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 and messy than we sometimes imagine leaving many to ignore it on the one hand or using it to wrongly condemn others hatefully, even violently, on the other. What is judgment, according to Scripture and the prophets? How should we read such bombastic, powerful and passionate words about justice? What does it mean to hear these words as spoken by the One who came, died and rose again in Jesus Christ? What happens, in other words, when Amos meets Jesus?
Judgment is first and foremost an “our” word, and an “us” word NOT a “them” word. Amos, like all prophets speaking for God, declares 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. Now, let me be clear, Amos tells us that God is aware of and intimately involved in all nations and with all people. His own prophecies even begins with judgments about other nations. The people listening were probably saying, “amen!”. However, Amos’ longest and most strident criticism was for Israel itself and this feature of prophecy – of internal critique – is the most unique element of the prophetic tradition of the Jewish people. In fact, we know of no religious texts outside the Bible that contain this kind of internal criticism.
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). Why? 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? Would you allow that to continue? Judgment is for God’s people who perpetrate identity theft – a formerly oppressed people who oppress others using God’s name. That’s why God will sometimes call the Egyptians to bear witness – Israel’s own actions reflect the height of hypocrisy (Amos 3:9).
I was told this week that it was hard to listen to the prophets because they weren’t encouraging. I get it. They’re hard to listen to but choosing not to is certain death.
“Okay, but define heart attack.” Or, “You know my friend, Bob, he eats way worse than me. Have you spoken to him?” Or, “You are the best doctor ever – my favorite – so now can I eat ice cream?” So we should not be surprised that the first command in our passage in vs. 3 is, “Shut up!” We must listen – which may mean we stop our singing, our talk radio, our constant critique of everyone but ourselves and listen as if our life depended upon it. Judgment is not a yell word or a curse word but one that commands us, urges us to be quiet, to listen. Why? Because judgment has a reason for us that we will miss if we don’t listen. It’s not a random act or undeserved horror but addresses what we are doing, particularly to the poor, the marginal, the oppressed. It aims to make us well.
Judgment, friends, God’s judgment, is properly he heard we focus on two questions, “What suffering, injustice, is the world going through?” “How am I a part of it?” When we ask that question, when we mourn, we are responding to judgment as we should.
Perhaps one of the more uncomfortable elements for us when we listen to prophetic judgment is the ever-present reality of violence. We must not turn away from this. The Bible does not turn away from this. We should be grateful that the Bible does not try to paper over what life is really like for individuals, families, and communities. We could spend 5 sermons on this topic and so I can’t say everything now. A few quick points:
a. The most common Hebrew word for violence is used almost exclusively for human violence and is almost always condemned. The prophets will constantly call out Israel and Judah’s violence: “do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan and the widow” (Jer. 22:3); put away violence and oppression” (Ezekiel 45:9); and do not do “violence to the earth” (Hab. 2:8, 17, Zeph. 1:9). Moreover, that violence isn’t simply physical but also exercised through words as well as social and environmental concerns. Even the reality of poverty is conceived of as a product of violence. Micah 6:12 puts it without qualification: “Your wealthy people are full of violence.”
b. The prophets will repeatedly declare that God wants to bring an end to violence (Isaiah 2:4; Hosea 2:18; Micah 4:3)
c. Nevertheless, God uses violence for two basic purposes: judgment against sin and salvation for the oppressed. God’s violence aims to stop the violence and sinfulness of others. But also, the relationship of God and violence is often that God brings the consequences of sin back onto the sinner. Sin generates a snowballing effect with violent consequences. Ezek 22:31 illustrates the point. God declares, “I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath,” and immediately states what that entails: “I have returned their conduct upon their heads.” God’s judgment and violence, therefore, is about how God midwifes, facilitates, or completes the connection between sin and consequences and God doesn’t shy away from that. In Hosea, a constant metaphor for the impending doom is “harvest.” Essentially, Hosea was saying on behalf of God, “If you don’t want violence, stop planting violence!”
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."
Biblical judgment is not always a loud voice on every moral opinion or deeply clinging to our own rights or even victim-hood 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. 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 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. It means any business that impacts the poor is God’s business. Are we listening to the poor? 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?
It’s certainly a hard truth that judgment always involves death. And that’s not only an Old Testament concept. 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 is so often the source of our 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 (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 for the sake of other people. I read about a group of pastors holding a Bible study on Ananias and Sapphira. Everyone felt uncomfortable. Some laughed at the absurdity of the story 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. 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 thing like a piece of real estate?’” If we are to be a community of justice, who care for the poor, then there are things that will have to die – our greed, our comfort, our lies. The biggest lie of all is that following God will cost us nothing. Judgment aims to help us die to those things that kill and harm others, to die to things that truly harm us.
What does it mean to read this passage as a Christian, as our story and not simply 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, 18; 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, often times painfully, God taking responsibility for making his people right. It is bringing into the light that which has lain 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.” 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 heed God’s warning? You can’t if you’re not fed yourself. It’s not too late to join a small group. Will we be actual ambassadors for God? 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.
