Begin again—seek good that you may live

Amos – Advent One

Amos is a shepherd, called by God unexpectedly to prophesy.

He calls out all the injustices in the communities of Israel and all surrounding communities…

These are the kinds of things that were going on—they:

·       Carried into exile whole communities

·       Did not remember the covenant of kinship

·       Pursued brother with the sword & cast off all pity

·       Maintained anger perpetually & kept wrath forever

·       Ripped open pregnant women and burned the bones of their enemies

·       Rejected the law of the LORD… being led astray by lies

·       Trampled the poor & commanded the prophets not to prophesy…

God has tried to change people’s hearts through various warnings…

Like in Amos 4:6

I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities (not about dental hygiene in this case), and lack of bread in all your places,
yet you did not return to me…

God has tried to change people’s hearts through harsh consequences –

Drought, plagues and punishments… “Yet, you did not return to me, says the LORD.”

¹² Therefore, God says through the prophet Amos…   Prepare to meet your God!

¹³ For lo, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals,
makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! 

⁸ The one who made the Pleiades (the eighties) and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name, ⁹ who makes destruction flash out against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress. 
¹⁰ You hate the one who protests, and you abhor the one who speaks the truth. 
¹¹ Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. 
¹² For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate. 
¹³ Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time. 
¹⁴ Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,
   just as you have said. ¹⁵ Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the public square;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. 

Finally Amos draws on an abundant water image… in 5:24 “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure…  the revelry of the loungers shall pass away. After this message,

The king threatens Amos – he has to stop this prophesy business – but Amos says, “I’m not even a prophet. I’m a shepherd and an arborist… but God took me and said “Go, prophesy! So hear the word of the LORD.”

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
   and bring to ruin the poor of the land…the Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of your deeds.
The book ends saying that God will not utterly destroy God’s people… there will be a remnant left… but that will include those who seek good, not comfort for themselves, but who in an ongoing way love God and love their neighbor.
Seek good. What does that mean? … We could look to another prophet, Micah.
God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [Micah 6:8]

As you look around in your daily life, where do you see the LORD – like a lion – roaring for justice?

I don’t know how many of you have been to the part of the world where Amos lived… I have been there twice, so I’ve seen first-hand the dependence on water. We are dependent on water, too… but in the land of 10,000 lakes, it might not feel as pressing. If you haven’t been in a place yourself like that, maybe you can think of the programs you’ve watched—maybe a Planet Earth special where all the creatures are buried underground, in semi-permanent hibernation, until finally the water flows over them and creatures hatch and are born and complete their whole life cycle while the floods are present.

“For Amos’ hearers, who lived in a world in which drought and the absence of rain was an all-too-regular occurrence, the image of justice being like a torrent of water running down, as well as a constant stream of doing what is right, must have been compelling”[1]… but maybe we can glimpse it too.

What is the call to justice that seems pressing for you, or that needs ongoing work, generation to generation?

Seek good.
It does not seem easy to seek good on our own. Online, on the radio, on the TV, in our schools and work places, while gaming, while socializing… there are plenty of places to get more and more anxious and afraid. There are plenty of places in our lives that lead us to question and doubt, but there are a few places where we are invited over and over again to seek God, and life, and good.

If we have been the ones who are sleeping through our Sunday mornings in relative comfort, denying God’s existence & God’s voice while others are suffering, Amos calls us to wake up.
Amos calls us to “mourning in a context of great injustice – to join in the pain and anguish we hear from #BlackLivesMatter, Indigenous leaders protecting water sources, refugees here and throughout the world, women and teens caught in trafficking, the gaping chasm between rich and poor that is growing bigger, deep concerns over access to health care, and many, many instances of violence and terror…

I wonder how in this Advent … you plan to seek God, seek life, seek good for others?
Week after week, and today, we are called to this table to share a meal with God… and the reason is so that as we take Christ’s gift, Christ’s own body into ourselves, we would become the body of God. It’s not just a metaphor. It’s science. You become what you eat. So, we become what we fill ourselves with… we’re called to the intentional work of seeking, of filling ourselves with God—of becoming good, life, love. God continues to believe it’s possible for us… Amos demands it.

I wonder, in this new season, how are we willing to begin again?

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[1] Juliana Claassens, Commentary on Daniel 3, workingpreacher.org, Accessed 11/30/2017.
Professor of Old Testament, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.