you read it, the more judgment you hear. You can’t escape it here. The bible really can be harsh – and not just the Old Testament. There are plenty of tough passages in the gospels where Jesus is condemning people to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Now, you need to understand something: Often we are “shielded” from such passages. With some exceptions here and there, I follow the lectionary – passages chosen for each Sunday by a learned group decades ago. Each week there is an Hebrew Bible passage, a Psalm, a reading from the epistles and a reading from the gospels. It runs on a 3-year cycle and then starts over at the beginning. A big part of the reason I follow the lectionary is to avoid the problem of me just choosing things from the bible I like so I get to say things in my sermons that I like. If I just chose what I like, it would be the Word of Kirsten, not the Word of God. Having to read passages someone else chose keeps me honest because many times they are passages I don’t like or don’t know how to preach without really studying it – and even then it’s hard.
But you what? The lectionary cheats. If you follow it all the time, there are horrific passages that would never be read, from both the old and new testament. The lectionary shields us from some of the most difficult parts of the bible. But they’re not the only ones doing this. I cheat a little, too. We are given four passages each Sunday, and I pick and choose between those four. And I do it in part to “shield” you when a passage like Amos comes along. I probably wouldn’t have preached on this if someone in our church hadn’t suggested that I do. But, the shielding is not necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s necessary in fact because of the nature of our worship services and how we do sermons.
The way we do things has left many, if not most of us hearing itty bitty passages without knowing how it fits in to the larger story. The fact is, if our only exposure to the bible comes on Sunday morning, then we are barely getting a glance at it. If we read the lectionary every week – all four passages - we would read 3.7% of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. 3.7%. And even though the number is much higher for the New Testament, we still only read 40%! We miss out on more than half of the New Testament. And let me tell you, there’s some pretty disturbing stuff in the other 60%. (http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm)
And frankly, because of this, the bible story comes off smelling pretty rosy, when in fact it’s probably more like compost: smelly, but good in the end. If we’re not reading 97% of the Hebrew Bible and 60% of the New Testament, there’s a pretty good chance we’re missing important parts of the story. And, as we know from reading any book, itty, bitty, individual passages only make sense as they are part of the whole story. We would never expect that if we read 3% of a novel, we are going to really know anything about the story. And the parts we did read are pretty meaningless without knowing the whole story.
It’s almost laughable for us to pull out these 22 verses in Amos from a 25,000 verse story and make any sense of it at all. And that’s one main reason why I “shield” us from these passages. We might hear something dripping with judgment and condemnation and think we know what that means and what it says about God – and we might get a terrible picture of God because we aren’t reading the whole story. Then we act on that terrible picture, and, well, terrible things happen.
But, today we are going to face Amos. We could ignore it because it’s one of those “terrible” passages. But what if ignoring Amos because he’s so difficult is just an analogy for us today when we only listen to the prophets who tell us what we already believe and agree with? That’s the danger of being shielded from the hard stuff – our beliefs are never challenged and God begins to look more and more like how we want God to look, and we hear less and less of what God wants for our lives and world. But, we need to be very, very cautious of any conclusions we draw from this very harsh, difficult text. If it is not read within the context of the whole Hebrew bible – the whole story of ancient Israel, we might come to all sorts of false conclusions.
Amos is relentless. It was hard listening to Tom read on and on and on about God’s ruthless judgment. It was uncomfortable hearing such a long passage where God seemed to say only one thing: You failed so you’re finished. And if we read all of Amos, we’d see that unlike some of the other prophets, Amos doesn’t even give the people a way out. The people have been indicted, found guilty, and now the sentence is being handed down. And it seems Yahweh is pro death penalty. Sometimes the bible feels like a punch to the gut.
But remember that Amos lived in a particular time and place, and he has only a slice of the larger, more complex story of the Jewish people. When Amos lived, gloom and destruction we’re looming large for the Israelites. They were about to be destroyed by their enemies. It’s easy to make this about “divine judgment”. But, Walter Brueggemann, a theologian who has read 100% of the Hebrew Bible, points out, this isn’t so much about scolding or reprimand or shame; that’s not what the prophets are about when you look at the whole story. “The poetry of Amos – the poetry of so many of the prophets – is meant to bring us to the reality around us.”
Amos is saying, “it’s a harsh world we live in – really, really, harsh.” Or more accurately, it’s a harsh world that some people live in – the poor and the oppressed. Further, he says, “I’m going to take a moment to name that – to give voice to that reality. And I’m going to demand that you stop too and see what’s happening in our world. Then, we’re going to grieve for all the suffering and pain we see.
Amos is not primarily judging; he’s grieving the loss of God’s realm. The loss of all that came with the promised land – freedom, justice, community, covenant. The rulers had ignored these things, they were oppressing the poor, they had taken Jerusalem – the holy city – and turned it into hell.
You can almost hear Amos weeping as he utters his words. At the beginning of what Tom read, Amos is pleading with God, begging for God to reverse course – change plans and save the people. But, God does not relent – and Amos feels the pain of what that means. Amos grieves. And grief over what has gone wrong is an important part of the story – it’s an important part of life – it’s an important part of the whole story of faith. If suffering is not acknowledged, and grief is not felt, the story – the great story of the bible, the one that leads to restoration and redemption – would not be able to continue. Amos says it’s time to stop and grieve, and our understanding of the human experience says we must do this before we can move forward.
So, if we listen to Amos, that we need to stop, look and grieve. What do we need to see? What do we need to grieve?
The truth is, we really don’t see reality. Well, we see our reality. But ours is basically a privileged one. We live mostly without seeing the kinds of things Amos was seeing – we don’t see the reality of parts of the world where the suffering is almost too much to bear, too overwhelming to feel. We turn away. We ignore what Amos is calling us to see.
But ignoring Amos isn’t a good idea. There are consequences. If we don’t stop and force ourselves to stand facing some difficult things without turning away, we are just avoiding reality – we’re living in constant denial. Denial is a dangerous place to live. We know this because of our own personal experiences of grief. We know that if, when something happens to us to make us suffer, we don’t stop and grieve before we ‘move on’, we will actually be stuck in the place of pain that the grief tries to name. Even though we think we have effectively put grief away, it doesn’t really go away. If we have not grieved enough, we will, paradoxically, be stuck with that grief until we truly go through it. And that grief that stays with us while we try to ignore wreaks all kinds of havoc.
In the say way, if we don’t see reality, and grieve fully, if we choose denial, the painful, horrific reality we try to ignore will never go away. It will always be with us, we will constantly have to choose to ignore it. We’ll be stuck. Not only that, but when we get stuck in denial, other people get stuck in reality we refuse to acknowledge. Our denial causes suffering to continue.
Many grieved when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Many wept, and it’s certainly true that many still do. But as a country, as a people, as the media, we have moved on when grief is still needed. We need to grieve because that emotion keeps us connected to the horror of war – and so keeps us more motivated to change things. We grieved, but not for long. The same wars we talked about and marched against and cried about seven and eight years ago are still happening. Yet we have gone back to life as before, no longer thinking much about the daily reality that we are at war; no longer hearing in the media the ongoing body count. No longer getting daily battle reports. Our newspapers show less and less pictures from “over there”.
We stopped grieving, and now we’re stuck in denial – back to business as usual. But while our denial has changed how we see reality, the actual reality really hasn’t changed much at all. Violence, death and oppression endure.
But it’s hard to dwell on the negative when we really don’t have too. It’s really hard to stop and feel the grief, to not shove it under the carpet. And here’s the kicker: we don’t even know where grief will lead, what will be accomplished. We have no idea if our grief will change anything at all.
Well, frankly, I think Amos didn’t know what would happen next either. That’s not his part of the story. He calls us to grieve without knowing yet what’s next. But this is where the larger story comes to bear. Amos teaches us that if we don’t stop and grieve and see reality, the picture becomes quite dire. But the bible teaches us that if we can break through denial and grieve, we open up space for Yahweh – for God – to show us what’s next.
Amos announces that God says “I will never again come to the Israelite people…never.” But Amos was wrong. God came again and again, and then again and again. And each time there was restoration, hope, new life and new possibilities. The people were unstuck. History was unstuck and things moved forward – at least until people forgot justice and mercy again.
So it seems we might be called to grieve those places where we have forgotten justice and mercy . Let’s choose to trust that if we see the pain without turning away, Yahweh’s plan will emerge. It might be hard, but it’s the only way out of denial – it’s the only way we will be able to move on from the terrible picture Amos paints. Amen.
