First Presbyterian Church Hallock, Minn.

July 18, 2010

Uncomfortable Amos

Amos 8:1-12

I recently commiserated with a friend over a challenging experience we shared from our childhoods. I don’t remember quite how it came up, but somehow this friend and I got to talking about holidays, and specifically holiday meals. Maybe it was July 4th that brought it to mind, but when we started sharing about the big holidays growing up — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter — we both said we looked forward to the tasty meals and good company. (But, that’s nothing special.) What did stick out, for both of us, was an experience of not quite being sure about a certain dinner guest.

You see, this friend and I grew up in household that invited, well, outsiders to holiday meals sometimes. Maybe it was the angry lady who lived next door and had no family around. Maybe it was the homeless guy from downtown. Maybe it was the person, that depending on whether he took his medications, you never quite knew what to expect. Both this friend and I felt torn about these memories. We loved what our families were doing by opening our house to others, and sharing God’s love in the process. But we also realized, with just a bit of regret, that the presence of this other person affected the feel of the holiday. We couldn’t quite just kick back and relax with only family present, there was a guest around, usually one with some rather odd things to say.

At the end of the conversation, my friend and I decided we really were grateful for these experiences and really glad our families reached out, but when I read today’s text from Amos, I instantly relapsed and thought, “I’m so glad my parents didn’t invite this guy to dinner.”

Amos would be an absolutely horrible dinner guest. I’m sure he’d talk about those taboo subjects: politics, religion, and sex. But he’d be even worse than that. Pretty much pick any controversial issue, and Amos not only expounds on the hundreds of ways you’re off base. Heck, he yells across the table: “You’re wrong, and God is going to get you!” At least, that’s what he does in these verses today.

Can you believe this guy? First he says the Lord can’t stand the state of religion and that songs of praise will end up becoming wails of despair.

Next, Amos talks about economic justice and the poor. He doesn’t say you should give more to charity or work harder for social justice, but just indicts the people for their shameful practices of wanting to make the biggest profit, to work all the time, to disregard the state of another just for a pair of nice sandals.

Then, as if that isn’t enough, Amos says the Lord declares, i will make your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation — and get this — I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head. I don’t know about manners at your house, but at mine, that sort of dinner table conversation is just completely unacceptable (and not just because both my grandfathers were bald).

Amos certainly would not fit in at any of our dinner tables, and he might be ok with that. In fact, he didn’t much fit in back in the day when he was writing either. Amos was one of those prophets that made people mad. God called him to get under people’s skin, to ruffle their feathers. Israel had become so powerful and so pompous, there wasn’t anything to do but tell it like it was. The Lord saw the poor being trampled by the rich, the religious neglecting their duties, and the society as a whole not caring for one another. So God sent Amos to speak to the hard truth: they were in deep trouble.

Today, we could read Amos and say, “Whew, I’m glad Amos told those Israelites what was up. It sure did sound like things were pretty bad back then.” But the problem with not having uncomfortable Amos over for dinner, is we just skip the uncomfortable facts of our lives. If we’re honest, we actually need a little Amos in our lives. So, what might Amos say to us today?

Amos harped on religion — and, if we’re honest, we’d probably be an easy target there. Amos argued that the religious leaders had lost the point, that religion had become more about the overdone festivals than actually worshipping the Lord. I’m afraid we are guilty of the same whenever we put ourselves before our worship, when we draw divisions in the body of Christ rather than see our common bonds in the Spirit. Whenever we get our way of worshiping God confused with God Godself, we should hear the voice of Amos calling us to repent.

Amos also rebuked his society for failing to care for the poor. Truth be told, Amos wouldn’t be too keen on our ways of caring either. Over the past few years, the rich have been getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In Minnesota, with its huge budget problems, cuts to services unduly affect the poor among us. And, if we look at the world, the picture is even worse. Around the world, over a billion people are hungry and 16,000 children die a day from lack of food or malnutrition. Which might lead Amos to another one of his favorite topics: economic systems that give more power to the rich and focus more on fancy goods for the few than sustaining services to many. Oh, Amos, the great angry prophet of Israel, would have a field day with us today.

A pastor I’m familiar with in Iowa, when he set up his study at the church, decided not to put his diplomas or ordination certificate up on the wall when he moved in. Instead, he mounted a construction level. A contractor he once worked with gave it to him — it’s a pretty level, a Stanley antique of cherry and brass, and there’s that little bubble inside to say if something is level or not. And get this — the pastor mounted it on the wall so it sits about 1/8th of an inch off level.

That was intentional, of course, to remind him that his life (as with all our lives) is off balance. I think Amos would be pleased with that level. Amos points to the imbalance of our lives — of poverty and privilege, joys and sorrows, justice and mercy. Each of us, if we’re honest, would do well to remember that level too.

So, to help First Pres Hallock look at our balance, at how we are living up to God’s call in this place, the church session is asking folk to fill out a little survey. You should have received a survey and cover letter in this month’s newsletter, but we have some extras available in the hall as well. The session is going through a visioning process in which we’re considering where we are as a church. We’re wondering what we’re doing particularly well, what we could improve, and what we might emphasize down the line. Since, as Amos reminds us and that Iowa pastor reminds us, all of our levels are off, the session is being sure to ask around for help. Eventually, we’ll share the survey results and have a conversation with anyone who wants to come about where we are, and where God is taking us. So fill out a survey; Amos might be proud.

But, survey or not, one of the problems with preaching on Amos, is finding the good news. Usually, preachers can emphasize the sinful stuff for a while, and then say at the end, “It’s cool, though, God has your back. Grace abounds.” But that’s not really what today’s passage actually says. Instead, it’s all about judgement, God’s wrath, and the day of accounting. Even if you read it many times, you’ll be hard-pressed to find much of what we typically understand as grace.

This passage from Amos is not really about grace at all. It reminds me of a scene in a book I’m reading, Home by Marilynne Robinson. Home tells the story of a man returning home to his small town, and revisiting his troubled past. The man, Jack Boughton, grew up as wild child in a minister’s family of otherwise perfect manners. One day, back when Jack was young, Jack led his brothers and sisters to play in a field of disputed ownership. By rights, the kids thought the field belonged to their father who didn’t use it and instead, a neighbor had planted a crop of alfalfa in it without their father’s permission. Well, a baseball ended up in the field, and before they knew it, the kids were playing in the alfalfa and ended up destroying their neighbor’s crop.

Later that day, their father found out about the field. Robinson writes,

The slight satisfaction in their father’s face confirmed what [the children] dreaded, that he saw the opportunity to demonstrate Christian humility in such an unambiguous form that the neighbor could feel it only as rebuke. He said, “Of course you will have to apologize…you had better get it over with.”

So off the kids went to apologize. I love this scene because the father doesn’t yell at the kids or berate them or ground them, but instead, he says simply: “Of course you will have to apologize. You had better get it over with.”

Amos is like sort of like that. It’s not about passing out cheap grace, but about calling Israel — and us today — to an apology. Amos is about yelling at us across the dinner table with a list of where we’re missing the mark. Amos isn’t about doling out grace, but about truth-telling, and the call to amend our life because our current life isn’t pleasing to God.

So we end, not with a cheap word of grace, but with a word of invitation. An invitation to let Amos into our lives, to help us root out the injustice and see the inequalities, to help us make our churches do truly holy work, and focus us on good things for all, not just ourselves.

And maybe, the next time you’re having a meal, talk to those gathered as if Amos were there. You don’t have to talk just as he would — yelling at each other and hurling insults — but, take a moment, a meal, to reflect on the injustice of our lives. Amos, and God, would be pleased.