Not to be confused with Prophet Major, Diminished and Augmented. Have some fun with Amos!
Mark 10:17-31, Hebrews 4:12-16; Psalm 90:12-17; Amos 5:6-7,10-15
It’s rather a shame that we don’t really talk about the so-called “minor prophets”. I think even the name is a little unfair, because it contributes to them being ignored. The “big names”, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, always get most of the press, but the “Twelve prophets” are really just as important, though their books are a bit shorter.
Take Amos, for example. He was preaching around the same time is Isaiah, Jonah and Hosea, during a time when Israel and Judah (the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel which formed after the death of Solomon) were both incredibly prosperous. Their economy was good; they weren’t at war with anyone; and people kept getting richer. The people assumed that their prosperity was because God was happy with them, so they assumed that they must be doing something right.
Then Amos showed up. Unlike some of the other prophets, Isaiah being a noble and Jeremiah a priest, Amos was no one special. He was a shepherd. Then God spoke to him, and God didn’t say very nice things. Much of the book of Amos centers on the failing of Israel to do right by God, specifically, in their wealth they completely forgot about the poor and downtrodden, which of course brings us to our reading this morning.
God, through Amos, says, “You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground… you trample on the poor and force him to give you grain… you oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times for the times are evil.” It’s not a pretty picture of what’s really going on in this nation who assumes God is blessing them because they are wealthy and prosperous.
This is a people whose money became more important than God, not unlike the rich young man Jesus talks to in the Gospel. This is someone who desperately wanted eternal life, and was doing everything he could to ensure it happened: he sought after Jesus; he followed all the “second half” commandments — no murder, no adultery, no theft, no false testimony, no fraud, and honoring his parents. But he didn’t pay attention to the first half commandments, specifically, “have no other gods before God.” His wealth kept him from God, because he paid more attention to it than to God.
It’s exactly what the people in Amos’ time where doing. They loved their wealth, but convinced themselves that they were wealthy because they were so good at loving God. That’s a dangerous fallacy to hold on to, and it is particularly insidious. We all want to believe that we’re doing everything we can to follow God, which means we have to be honest with ourselves, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and really make sure our priorities are right.
For the ancient Israelites, their unfaithfulness to God led to their way of life being destroyed and the people scattered throughout the Middle East. While God doesn’t usually do things that way anymore, He does warn us that He knows what’s really going on. The writer of Hebrews writes, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
Oddly enough, statements like that actually reassure me quite a bit, because then I know that when I confess my sins to God I’m not really telling him anything he doesn’t already know. When I have something that I am putting before God, be it wealth, as in the examples of our readings, or anything else, it’s not like God doesn’t know about it — he does know, loves us anyways, and offers us forgiveness.
That’s the frustrating thing to me about prophets like Amos. Well, actually not about Amos, but about the people who didn’t listen. All the chaos and strife that he prophesied would have been avoided had the people just turned back to God — if they had only loved God and neighbor instead of their wealth. They had the same issue as the rich young man in the gospel.
Knowing that makes me feel a lot better. When I find myself valuing something more than I follow God, I know that I only have to, as the writer of Hebrews says, “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that [I] may receive mercy and find grace to help [me] in [my] time of need.”