Old Testament: Amos 8:4-7
In seminary I was blessed to have classmates who came from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, church upbringings, and age groups. They also carried within them a wonderful diversity of vocational goals. Some wanted to continue into academia while others wanted to dive straight into parish ministry; some felt pulled to large churches and others to small ones; some wanted to focus on youth ministry and others on ministry among older congregations.
And then I had a classmate who wanted to be a prophet. He’d once seen a photograph of the pulpit in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Duszniki, Poland that had the preaching desk contained within an elaborate sculpture of a giant whale. Nothing, he said, appealed to him more than the idea of standing on that spot as a modern-day prophet, preaching woe and repentance to the world from out of the mouth of the whale.
All of us, of course, laughed and rolled our eyes, and even he laughed at what seemed at that moment to be the absurdity of his vocational goal. This week, though, as I reflected on the passage from Amos, I thought about what he said. I gave thought to the challenge of prophetic preaching. And I thought about the prophetic voices in today’s world, wondering where they are, whether they’re being raised, and – most importantly – whether anyone is listening.
Several years ago, I had a conversation with The Rev. Katie Hays, pastor of Galileo Church in Fort Worth, Texas. As she and I talked about the art of preaching she made the comment that in the modern world church pews on Sunday mornings often hold comfortable people in comfortable seats wanting to hear a word of comfort. Now don’t get me wrong: comfort is important. When someone is struggling with illness, comfort is needed. When someone is dealing with addiction, or is in an abusive relationship, or has lost a job, or is the victim of discrimination or alienation, or is facing death – either their own or that of a friend or loved one – comfort is needed.
But then we read the words of a prophet like Amos, and we’re reminded of so much else in the world beyond the limits of our personal spaces that’s deeply troubling – and that instead of being comforted, we must be challenged. As Christians following Jesus, I think our default action is often to look for words of inspiration, peace, and hope in his life and example. But even he had moments when the style of the prophets of old revealed itself (remember his approach to the money changers in the Temple?). Frankly, there are times when we need a good, loud prophet standing and raising their voice above the chaotic sounds of the world to call us out and call us to action.
Amos wasn’t a typical prophet. Active for a brief period in a time roughly between 760 and 750 BCE, he never had extensive training as a prophet and was never a student in a prophetic school. He was a shepherd and farmer from a town about 10 miles south of Jerusalem. But of all the prophets in the Old Testament, however, it was the words of Amos that were first collected into a scroll, and unlike other more familiar prophets who focused on worship or politics – Elijah and Isaiah, for example – he focused on the way people treated one another. He focused “on the way people are constantly being hurt by other people, and on the way God then ‘inflexibly and relentlessly’ champions and defends them.”[1]
Look at what he’s calling out here in these four verses. Look who he’s calling out. Those who trample on the needy. Those who bring ruin to the poor. Those who are anxious to get to the marketplace to take economic advantage of others. We don’t have any way of knowing specifically who those people were; we have no indication in the text of their role in society or their connection to those who suffered. They could have been rich merchants or farmers; perhaps they were religious or community leaders. What we do know is that they had power and influence, while all those for whom Amos spoke did not.
And these verses aren’t the first time in the book that Amos – or those who contributed content to the book under the name of Amos – challenged these disparities. In chapter two he called out those “who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way.”[2] In chapter five he issued a call for justice for the mistreated using words that may be very familiar to you: “Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”[3] The great things you are saying, Amos accuses, are not matched by what you are doing. Beautiful songs against injustice don’t matter; meaningful actions against it do.
Amos was an ordinary person called to an extraordinary vocation. He had a choice: he could look at what was going on in the world from his position of relative comfort and continue in quiet contemplation, or he could engage in bold action. He chose the latter: he chose to follow the call of God; he chose to engage; he chose to be bold; he chose to call out what – and who – was wrong in the world and challenge them to do what was right. Stop walking on the poor and help them up; stop bringing ruin to the poor and build them up; stop taking advantage of the poor and give them hope.
We see here the plight of the poor highlighted in the prophetic voice of Amos, their voices loud enough that Amos couldn’t ignore them. Throughout the gospels it was the poor, sick, and marginalized to whom Jesus continually went and to whom he continually called, their voices sometimes raised loudly enough that they couldn’t be ignored. Today the voices of the impoverished, the sick, and the marginalized continue to be raised – often to the point that, speaking only for myself, they can’t be ignored. There are many voices speaking on their behalf, yes – but how much of the world still chooses not to listen? How much of the world chooses not to live like Amos, but to live like those he calls out?
If this passage were to be given the structure of a courtroom, Amos is the prosecutor, his words the indictment. Sitting in judgment is the one who sees all and remembers all – the one who in the last verse of this passage, as we are reminded, “will never forget any of their deeds.”[4] And we who sit at the defense table – how will we plead? Will we be the ones to hear the prophetic voices of the world and choose to continue in quiet contemplation? Will we loudly proclaim, “Not guilty!” and follow Amos and the prophetic voices of today onto the path of bold action? Or could it be that the prophetic voices we’re seeking – and others are desperate to hear – are in fact our own? Perhaps we’re the untypical prophets in the mold of Amos, those who aren’t students in a prophetic school but who simply follow God’s call to us.
Perhaps the prophetic voice the world needs is yours. How – and when – will you use it?
[1] John Goldingay. Hosea – Micah, p. 248.
[2] Amos 2:7 (NRSV).
[3] Amos 5:23-4 (NRSV).
[4] Amos 8:7 (NRSV).