Hush and Listen What Judgment Is ~ Amos 8:1-12

This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked. “A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered. Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. ³ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!” Amos 8:1-3

Anyone who reads the Bible with a passing familiarity is aware of the concept of judgment. The Bible is simply filled with it. But the topic or concept can be far more slippery than we sometimes imagine leaving many to ignore it on the one hand or using it to condemn others hatefully, on the other. What is judgment? How should we read such bombastic, powerful and passionate words about justice? What does it mean to hear these words as delivered by the One who came, died and rose again in Jesus Christ? What happens, in other words, when Amos meets Jesus?

            1.    Judgment is for God’s people to see, hush, and listen. 

Judgment is first and foremost an “our” word, and an “us” word NOT a “them” word. It’s about “my people” and “the temple” and “worship.” Judgment is not what happens first and foremost to secular people or unbelievers but for those who have seen and heard what God desires, who know what God wants. And judgment is not a yell word or a curse word but one that commands us, urges us to be quiet, to hush. So we should not be surprised that the first command in our passage is, “Hush!” Why? Because judgment has a reason that we will miss if we don’t listen. It’s not a random act of terror or undeserved horror but addresses what we have done, particularly to the poor.

We will never be the community we are created to be if we don’t recognize that judgment is first and foremost for us (1 Peter 4:17). Because as those who have claimed loyalty to God we have seen and heard yet still have failed, many times willingly. We are those called by His name – and if we act falsely, belligerently, criminally, we malign him. Can you imagine someone doing horrific things in your name? Today, I fear the church is in danger of identity theft - misrepresenting God's true feelings about the poor.

Friends, we live at a time when the world is filled with in authentic words, reflecting cheap knockoffs, poorly made, even harmful. We’ve all stopped listening and imagine that it’s all about who can scream the loudest. We must listen – which may mean that we stop our singing, our talk radio, our constant chatter and listen as if our life depended upon it. We must listen because there will be an end. “End,” in Hebrew, was pronounced identically as the word for “ripened fruit.” And our end will be determined in many respects by what we hear in this life by the fruit that we bear.

In one of the earliest Grail legends – medieval stories about the cup which Jesus drank from at the Last Supper – a knight by the name of Percival encounters the Fisher King – a generous monarch who lavishes Percival with all manner of gifts, care and hospitality but who is stricken with horrible pain and suffering. Later, after Percival had left the Fisher King’s castle he encounters his cousin who angrily chastises him for not healing the King by failing to ask a simple question. “What question,” Percival demanded. She replies, “What are you going through?”

Judgement, friends, God’s judgment properly happens when we listen deeply and focus on that question, “What suffering, injustice, is the world going through?” When we ask that question, we will be surprised.

⁴ Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land,⁵ saying,

“When will the New Moon be over
    that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
    that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
    boosting the price
    and cheating with dishonest scales,
⁶ buying the poor with silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals,
    selling even the sweepings with the wheat. Amos 8:4-6

            2.    The judgment of God is for the poor over piety. 

The Prophetic vocation and the act of judgment is telling the truth about God’s preferential wishes for the poor. Amos moves directly from addressing Israel to “you that trample the needy” – in Amos we find the poor dying of starvation, being sold into slavery for massive debt, and constantly living in an impoverished state. And who are these people who do such things? They follow the Sabbath, sing songs about God, appear to be deeply religious people but who hide something much more sinister - contempt for people, especially the weak.

Biblical judgment is not always a loud voice on every moral opinion or deeply clinging to our own rights or even victimhood but an announcement that God’s love language is not primarily for a killer worship band but for a people who care deeply for the most vulnerable. You know about love languages right? Love languages is a concept developed by the Christian psychologist Gary Chapman and refers to the ways in which someone most enjoys both giving and receiving love. And Amos reminds us that God’s love language, his favorite way to receive love, is for the poor to be cared for. David Hubbard, OT scholar, president at Fuller Seminary and one of the founding members of this church, in his commentary on Amos, states it quite well, Amos reminds us that “worship is no substitute for justice!” (cf. 5:24). But Amos does more than simply remind us of God’s preferential love for the poor. He also reveals a deep listening to those who are poor in concrete ways rather than speaking about the poor in the abstract. 

He had taken his own prophetic judgment of silence to heart and paid to attention. Amos’s message about God’s justice reflects a detailed description of fraud, deceit and their motivations: they can’t wait for worship and Sabbath to be over, they boost prices, rig scales, devalue human life and deliver inedible wheat. It is a portrait of pious men who say they love God and yet trample others. It means that Amos is taking the time to know what is happening in the everyday lives of people as they try to make a living. He is talking with the poor, going to the marketplace and watching and listening to traders and businessmen, investigating people’s stories. This means that all business is God's business. Are we listening in the market place to simply enrich ourselves or to bring God’s justice? Are we responding to the love language that God truly desires? Are we talking to the poor as much as we are worshipping God?

            3.    The judgment of God reveals that there can be no people of God without the reality of something dying. 

It’s certainly a hard truth that judgment involves death. Earlier in our service we heard the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. It seems important that the first real crisis to hit the church was a crisis over possessions. If you want to look for unfaithfulness and lying, Luke seems to say, look first at the role of money in the church. In almost clinical detail, Luke describes the death of two church members over greed and deception. It’s interesting how Luke links money to self-deceit? Peter accuses Ananias and Sapphira, not of greed per se, but of lying. Like the passage in Amos, we understand there is something quite natural about the lies of Ananias and Sapphira, for we all know the way we rationalize and excuse our own greed. “I’m not really that well off,” we say. Or, “I worked hard for this and I deserve it.” Our materialism and self-deception, Amos reminds us can have devastating effects on our spiritual lives and the lives of others. Could that be why, in ending the stark account of Ananias and Sapphira, Luke astonishingly uses the word “church” for the very first time in the book of Acts (5:11)? It was a death that actually made the community a church for the first time. 

What sort of church would we need to be in order to be half as truthful about money as Acts 5 and Amos 8? We must allow the judgment of God to help us see clearly the plight of the poor and our responsibility to them. That means somethings will have to die. It’s terrifying to realize that the church is more than a matter of good-hearted fellowship, beautiful singing, or thoughtful prayers and that life and death are on the line. It is an awesome thing to realize how much God is determined to make us into a holy people. The famous theologian Stanley Hauerwas once told a story about a group of pastors in a Bible study on Acts 5.  He recounts how some laughed at the absurdity of the tale while others, horrified, could never imagine preaching on that passage. In desperation the leader of the study asked the group,. “Has anybody here ever had to kill someone to save the church?” To everyone’s surprise, someone in the back answered, “Yes – in a way.” “How? He was asked. The pastor responded, “I preached on the issue of race in a little Southern town. The schools were integrating. It was tense. I was warned by the board to tone down my preaching on the issue. When I didn’t, five families left the church. Four of them never became members of any church ever again. My wife asked me, “Is it worth alienating people from the church forever over one issue? Hers was a good question. I hadn’t thought about it lately until tonight. I guess you could ask Peter, Is it worth provoking a coronary in a couple over a little think like a piece of real estate?” If we are to be a community of justice, who care for the poor, or a community at all? The answer, prayerfully, humbly, with fear and trembling, must be “yes.”

  

⁷ The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.

⁸ “Will not the land tremble for this,
    and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
    it will be stirred up and then sink
    like the river of Egypt.

⁹ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

“I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
¹⁰ I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
    and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
    and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it. Amos 8:7-12

            4.    Finally, the judgment of God is God getting what God wants, love having its way, Jesus crucified and risen from the dead.

What does it mean to read this passage as a Christian, as our story and not simply about Israelites long gone? How do we take seriously this passage without imagining God to be some tyrant who is willing to kill whomever displeases him? How do we hear Jesus speak Amos’ words? One element that is very important is to realize that God’s judgment is not simply about condemning wickedness or making people take sole responsibility for their actions but God himself taking responsibility for making things right (note the four “I will(s)” in vss. 8-9). It begins with God swearing on his own name, by himself (vs. 7). The phrase “the pride of Jacob” often refers to the land of Israel (Ps. 47:4; cf. Is. 58:14) but in this passage it does not refer to the land or God’s people but as a title for God himself. In other words, God takes up their hypocrisy, the name that they have not lived up to and names himself by it. God will be the answer to Israel’s dilemma, Israel’s failure. And he will not only remember (vs. 7) but he will take up their name and will act (vss. 9-10). 

And at this point is where Jesus steps into Amos’ passage in a startling way. Did you notice HOW God will act? 

He will “make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your religious festivals into mourning and all your singing into weeping” (vs. 9) (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33-35; Luke 23:44; Mark 16:10; John 20:11-15; cf. Matthew 27:51 concerning vs. 8).

He will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day” (John 3:16-21; 1 John 4:9; cf. Hebrews 11:17).

Friends, in Amos prophecy we have prefigured God’s final judgment, his end for humanity, his verdict on our failure, the ultimate death needed to make things right – the crucifixion of Jesus, God himself taking up our failure, our wickedness, and dying in our place. Hush and listen what judgment is. Judgment is God making his people right. It is ultimately bringing into the light what has been destructively hidden in the dark. 

Judgment is a covenantal love relationship between God and humankind. Judgment is Jesus crucified and risen from the dead.

But what about the famine that Amos ends with?

The “famine” is not for the words of the Lord, but a famine of “hearing.” First, commentators point out that this is the first place in the prophecy which extends God’s judgment to the whole earth and not simply to Israel. The range of the roaming from “sea to sea” is intended to designate the uttermost boundaries of the earth.Vs. 12 is a vivid description of how people react when they are physically starving. And what do they want? What are they hungering and thirsting for with a desperation? The “words of the Lord”? Will we feed them? Will we tell them about Jesus – God’s gracious judgment for them.

To begin the task of meeting the world’s hunger we must see, listen, and repent.

 

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.