Around 760 BCE in a small, insignificant village in Judah, a most monumental event occurred. A shepherd was called by God to prophesy in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This shepherd did not belong to any of the prophetic guilds—in other words, he had no “professional” training. But God’s call came upon him like the roar of a lion breathing down his neck. And so Amos left his flock, journeyed to the worship center Bethel, and thundered his message: “Thus says the Lord–”
Now why is this event, no doubt unnoticed by Amos’ contemporaries, so significant in the history of religion? Because with the preaching of Amos we have the beginning of Classical Prophecy in Israel. There were prophets before Amos (Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha), but with Amos something new appeared. And that newness was God’s comprehensive message of judgment and hope for both Israel and the world. The flowering of prophecy begun by Amos continued in the messages of Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Second and Third Isaiah, and so many others. In the 8th century BCE a religious awakening from a revelatory gift from God occurred in a momentous fashion that was to shape the essence of both Judaism and Christianity. According to biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, the poetry of the prophets, begun by Amos, served two purposes: Articulate the Real & Imagine God’s Alternative (In other words, tell it like it is and then reveal God’s dream for Israel and the world). Through their words, introduced by the powerful formula, “Thus says the Lord,” history was made, kingdoms were uprooted, and newness was born.
And it all began with a shepherd named Amos. How typical of the God of the Bible to choose a shepherd! The temple in Jerusalem and the sanctuaries at Bethel and Gilgal were overflowing with religious professionals—priests and prophets—trained, articulate, authorized, anointed, and ordained. But not a one of them could hear the Word of God in the midst of all their words—not a one of them could feel the newness about to explode in history—a newness detonated by a God who could no longer stomach the status quo. Not a one of them could see the vision of a new world flowing from the imagination of God’s own heart.
So, the Lord had to call a shepherd and send him to speak truth to power—to paint with powerful words the awful portrait of Israel’s failure. Amos appeared at Bethel, the chief sanctuary of the Northern Kingdom Israel, and thundered his message: “Thus says the Lord!”
But what did he say? What was the message that was so hidden from the professional priests and prophets at the worship centers of Jerusalem, Bethel, and Gilgal? What was the word that was so new that those trained in customary patterns of thought and familiar habits of worship could not hear?
Our passage today states the message of Amos in a nutshell. God hates their religious festivals, sacrificial offerings, prayers, and songs. God despises the rituals and liturgies the people act out in the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. God refuses to receive any of their worship. Why? Because the people are not offering what God wants. So, what does God want? “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (All prophecy comes in the form of poetry which should alert us to take seriously but not necessarily literally the metaphors used in the prophetic messages. One characteristic of Hebrew poetry is parallelism. In synonymous parallelism the prophets say the same thing but use different words. In the verse “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” the words “justice” and “righteousness” are synonyms.) Amos is dramatically emphasizing what God wants. God wants justice and because Israel practices injustice at every level of society, the nation is headed for judgment and destruction.
Now Amos was not the first to see justice as what God wanted for Israel. We see the importance of justice in Moses, Nathan, and Elijah (especially in the story surrounding Naboth’s vineyard and the greed of Jezebel and her husband Ahab). But Amos was the first to understand how central justice is to the heart of religion and how crucial justice was to the survival of Israel as God’s people. Amos said that justice was not a negotiable item. Israel could not continue injustice and remain God’s people. All of their sacrifices—all of their prayers—all of their songs—all of their worship was so much nauseating refuse to God when there was no justice.
And what Amos said about justice is echoed in the messages of every prophet to follow him–Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Second and Third Isaiah, etc. From this point on, God’s people have no excuse for not knowing that for God, justice is not optional—it’s a requirement. (Justice also becomes fundamental in Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God. It amazes me how many Christians remain ignorant of the crucial and non-negotiable nature of justice in the Bible. Without those passages dealing with justice, the Bible would be truncated beyond recognition.)
But what is justice? Is justice what is decided in the county courthouses all over this land? Is justice what is done by vigilante mobs? Is justice posh prisons for “white collar” criminals and crowded cells full of violence, rape, and drugs for poor and “blue collar” criminals? Is justice what nine judges decide in a marble edifice in Washington, D.C.? Is justice what is right? And if so, then who decides what is right? Is justice “law and order” where some make the laws and others get the orders?
So, what is justice? From a biblical point of view, two things must be said:
l) Justice must reflect the will of God whose compassion and righteousness demand fairness, compassion, mercy, and harmony in every aspect of life and at every level of society.
2) Justice must be concrete. Justice is what we do, not what we think or say. The word for justice in the Hebrew Scriptures is mishpat and comes from the verb shaphat. Shaphat means “to deliver.” (The Book of Judges is not about leaders who administer justice in law courts. It’s about leaders who deliver the people of Israel from their enemies.) So, justice is deliverance from whatever oppression and unfairness one suffers.
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has a powerful definition of justice. Justice is deciding what belongs to whom and returning it to them. This definition, however, is helpful only if the person deciding actually recognizes what truly belongs to whom. Brueggemann tells the following story to illustrate this point:
There was a proper English lady who entered a tea room in London. The room was crowded so she was asked if she would mind sitting at a table with a man from India. She agreed to share the table and ordered her tea. Within her purse were some cookies she had brought along to enjoy with her tea. The man at her table smiled and graciously acknowledged her presence and then returned to reading the daily news.
When her tea was served, she reached for one of her cookies and was shocked to see the man lifting one from the package. She frowned at the Indian, but he smiled pleasantly and returned to his paper munching his cookie. The woman fumed. She could not imagine how anyone would have the effrontery to do such a thing. She was even more shocked when the man took a second cookie. She glowered at him and mumbled something under her breath. But she took her cookie noting that there was only one left. She gobbled her cookie as fast as she could so that she could have the remaining cookie, but the Indian beat her to it. When he saw her reach for the cookie, he offered it to her with his pleasant smile, but she stormed out of the tea room saying something about ill-bred foreigners taking over the country.
Less than a block from the tea room she realized that in her angry haste she has not paid for her tea, and being the proper English lady she was, she returned to pay her debt. When she opened her purse to her horror she found her little package of five cookies. She has been eating the man’s cookies all along. They belonged to him, but he had been pleased to share them with her What she thought was hers in fact belonged to another.
If there is ever to be justice in this world, we must come to the same realization as this proper English lady. Tragically, what is at stake are not a few cookies but the lives and hopes of millions all over the world. The Koch brothers, who have made their fortune destroying much of God’s green earth, would assume that all their wealth belongs to them and anyone taking it from them (for example, the government through taxes) is practicing injustice. The same is true for many of the families whose wealth is based on the immoral if not illegal actions of their ancestors. I once pastored in a small town where the wealth of the richest person in the area came from his grandfather. That grandfather ruthlessly foreclosed on poor families during the Depression only to sell their homes a second if not third or fourth time and thus increased the family’s wealth.
I would imagine that many of the indigenous peoples of the Americas would like returned what used to belong to them and their ancestors. They managed to live on these continents for thousands and thousands of years without turning them into cesspools of pollution and countless acres of concrete and asphalt. And what about all the laborers in the world today who are worked up to fourteen hours a day and are paid pennies an hour in horrible work conditions so we can buy designer clothes at cheap prices? I would think they would appreciate being paid all the back wages they are owed had they been paid a fair and just amount for their labor.
Much of the coffee, chocolate, and fruit we buy comes from lands once owned by peasants who depended on the indigenous crops they needed to survive. These lands are often violently stolen from peasants so that cash crops can be grown and shipped elsewhere. Such a practice enriches the wealthy landowners while the peasants who once owned the land now work as day laborers and barely earn enough wages to survive. So, what would justice as defined by Brueggemann look like in these situations?
And then there is the bigger question. Our consumeristic culture is robbing the planet of resources that future generations will never enjoy because of our greed. What is the cost of our lifestyle to the planet itself and to future generations? Do these resources belong to us in such a way that we can do whatever we want with them? Apparently, that is our assumption. One wonders what Amos would say in our culture.
The bottom line—at least the biblical bottom line—is this: What we often think is ours is in fact not ours. We may have held it in our hands and in our hearts for so long that we think it’s ours, but it is not.
Perhaps a good place to start when we consider what justice means in our world is found in the first verse of Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world, and those who live in it.” If the psalmist is correct, then biblical justice demands that we recognize that everything, including ourselves, belongs to God. The question then becomes, what would God have us do with what belongs to God? It was this insight that led Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea to write these words in the 4th century:
“When someone steals a man’s clothes we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not. The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”
In our world where 815 million people are hungry, what does it mean to decide what belongs to whom and to return it to them? (The world produces enough food to feed 10 billion people. Hunger is not a matter of scarcity. It’s a matter of economics, greed, indifference, and politics.)
In our world where the homeless wander the streets, where refugees wait without hope, where children from New York to Rio to Calcutta dig through garbage trying to find something to eat or sell, what does it mean to decide what belongs to whom and to return it to them?
In our world where the environment is being mortgaged against our children and grandchildren by our insatiable desire for more, what does it mean to decide what belongs to whom and to return it to them? Whatever we decide, Amos would remind us that for God, justice is not a negotiable item. And he would probably also say that a little “trickle down” justice in our kind of world won’t do. His message to us would probably be the same message he thundered in 760 BCE to his own people: “Let justice roll down like waters; and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!” Israel, of course, did not heed Amos’ plea. So far, neither have we.
Communion: At this Table we instinctively know what belongs to whom. Everything belongs to God. Our very salvation, the healing of our spirits, and the cleansing of our souls are gifts from God. They are not our possessions–we have not earned them–we cannot control them–we should not hoard them. The Bread and the Wine which we handle with frail and sinful hands nourish us from sources beyond our capacity.
At this Table, God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And that gift of healing and salvation, of acceptance and regeneration rests lightly upon us because, properly received, grace is a blessing which opens our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to the Lordship of God whose glory fills the whole earth.
Commission: Let no man, woman or child leave this holy altar with proud and idolatrous notions of what belongs to them. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. At this Table and at the foot of our Crucified Lord, we know who we are and whose we are. Our world desperately needs to experience Christians who know that they and all they have belong to God. Only then can the long-awaited justice come to earth. And only then will we be free to let go and let God be our God by whose hand we are all fed. Amen.
