Sunday worship: Majoring on the Minors series wk1/ Amos on God's justice

Over the next eight weeks we'll be exploring the Minor Prophets.
Today we begin with Amos...

READINGS: Amos 1:1 and 5:1-27; Amos 8:1-14; Amos 9:11-15

SERMON
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer, Amen.

A few year’s back, a movie came out which was
a modern-day, comic take on Noah.
Now, I know we’re thinking about prophets this morning,
but indulge me a wee moment.
The underlying question of the movie was:
‘what might it look like, if God called a modern day Noah to build an ark?’
It was a ridiculous movie – and also great fun.
The modern-day Noah begins the movie with a clean-shaven, square jaw.
Over the course of the movie, as he begins to accept this strange calling,
the clean-shaven look gradually begins to disappear, and facial hair begins to sprout.
He becomes very pre-occupied with the weather
incessantly talking to friends, neighbours, and colleagues about rain –
and warning them to be prepared.
Animals begin appearing at his doorstep.
The facial hair continues to grow until he ends up with quite an impressive beard.
And it’s the beard that provides the movie’s best description of our modern-day Noah:
he ends up being referred to as:
‘the weirdo with the beard-o.’

I love that description –
and here’s the link between Noah and the prophets:
I have a strong hunch, that, when it comes to thinking about prophets in the Bible,
who, as part of delivering God’s message
are sometimes called to say and do some very strange things...
well, I wonder if we might occasionally think of them a little like
our chap in the movie - as weirdos with beardos?
But there’s more to the prophets than just the possibility of all of them
having very long beards which, by the by, are very trendy at the moment.
So, who were these prophets –
and in particular, these ones called the ‘Minor Prophets?’

As I said at the beginning of the service, they’re not called ‘minor’
because they’re young;
nor because they’re unimportant –
rather, it’s because the length of each of the writings of our Minor Prophets
is quite short when compared to guys like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel –
who are known collectively by another name –
the Major Prophets because their writings can run up to 60 odd chapters in some cases.
So, Minor Prophets – shorter books.

By way of giving you a little context, of setting the scene,
if you look at your order of service, you’ll see a wee table –
giving you the names of each of the prophets that we’re going to be looking at,
an approximate date for when they were exercising their prophetic ministries,
and a key word, by way of trying to sum up, in a nutshell,
the heart of the message each of these prophets is delivering.
So today, you see that scholars would have Amos working around
the late to mid-8th century before Christ, and this minor prophet’s major theme is justice.

The work of a prophet is to be a messenger: God’s messenger, to be precise.
And throughout the centuries,God callS different people – men and women –
to tell his people certain things, such as:
• God is the ruler of all history;
• of the need to get right with God;
• of religion and right living
• of judgement and hope
• and of the coming Messiah
This last, very much the message of Malachi, who is the last of the Minor Prophets
and who stands at the door of the New Testament.
So, prophets are called by God;
they have a message from God;
and they also, at times, speak to God on behalf of the people;
And Amos is a prophet.

Amos lives well after the reign of Solomon,
after the kingdom has been split into two –
Judah in the south,
and Israel in the north.
These two kingdoms have an uncomfortable relationship with one another.
And Amos is called to move out of his comfort zone,
to leave his home in the Southern kingdom –
in place called Tekoa, 12 miles south of Jerusalem –
and to travel to the Northern kingdom, where he will proclaim God’s message.
So Amos, who is a shepherd, obeys God’s command and does just that.
But being a prophet is no easy thing – especially in Amos’ time.

The major power players of the time are the Assyrians –
but their focus is elsewhere as another powerful nation decides to test
its strength and have a go at them.
With the eyes of the Assyrians in another direction,
things in the Northern Kingdom seem to be going well:
with no great super-power breathing down their neck,
it’s a time of relative prosperity and comfort.
The king, Jeroboam the 2nd,
has taken the chance to expand his territory,
he’s been able to broker some excellent trade deals -
which is always better than no deals -
and which have given the economy a boost.
If you’re one of the upper class, the living is easy, and all seems right with the world –
everything is shiny, happy.
But scratch the shiny, happy surface, and you’d see a very different story:
the kingdom is rotten to the core.
While the wealthy luxuriate in opulence, there’s been no ‘trickle-down’ effect
for those not so well off:
the divide between rich and poor has become even wider.
Some of those struggling to make ends meet have had to sell their land,
their goods, and sometimes sell themselves into slavery in order to survive.
Everything in that society has been measured and weighted in favour of the ‘haves’,
who’ve profited off the backs of a growing number of ‘have-nots’,
even the law is against the most vulnerable:
there is ...     no  ...    justice.
It’s into this mix, that God calls Amos to deliver some hard truths.
And it doesn’t make for becoming most popular person around.

‘Seek good, not evil,’ is a recurring phrase throughout
God’s message through Amos to those in the Northern Kingdom –
‘seek good, not evil... so you may live.’
But what is ‘good’?
The Northern elite would cheerfully say that living in the lap of luxury
is a jolly good thing, thanks very much:
a case of ‘I’m alright, Jack.’
But their ‘good’ lifestyle is gained at the expense of others.
To maintain their wealth,
to keep the comforts they’ve grown accustomed to,
means that others have to suffer.
If the nation’s resources were a pie cut into twelve pieces,
the minority elite would have eleven pieces,
while the majority of the population would have to make do with just one piece
to fill their hungry bellies.
Now, there’s nothing necessarily bad about being well-off – enjoy what you’ve got.
But the problem comes when that wealth is gained to the cost of others:
that’s not good,
that’s ...exploitation.

What is ‘good’, then as seen through God’s eyes?
God calls his people to be witnesses to the world, to demonstrate what God’s kingdom looks like.
Amos is telling those in the Northern Kingdom that they’re doing a pretty bad job of it.
Instead of their modelling a ‘me first’ attitude, God, through Amos,
is saying they can do better:
for goodness, as seen in God’s kingdom, is when there is justice for all:
not just the elite, but for the helpless –
the ones cast down,
the ones who never seem to get a break,
the ones who struggle just to find crumbs under the table to survive.
Goodness is a fair go for all;
goodness is lifting people up
not pushing people down;
goodness is seeing the God-ness in others, and seeing their dignity and worth.
To seek good, not evil,
is to seek God,
and in that seeking,
to find life.
Amos’ message is one of justice:
God’s justice.
And so, Amos is called to call out
the corruption,
the self-interest,
the lack of compassion
that God has seen in the North.
The behaviour of those in power is not good enough...
is not... God enough.
‘Seek good, not evil, and you will live.’
About 30 or so years after Amos had proclaimed this message and seen it rejected,
and had even been told to go home by one of the Northern prophets,
the Northern Kingdom caught the attention of the Assyrians and ceased to exist as a nation.
Sobering stuff.
So focused upon themselves, that they perished.
And yet, that’s not the end of Amos’ message:
in chapter nine, there’s hope –
the promise of restoration...
God’s justice is always about reconciliation, and restoration, and wholeness –
for God’s justice is about life.

In a world where goodness seems to be defined once again as ‘me first’,
God’s message through Amos is as fresh as it was in the 8th century before Christ.
There’s more than enough food in the world to feed everyone well –
none need starve;
and yet more people than ever live in hunger.
There’s more than enough resources in the world to ensure a decent quality of life for all –
but we in the Western wealthy nations have spent several centuries
effectively asset-stripping the wealth of other nations –
pulling out the rug from under them.
Empires are only ‘good’ for those who create them, after all...
less good for the conquered. ...

What is good?
The heart of the message of Amos can be found in Chapter 5:24 -
in God’s 'justice, rolling like a river,
righteousness, like a never-failing stream':
powerful words from Amos to those used to living in semi-desert lands with unreliable water sources.
These powerful words from Amos were picked up by the late Martin Luther King Jr
and were used to call out the injustice of racism in his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech,
and used again in his ‘I’ve been to the mountaintop’ speech,
which he gave the night before he was assassinated:
a man proclaiming God’s word,
calling for God’s justice in an unjust world...
calling for the right for his people
to be seen as those created and made with goodness,
because they were made in God’s image.

‘Let justice roll on like a river...’
rolling alongside the growing food banks with longer and longer queues;
rolling alongside the places where human traffickers ply their trade;
rolling alongside corporations who use zero hour contracts and who don’t pay their fair share of tax –
taking, taking, and never giving back;
‘Let justice roll on like a river...’
rolling alongside those in positions of power who ensure their own houses are in order
but ignore the plight of the homeless.
God sees them all,
and still God calls:
‘Seek good, not evil, and you will live.’
And calls us to speak of God’s justice in an unjust world,
and to say that we can do better,
that we can be better than this:
that true goodness is seen when all have the chance to blossom and flourish.
Working for God’s justice might begin by showing compassion to others by
making donations to the food bank...
but it doesn’t stop there:
the work of proclaiming God’s justice continues by asking questions of a system
so broken that food banks are actually needed in the first place.

We are God’s people –
God’s witnesses,
tasked to proclaim God’s message to the world.
Be seekers of good...
be seekers...   of God:
speak God’s justice in the face of evil,
be bringers of life in this odd, and strange,
and frightening and beautiful world
that is currently crushing the life out of the many for the few.
What might it look like,
if God called a modern-day Amos to proclaim God’s message of justice to the world?
Friends, God calls us, whether or not we’ve got long flowing beards...
and God’s message, through Amos, could not be more relevant for today. Amen.