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Posts Tagged ‘The Ring’

It’s very graphic – the book of Hosea – and full of passion. For what is at stake, Hosea believes, is not simply a nation that is breaking a few commandments, but rather an entire people who have forsaken the lover of their souls.

“Plead with your mother, plead – for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband – that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.” (Hosea 2:2-3)

No, we’re not at Sexpo, but you could be forgiven for wondering what place words such as these should have in the church, or, moreover, in the Bible! Ah, but we are in the book of Hosea, which has to be one of the most bizarre books in the Bible, and certainly contains one of the most bizarre stories.

Last week we looked at Amos – my favourite prophet. This week I get to introduce you to his bizarre mate, Hosea – another character who prophesied a message of judgement to Northern Israel, in the 8th century B.C.

These men may actually have been mates! Certainly they were preaching in the same place to roughly the same group of people at the same point in Israel‘s history. Many scholars think that Hosea might have started his work just as Amos finished his. Even so, there may well have been some overlap.

Certainly they were speaking to the same generation of people in the same place, and both were delivering equally grim messages of doom, though, despite all these similarities, there is no mistaking one prophet for the other!

Amos, you will remember, was a farmer from the South, who felt called to go and preach to the people of the North, after which he presumably returned to his farm. Hosea seems to have been a northerner to begin with, and we don’t know what his vocational background was, but he certainly seemed to have had a strong connection to the sex industry!

Hosea indeed married to a sex worker. That is clear. What is not so clear is whether, after divorcing his first wife, he then went on to marry a second sex worker, or whether, as most scholars who have tried to reconstruct his story suggest, he went back to his first wife and married her again – plucking her directly from the brothel, it seems, to take her back home!

However we piece together the details, two things about Hosea are uncontestable:

That he had a highly dysfunctional family life.

That his life, and most especially his tragic marriage, was his message!

Christian couples who give a priority to ministry have always recognised that there is no shielding your family from the work, and I don’t only mean persons in the ordained ministry. Any family that gives priority to ministry and mission recognises that giving yourself to God and to other people cannot be constrained within a nine-to-five framework. All your family will be effected.

Every couple in mission drags their children with them. It is inevitable! But no one in the history of the missionary work of the people of God, so far as I know, has ever pushed the envelope further in this regard than did Hosea!

Hosea did not just drag his family with him into battle (so to speak) while doing his best to shield them. Rather, he more or less threw his family out in front of him and stood behind them! He did this not only to his wife – his living sermon illustration of unfaithfulness. He did it equally to his three children, each of whom received a horrible symbolic name!

I admit, I did at one stage feel tempted to call our baby son, ‘Doom’, but that was because I really loved the game (the world’s first 3D shooter).

Hosea named his son, ‘Jezreel’, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that Jezreel was the place where Jehu, after killing King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, butchered their entire household – children, family, friends, associates, and really anybody who had even been rumoured to have had a friendly conversation with the deposed royal family. Each had his or her head thrown into a basket at Jezreel.

Calling your son Jezreel was like calling him, ‘9/11’ or even ‘Auschwitz’ – a name that evoked memories of violence and judgement. And the two girls didn’t fare much better. The first was named, “not pitied”, and the second, “not my people”. Admittedly, their names don’t sound too bad in Hebrew – Lo’-ruhamah and Lo’-ammi – but I’m still guessing that they had a hard time at school. Indeed, I can’t imagine their teacher keeping a straight face during roll-call:

Jessica (here sir)

Jacob (here sir)

Not my people …

It is Hosea’s wife, Gomer, though who was the real focus of the prophet’s message, for in her waywardness, Hosea believed, she illustrated the essential problem in the relationship between Israel and her God.

It matters not whether Hosea’s tragic marriage only started after he received his prophetic calling or whether he and Gomer had always struggled, as a couple and as individuals. What is clear is that Hosea saw Gomer’s inability to remain faithful to him as mirroring his nation’s failure in faithfulness towards their God. Gomer flirted and played and got sexually involved with a variety of partners. So likewise, Hosea said, Israel was flirting with the ‘Baals’’, and waking up in bed with even the most vile of foreign deities!

It’s very graphic – the book of Hosea – and full of passion. For what is at stake, Hosea believes, is not simply a nation that’s breaking a few commandments, but rather a people that had forsaken the lover of their souls. They had turned their backs on the one who loved them and who had always loved them.

“But I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no saviour. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought; but when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.” (Hosea 13:4-6)

Hosea prophecies judgement, but it is judgement with a purpose. The punishment of the people, the prophet hopes, will awaken them to the fact that they have abandoned their true partner and God, and so it will lead them back to Him.

[Israel has] “played the whore … For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’“ (Hosea 2:5-7)

The essential problem, Hosea says, is a lack of commitment to the relationship on the part of Israel – a steadfast marriage-like commitment, embodied in the Hebrew word, ’hesed’, normally translated as ’covenant faithfulness’ or ’steadfast love’.

“For I desire steadfast love (ie. ‘hesed’),” says the Lord, “and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)

Religion, as a set of empty rituals, he says, is not enough. Sacrifice and sacraments do not in themselves constitute a relationship with the Almighty any more than a wedding ceremony constitutes a meaningful marriage! It is love that is needed: real love, faithfulness, sacrifice, commitment, ‘hesed’.

Now I’m not going to plough further through Hosea today. You can read it yourself in about half an hour, and it really is a book with a single theme and a single message. What I want to conclude with is rather to think a little more about how this prophet, Hosea, compares with his contemporary, Amos.

For the two were, as I said, addressing roughly the same group of people at roughly the same time, and certainly in exactly the same place! Yet if you didn’t work that out, by looking at the timelines they each supply, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are addressing entirely different situations!

Amos’ message seemed to be basically a call to social justice! His words of judgment and doom came in response to the systematic oppression of the poor that was taking place in Israel. The people of the north had developed an unjust system whereby the rich and the powerful were crushing the poor and the weak. The judges were being bribed and there was no justice in the courts. The bottom line had become the bottom line, and all morality and human need had been set aside for the sake of good business!

Hosea barely mentions any of this. Indeed, he barely mentions the social situation at all. Instead, his focus is almost exclusively on the personal relationship between the people of Israel and their God, who is depicted as their lover, their husband, and their true and only life-partner.

So we must ask, were the two prophets just talking about totally different things? Did they have complimentary ministries – one focusing on the secular issues of the people and the other on their spiritual needs? Would it be correct to say that Amos and Hosea cover different issues within Israel – injustice and oppression on the one hand, idolatry and unfaithfulness on the other. One prophet challenges the priests and clergy with spiritual issues, the other challenges politicians and businessmen with economic issues.

This is how this pair of prophets have often been depicted, and I think that this is a mistake, for I believe that the distinction we like to make, between religious issues and justice issues, between the spiritual and the economic, is a distinction that is alien to the Bible itself.

In the Bible, the love of God and the love of neighbour cannot be easily separated. As the Apostle John would later say, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar” It’s not that the two are simply inconsistent. They are contradictory. “for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1John 4:20)

When we work for justice and uphold the cause of the needy, we participate in a spiritual and religious act.

“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD”, says the writer of Proverbs (19:17). Likewise, to stand up for someone who is weak is an act of love not only towards that person but towards his or her God! Conversely, to neglect your neighbour, even the least of your brethren, is Biblically understood as an act of unfaithfulness towards God Himself!

What we see in the prophecies of Amos and Hosea are not two men seeing two different dimensions to a national problem. They are seeing the same problem, but they describe it differently!

When Amos decried those who “sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2) he wasn’t upset because it was unconstitutional! Amos saw this as an offence against God, who took it personally, and would not tolerate a society where one segment of the population exploited another.

Likewise, when Hosea laments the loss of ‘hesed’ (ie. divine love) in the land, this is inextricably tied in to the crimes of violence he sees around him.

“There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” (Hosea 4:1-2)

Friends, if there’s one thing I would like you to take home from our two-week venture into the 8th century prophets, it is this: that there is no distinction between sacred and secular worlds. There is no dividing wall between physical and spiritual, between the religious and the economic, between human issues and divine issues, between faith and politics.

All truth is God’s truth! All love is God’s love! All acts of mercy and justice are spiritual and religious acts, and genuine worship of the God of the Bible will always be embedded in communities that exude justice, mercy and love.

As Amos would say, if you want to genuinely worship the God of the Bible, then “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like and ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24), or as Hosea would put it, while those who “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” (8:7), if you “sow for yourselves justice, you will reap steadfast love”. (4:12)

Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?” The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:1-12)

I sorta promised someone in the parish that I’d choose a more cheery passage next time I preached. “Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden” was suggested – a message of encouragement and hope. This is not that sermon.

Inspired by our set lectionary readings, for better or worse, I have found myself irresistibly drawn again to the figure of Amos – one of the fieriest or the fiery prophets of the Old Testament. So … my apologies, but strap yourselves in!

Amos is actually an old friend of mine. Indeed, we became friends a long time ago. During my crazy early Christian days, when I was busy preaching on street corners, trying to convert all my old friends, doing my best to share all my possessions, set up shared bank accounts with the other members of the youth fellowship, and turn my flat into a de-facto shelter for local alcoholic persons, Amos was my inspiration.

I preached my first ever sermon at my home church – the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Surry Hills – on Amos, at the first service of the day, and I got so carried away that I just couldn’t be stopped. I preached for 25, 30, 35, 40 minutes, and as people arrived for next service and started knocking on the door, I was still going! You have been warned! Strap yourself in (and pour yourself a cup of coffee).

Why was I so drawn to the figure of Amos? Because nobody in the Bible, I think, more clearly reflects the Biblical passion for social justice as does the prophet Amos

Amos was an 8th century prophet, meaning that he preached in the 8th century B.C., before the destruction of Northern Israel.

If you know the history of ancient Israel, you know that after the reigns of King David and his son Solomon, there was a civil war of sorts in Israel, after which the country was split into north and south. The southern state of Judah remained loyal to the line of David and maintained Jerusalem as their capital, while the much larger state of northern Israel set up their capital city in Samaria, and built there an alternate temple, which, according to the books of Chronicles, was the beginning of the end.

The importance of this with regards to Amos is that Amos was a southerner, from the southern state of Judah, but was preaching in the north! This was a point of tension for Amos, and when he comes into conflict with the northern religious authorities he’s told to go back home and mind his own business, and I’m sure that his southern drawl would have made it difficult for him to get a unbiased hearing.

Amos was no professional preacher either, with a clever, polished style. He tells us quite frankly that he was a farmer who felt called one day to go and preach to the people of the north. So he closed the farm door, got on his donkey, rode all the way to Samaria, the capital of the north, set up a soap-box, and started preaching:

Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment” (Amos 1:3)

I’m in Amos chapter one, where we read of Amos giving a series of prophecies of doom to a variety of middle-eastern nations – Damascus, Moab, Edom, etc. – and he speaks of the terrible judgement that God is going to bring upon these peoples for the crimes of violence that they have committed.

We’re told that the people of Damascus “threshed Gilead with sledges of iron”, and that the Edomites hunted down their Israelite relatives “and showed no pity”. We’re told that the Ammonites even “ripped open pregnant women in Gilead”!

We are not unfamiliar with this sort of violence. Crimes such as these continue to happen. Indeed, for some of our parishioners, who have come to us seeking refuge from their own war-torn homelands, these reports may sound all too close to home!

They were crimes took place, of course, in the context of war, but so far as Amos in concerned, this is no excuse. Don’t bother pleading, “I was only following orders”. God will not overlook such terrible acts of inhumanity.

In terms of Amos’ overall message, it’s worth recognising that in this opening spiel, Amos is railing exclusively against Israel‘s enemies. Indeed, if you take a map of the area and pinpoint the nations that Amos targets in these prophecies, you‘ll see that they encircle Israel, and that crimes of violence were all perpetrated on Israelites.

This was probably Amos‘ attempt to get his audience on-side by whipping them into a patriotic frenzy. “Woe to the you violent Iranians”, he cries. “woe to the Syrians, woe to you Hezbollah Muslim fanatics”, … and all the people say, “Amen!”

In chapter 2 though, Amos adjusts his sights, extending his message of doom firstly to Southern Judah (his home country) and then finally to the people of the north, and again it’s for crimes of violence, though this time of a more subtle nature:

Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same maiden, so that my holy name is profaned; they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.” (Amos 2:6-8)

Amos’ basic charge is one of violence against the poor, but it’s not because there are gangs roaming the streets, beating up poor people (‘Clockwork Orange’ style). Rather, what is being targeted is systematic injustice that is being perpetrated through the government and through the economy!

This practice of ‘selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals’ refers to a business practice whereby poor people were being ripped of and further impoverished though an unfair system of trade. While the exact details are not known, we know today that people are still being ‘sold for a pair of sandals’ ,or running shoes, at any rate (made in the third world factories belonging to Nike etc).

And along with these unfair trade practices go high interest rates from the banks and money-lenders, that make it almost impossible for the poor to get ahead. They “lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.”

It says in the Torah that if you if a poor man gives you his coat as a acuity for a loan, you have to give that garment back to him at nightfall so he has something to sleep on. What we see here though is that the money-lenders are charging exorbitant interest rates from these poor people, taking their garments, yet have the gall to take them to the temple and sit on them while they drink!

The temple-worship of these businessmen strikes Amos as blatant hypocrisy, and he’ll come back to that again. Let’s note though first that Amos also launches an indictment here against ‘a man and his father who go into the same maiden’.

We assume that this is more than just a particular incident of promiscuity. Most likely cult prostitution is on view, or young slave-girls forced into the sex industry. Exploitation takes many forms and, Amos says, God will not excuse any of it!

The aspect I most want to draw attention to in this opening volley from Amos, is that he is not just attacking some nasty people who are doing some obviously nasty things. The crimes that he has on view are ones that are embedded in the system.

The men of violence that he targets are not street thugs. They are businessmen! These money-lenders are not wanted men. They are acting within the law. And even these father and son teams who are getting up to mischief out the back of the boardroom are probably not doing anything technically illegal. What we have here is a corrupt system that is enriching one section of the community at the expense of another. The business leaders are working with the courts, and they’re getting their blessing from the priests, and it’s all entirely kosher (pardon the expression).

What Amos is telling the people is that their God does not consider the fact that it’s legal to be an excuse! You can‘t say, “sorry mate, but business is business” and “it’s not my fault. I‘ve got to operate in the real world”, any more than those Ammonites can say, “We were only following orders” or those young boys can say, “but raping young girls is an acceptable part of the culture where we come from”.

“Garbage!”, says the prophet. It doesn’t matter what standards your culture sets any more than it matters what your mates were doing. It doesn’t matter what your orders were. It doesn’t matter whether it’s legal or illegal. It’s wrong, it’s violent, it’s demeaning of other human beings and God will not overlook it, even if everybody else was doing it!

In chapter 5, Amos highlights the way in which the powerful are working with the courts. He speaks there about ‘the gate’, and the gate of the city is where they held their court, so when it says ‘the gate’, it’s a reference to the legal system.

“They hate him who reproves in the gate (ie. an honest judge) and they abhor him who speaks the truth (ie. an honest witness). Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” (Amos 5:10-11)

Again, it’s not because anyone in particular is beating up on poor people, but because there is a corrupt legal system in place that is generating injustice. A similar point is made in Amos’ well-known attack on the upper-class women of Israel in chapter 4, where he refers to these ladies as ‘cows’!

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’“ (Amos 4:1)

Again, these women are not out on the streets, oppressing the poor. They probably rarely ever see poor people. Those sorts of persons probably don’t get up to ‘Bashan Heights’ very often – the place where these women were ‘grazing’.

No, their sin is in their involvement in an unjust system. They say to their husbands, “bring that we may drink” and they are probably only half-aware of the fact that their fine wine and their gorgeous parties are only possible because of the injustice and virtual enslavement of the poorer section of their population.

Chapter 5:21-24 has Amos’ most focused attack on the people’s worship:

“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

This was a favourite passage of Martin Luther King’s and of Latin American scholar, Hose Miranda, who said (in ‘Marx and the Bible’) that this passage illustrates how the God of the Bible does not really care about prayer and worship. I think this is an exaggeration. The practices being referred to were God-ordained, and there is no doubt, I think, that God delights in the prayer and worship of His people, but NOT when those who are worshipping are simultaneously profiting from injustice, from the systematic oppression of the poor.

These issues of injustice, corruption and hypocrisy all come together in the reading we had this morning, from Amos chapter 8:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?” and keep our thumbs on the scales, and outsource all our manual labour to Gabon, and take control of those oil-fields in Iraq, and make a killing on the stock exchange while we‘re at it! (nb. I am ad-libbing a bit) The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:5-7)

Sisters and brothers, some people says to me, “Dave, as a Christian I am not interested in politics”, and I can say to them in all honesty, “neither am I”.

If by ‘politics’ you mean the way governments work and way bureaucracies function, I agree, I find the whole science of these things entirely boring, and I suspect that Amos did too. But what I am interested in, and what I think Amos was interested in, and what we all must be interested in, is people.

And when people are being destroyed – whether it be by acts of individual violence, through the drug trade, through relationship breakdown, or through the legalised violence of an unjust political or economic system, none of us can turn a blind eye.

Saying, ‘that’s just the way things are’ is no excuse. Hiding behind company policy or blaming the system will not cut it with the Almighty, says the prophet Amos.

The people of Northern Israel ultimately had to learn this lesson the hard way when their Assyrian neighbours came down and crushed their system and destroyed their nation about 30 years after Amos came and warned them. Let us hope and pray that in our case we can come up with a less brutal solution for bringing life and health and humanity back into our economic and political systems.

Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?” The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:1-12)

I sorta promised someone in the parish that I’d choose a more cheery passage next time I preached. “Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden” was suggested – a message of encouragement and hope. This is not that sermon.

Inspired by our set lectionary readings, for better or worse, I have found myself irresistibly drawn again to the figure of Amos – one of the fieriest or the fiery prophets of the Old Testament. So … my apologies, but strap yourselves in!

Amos is actually an old friend of mine. Indeed, we became friends a long time ago. During my crazy early Christian days, when I was busy preaching on street corners, trying to convert all my old friends, doing my best to share all my possessions, set up shared bank accounts with the other members of the youth fellowship, and turn my flat into a de-facto shelter for local alcoholic persons, Amos was my inspiration.

I preached my first ever sermon at my home church – the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Surry Hills – on Amos, at the first service of the day, and I got so carried away that I just couldn’t be stopped. I preached for 25, 30, 35, 40 minutes, and as people arrived for next service and started knocking on the door, I was still going! You have been warned! Strap yourself in (and pour yourself a cup of coffee).

Why was I so drawn to the figure of Amos? Because nobody in the Bible, I think, more clearly reflects the Biblical passion for social justice as does the prophet Amos

Amos was an 8th century prophet, meaning that he preached in the 8th century B.C., before the destruction of Northern Israel.

If you know the history of ancient Israel, you know that after the reigns of King David and his son Solomon, there was a civil war of sorts in Israel, after which the country was split into north and south. The southern state of Judah remained loyal to the line of David and maintained Jerusalem as their capital, while the much larger state of northern Israel set up their capital city in Samaria, and built there an alternate temple, which, according to the books of Chronicles, was the beginning of the end.

The importance of this with regards to Amos is that Amos was a southerner, from the southern state of Judah, but was preaching in the north! This was a point of tension for Amos, and when he comes into conflict with the northern religious authorities he’s told to go back home and mind his own business, and I’m sure that his southern drawl would have made it difficult for him to get a unbiased hearing.

Amos was no professional preacher either, with a clever, polished style. He tells us quite frankly that he was a farmer who felt called one day to go and preach to the people of the north. So he closed the farm door, got on his donkey, rode all the way to Samaria, the capital of the north, set up a soap-box, and started preaching:

Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment” (Amos 1:3)

I’m in Amos chapter one, where we read of Amos giving a series of prophecies of doom to a variety of middle-eastern nations – Damascus, Moab, Edom, etc. – and he speaks of the terrible judgement that God is going to bring upon these peoples for the crimes of violence that they have committed.

We’re told that the people of Damascus “threshed Gilead with sledges of iron”, and that the Edomites hunted down their Israelite relatives “and showed no pity”. We’re told that the Ammonites even “ripped open pregnant women in Gilead”!

We are not unfamiliar with this sort of violence. Crimes such as these continue to happen. Indeed, for some of our parishioners, who have come to us seeking refuge from their own war-torn homelands, these reports may sound all too close to home!

They were crimes took place, of course, in the context of war, but so far as Amos in concerned, this is no excuse. Don’t bother pleading, “I was only following orders”. God will not overlook such terrible acts of inhumanity.

In terms of Amos’ overall message, it’s worth recognising that in this opening spiel, Amos is railing exclusively against Israel‘s enemies. Indeed, if you take a map of the area and pinpoint the nations that Amos targets in these prophecies, you‘ll see that they encircle Israel, and that crimes of violence were all perpetrated on Israelites.

This was probably Amos‘ attempt to get his audience on-side by whipping them into a patriotic frenzy. “Woe to the you violent Iranians”, he cries. “woe to the Syrians, woe to you Hezbollah Muslim fanatics”, … and all the people say, “Amen!”

In chapter 2 though, Amos adjusts his sights, extending his message of doom firstly to Southern Judah (his home country) and then finally to the people of the north, and again it’s for crimes of violence, though this time of a more subtle nature:

Thus says the LORD: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same maiden, so that my holy name is profaned; they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.” (Amos 2:6-8)

Amos’ basic charge is one of violence against the poor, but it’s not because there are gangs roaming the streets, beating up poor people (‘Clockwork Orange’ style). Rather, what is being targeted is systematic injustice that is being perpetrated through the government and through the economy!

This practice of ‘selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals’ refers to a business practice whereby poor people were being ripped of and further impoverished though an unfair system of trade. While the exact details are not known, we know today that people are still being ‘sold for a pair of sandals’ ,or running shoes, at any rate (made in the third world factories belonging to Nike etc).

And along with these unfair trade practices go high interest rates from the banks and money-lenders, that make it almost impossible for the poor to get ahead. They “lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.”

It says in the Torah that if you if a poor man gives you his coat as a acuity for a loan, you have to give that garment back to him at nightfall so he has something to sleep on. What we see here though is that the money-lenders are charging exorbitant interest rates from these poor people, taking their garments, yet have the gall to take them to the temple and sit on them while they drink!

The temple-worship of these businessmen strikes Amos as blatant hypocrisy, and he’ll come back to that again. Let’s note though first that Amos also launches an indictment here against ‘a man and his father who go into the same maiden’.

We assume that this is more than just a particular incident of promiscuity. Most likely cult prostitution is on view, or young slave-girls forced into the sex industry. Exploitation takes many forms and, Amos says, God will not excuse any of it!

The aspect I most want to draw attention to in this opening volley from Amos, is that he is not just attacking some nasty people who are doing some obviously nasty things. The crimes that he has on view are ones that are embedded in the system.

The men of violence that he targets are not street thugs. They are businessmen! These money-lenders are not wanted men. They are acting within the law. And even these father and son teams who are getting up to mischief out the back of the boardroom are probably not doing anything technically illegal. What we have here is a corrupt system that is enriching one section of the community at the expense of another. The business leaders are working with the courts, and they’re getting their blessing from the priests, and it’s all entirely kosher (pardon the expression).

What Amos is telling the people is that their God does not consider the fact that it’s legal to be an excuse! You can‘t say, “sorry mate, but business is business” and “it’s not my fault. I‘ve got to operate in the real world”, any more than those Ammonites can say, “We were only following orders” or those young boys can say, “but raping young girls is an acceptable part of the culture where we come from”.

“Garbage!”, says the prophet. It doesn’t matter what standards your culture sets any more than it matters what your mates were doing. It doesn’t matter what your orders were. It doesn’t matter whether it’s legal or illegal. It’s wrong, it’s violent, it’s demeaning of other human beings and God will not overlook it, even if everybody else was doing it!

In chapter 5, Amos highlights the way in which the powerful are working with the courts. He speaks there about ‘the gate’, and the gate of the city is where they held their court, so when it says ‘the gate’, it’s a reference to the legal system.

“They hate him who reproves in the gate (ie. an honest judge) and they abhor him who speaks the truth (ie. an honest witness). Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” (Amos 5:10-11)

Again, it’s not because anyone in particular is beating up on poor people, but because there is a corrupt legal system in place that is generating injustice. A similar point is made in Amos’ well-known attack on the upper-class women of Israel in chapter 4, where he refers to these ladies as ‘cows’!

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’“ (Amos 4:1)

Again, these women are not out on the streets, oppressing the poor. They probably rarely ever see poor people. Those sorts of persons probably don’t get up to ‘Bashan Heights’ very often – the place where these women were ‘grazing’.

No, their sin is in their involvement in an unjust system. They say to their husbands, “bring that we may drink” and they are probably only half-aware of the fact that their fine wine and their gorgeous parties are only possible because of the injustice and virtual enslavement of the poorer section of their population.

Chapter 5:21-24 has Amos’ most focused attack on the people’s worship:

“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

This was a favourite passage of Martin Luther King’s and of Latin American scholar, Hose Miranda, who said (in ‘Marx and the Bible’) that this passage illustrates how the God of the Bible does not really care about prayer and worship. I think this is an exaggeration. The practices being referred to were God-ordained, and there is no doubt, I think, that God delights in the prayer and worship of His people, but NOT when those who are worshipping are simultaneously profiting from injustice, from the systematic oppression of the poor.

These issues of injustice, corruption and hypocrisy all come together in the reading we had this morning, from Amos chapter 8:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?” and keep our thumbs on the scales, and outsource all our manual labour to Gabon, and take control of those oil-fields in Iraq, and make a killing on the stock exchange while we‘re at it! (nb. I am ad-libbing a bit) The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” (Amos 8:5-7)

Sisters and brothers, some people says to me, “Dave, as a Christian I am not interested in politics”, and I can say to them in all honesty, “neither am I”.

If by ‘politics’ you mean the way governments work and way bureaucracies function, I agree, I find the whole science of these things entirely boring, and I suspect that Amos did too. But what I am interested in, and what I think Amos was interested in, and what we all must be interested in, is people.

And when people are being destroyed – whether it be by acts of individual violence, through the drug trade, through relationship breakdown, or through the legalised violence of an unjust political or economic system, none of us can turn a blind eye.

Saying, ‘that’s just the way things are’ is no excuse. Hiding behind company policy or blaming the system will not cut it with the Almighty, says the prophet Amos.

The people of Northern Israel ultimately had to learn this lesson the hard way when their Assyrian neighbours came down and crushed their system and destroyed their nation about 30 years after Amos came and warned them. Let us hope and pray that in our case we can come up with a less brutal solution for bringing life and health and humanity back into our economic and political systems.