Pastor’s Message – Amos 7:7-17
July 10, 2016
Rev. Lourey Savick
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are in trouble. I know you don't need me to say it. Still, in
this place we should tell the truth. We are surrounded by violence and uncertainty and it is
hard to constantly grieve. I want worship to be a time of hopefulness and inspiration, but
these things begin with honesty and faith in what is true.
Here are some true things:
1) Innocent people are losing their lives and their dignity every day on our watch.
2) There is nothing about these losses that is justifiable or acceptable.
3) These losses are connected to one another and to other manifestations of injustice in
our common life, and throughout the world.
4) God loves us passionately and individually.
5) God is also passionate about justice.
Today's reading encourages us to think about what happens when God's loves for us and
for justice come into conflict with each other. They are in conflict when we--often gradually-begin to adopt injustices into our own practices with such regularity that we sinners don't
recognize our sin. God does not want to lose even one of us in such a sloppy and careless
way. God interrupts our bad behavior, forcing us to question our assumptions and rebuild
our relationships.
This is what was happening in Amos' day. According to history, after King Solomon died
Israel split into two nations. Both nations carried on quite well, and over the next one
hundred years, the North prospered especially. Along with that prosperity developed
profit/credit systems. Gradually, the wealth disparity grew, meaning that the rich got richer
and the poor got poorer. People with cultural differences also stopped worshipping
together. Since Jerusalem was in the South, the King in the north built sanctuaries in his
own cities for his people to visit. Over time, the people of the Northern Kingdom managed
to completely lose sight of what it meant to be God's people while maintaining the outward
appearance of religion. Sound plausible to you? As a result, God called Amos out of his
farms in the South to bring a hard message to the people of the North.
Amos gets people's attention with his message, because he begins by speaking about
what's wrong with other nations. People come together to hear bad things said about their
enemies. This is not just a rhetorical strategy. A commentary on this passage explains:
The overall theme of this series is that God is the God of all nations, even those who do not
acknowledge that truth...Other nations cannot plead ignorance about God's demands for
the way humans should treat each other. They should know that...The nations of the
covenant, on the other hand, cannot claim special privilege, immunity from the
consequences of wrongdoing, or certainty that God will always take their side no matter
what they have done.1
1
Simundson, Daniel J. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah,
Micah; Abingdon Press (Nashville: 2005), p.160
Pastor’s Message – Amos 7:7-17
July 10, 2016
Rev. Lourey Savick
If it were happening today, you might imagine that Amos begins by describing God's
intended consequences for Muslims who kill themselves in order to harm, or who commit
murder, covet, and dishonor others in God's name. But then, Amos starts talking about
what we're doing.
Amos' criticism moves across the map from farther to closer until it reaches Israel, then
really cuts deep. God says, "You people turn justice into superficiality and bitterness, bring
righteousness to the ground (5:7), trample on the poor (5:11), and take bribes, pushing
aside the needy in the gate (5:12)." Amos speaks as an individual torn between the
Israelites and God. First, he sees terrible judgments coming from God, and pleads for God
to be compassionate toward Israel. Then, he turns to Israel and admonishes them to stop
provoking God's anger. His turning point is the vision of the plumb line.
Amos sees God holding up a plumb line against a wall, revealing that the foundations of
this kingdom are not solid and true. God is not wavering in his love for human kind--rather,
he sees what the insiders cannot. He sees that what they are building is doomed to fail
and destroy them all. Amaziah, an insider and a priest, complains about the disruptive
effect that Amos is having, and Amos points out that Amaziah's spiritual loyalties are split.
He professionally practices Jewish law and ritual, but in his heart serves himself and the
culture of his region. His internal division is tearing apart his home, his congregation, and
the whole country he serves, even if he can't see it yet. How do we know when our
loyalties are split? Will we have the courage to fix our foundations?
Remember some true things:
1) Innocent people are losing their lives and their dignity every day on our watch.
2) There is nothing about these losses that is justifiable or acceptable.
3) These losses are connected to one another and to other manifestations of injustice in
our common life, and throughout the world.
I say our losses are connected because they all point to a profound loss of trust in one
another. I hear it everywhere--we don't trust our form of government to run the country, we
don't trust the people we elect to serve the public interest, we don't trust our police and
military to act with dignity and humanity when action is needed, we don't trust our elders
and teachers to enhance our corporate wisdom, and we don't trust people who are not
precisely like us to take our side and work together with us. Perhaps worst of all, we don't
trust our neighbors to recognize our shared humanity and not commit evil against us.
In part, this is because our trust has been betrayed in devastating ways. It is also because
we have placed our trust in the wrong things. Brene Brown, a researcher and author in the
areas of shame and resilience, imagines trust in relationships as a jar of marbles. When
someone does something that honors your dignity and the relationship, the jar starts to fill.
When someone betrays you or undermines your relationship--and this happens in all
relationships--marbles come out of the jar. The levels in these imaginary jars reveal which
relationships are the most faithful and trustworthy.
Pastor’s Message – Amos 7:7-17
July 10, 2016
Rev. Lourey Savick
Time and again, we outsource some of our big expectations of God to other relationships
that were never meant to bear them. We have trusted for-profit industries to do for us what
our families and social relationships were meant to. We have eschewed responsibility for
the lives affected by our own benefits and profits. We have turned away from an honest
accounting of where our loyalties lie and why we have placed them there. We cry out,
"Someone fix this!" and criticize others' failures to respond.
But hear the good news in all of this: if all I have said is true, then we can do something
about it. We need not hear of one more loss of life before we begin to change. As people
of God, we have a special responsibility and power to be God's love in the world. When we
ask questions of others and strive to learn from their answers, we start to fill jars. When the
house down the street hosts a graduation party and we drop off a card, we start to fill jars.
When we show up to town meetings, smile at people doing public service, spend nonscreen time with our spouses and children and parents, we start to fill jars. When we give
credit to our coworkers, we start to fill jars. The natural consequence of these trifling
actions is that we get to know and to care about people who are different from us. It gets
easier to know when they experience hard times. It gets easier to understand what they
mean by what they say, and it gets harder to fear them. Eventually, watching the news, we
find that this service person looks like our favorite nephew, and that troubled young person
has the same concert t-shirt as the neighbor girl. Someday, even, we'll see a member of
ISIS with the same eyes as our favorite barista. God sees someone beloved in all of us.
Our behaviors will change when we can see like that. Little things lead to big things, like
the kind of guns we feel we need, or the way we conduct important elections. It does take
effort, and is at times uncomfortable. But remember, the root of the crimes of the Northern
Kingdom was the way they abandoned each other. The challenge now is to make
connections.
Will we have the courage to fix our foundations? Will we accept our responsibility to show
the love of God by actively building relationships of trust? If so, let's not wait for another
tragedy. Let's start now.