As we've been working our
way through the Book of the Prophet Amos this month, we've finally
come to the end. And while our lesson manual only calls for the bulk
of Amos 8, I think current events require us to zoom out a bit and
include the context, looking at Amos 7-9. In these chapters, Amos
gets a sequence of vision-messages: God sort of brainstorms with Amos
through riddles and pictures. In chapter seven, there are three of
them. In the wake of threatening that he was “raising up against
you a nation, O House of Israel” (Amos 6:14), God shows Amos a
massive swarm of locusts who would consume all the vegetation of the
whole land (Amos 7:1-2). But Amos objects that the judgment is too
harsh. It's overkill, he says, so God moves on to option two: a
shower of fire that would burn the land to a crisp (Amos 7:4).
Again, Amos objects: “O Lord God, cease, I beg you! How can
Jacob stand? He is so small!”
(Amos 7:5), and for a second time, God relents and cancels the
proposal (Amos 7:6).
Finally,
there's a third vision, and God asks Amos to describe it. Amos sees
it for what it is: a plumb line. God is standing next to a wall
built using a plumb line, and there he is, holding the plumb line
(Amos 7:7). The wall is being compared to the original standard.
And that's exactly what's happening: This plumb line is God's red
line, the final line, the one Israel does not get to cross and
survive. He says that he's “setting a plumb line in the midst of
my people Israel; I will never again pass them by,” never again
spare them or look the other way, never again back down. The plumb
line is the last straw (Amos 7:8).
Through
Amos, God delivers a final pronouncement that “the high places of
Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be
laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with a
sword” (Amos 7:9). In short, the climax of these three oracles is
a judgment against Israel's government and against the form of
religious worship officially endorsed by the state. All the organs
of official state ideology are subject to God's judgment because of
the way they've collaborated with the sinful desires of the Israelite
leisure class, who feel that they can bend God's laws to their whims.
Naturally,
this threatens the gatekeepers of public opinion, the propagandists
of the party line. That's really what Amaziah is. Amaziah is
introduced to the action here: his title is “priest of Bethel,”
which is the headquarters of Israel's state-sponsored pagan cult, the
established state religion – or, perhaps, irreligion. As soon as
he hears that Amos has declared a challenge to the state's idols, he
springs into action. Amaziah sends a letter to Jeroboam II, Israel's
king at the time, and lodges an official complaint, accusing Amos of
treason and of upsetting the status quo. In the very halls of power,
Amos has dared to speak against the state. And as in any tyranny,
that can't go indefinitely unpunished, because “the land is not
able to bear all his words” (Amos 7:10). Amos is officially a
rabble-rouser, a dissident. He's the exception to tolerance, he's a
threat to civil order, he must be stopped.
So
with a complaint lodged with the king, Amaziah takes it upon himself
to confront Amos. Amaziah tells him to take his trade and pack up
his bags and go home to Judah, because no one in Israel wants what
he's selling (Amos 7:12). Amaziah wants to have Amos kicked out of
Israel, excommunicated from society as a whole, because his challenge
to state ideology is just intolerable. Amaziah is very clear: he
does not want Amos prophesying at Bethel, “for it is the king's
sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom” (Amos 7:13). There's
no place for Amos' kind in the public square, Amaziah makes clear.
If Amos wants to worship God in private, he's welcome – for now –
but the moment he tries to live his public life in society on that
basis, he's crossed the line where Amaziah takes his stand. The
solution is censorship of speech and of action: “Do not prophesy
against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac” (Amos 7:16). It's the same as when the Sanhedrin freed Peter and John but
“ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus”
(Acts 4:18). Amos can talk about whatever else he wants, but he'd
best not dare touch the sacred cows in the state herd. He can preach
personal conversion to his heart's content, thanks to the state's
oh-so-generous permission, but now he's preaching politics, and that
breaks all the rules.
It's
a remarkably familiar story, when put in those terms. One of my favorite authors, G. K.
Chesterton, once famously said, “Once abolish the God, and the
Government becomes the God.” Just two days ago, our own government
– in terms of the judicial branch of the federal government –
took a decisive stand saying that marriage is officially something
other than what God made it, and that every state government
absolutely must play make-believe with the same legal fiction. Paul
said in Romans 1 that a confusion of the distinctions between created
things is the closest sin, as an idea, to idolatry itself, the
confusion of the distinction between creature and Creator. The de
facto law of our land now
enshrines confusion as a god – a culturally popular one, to boot –
in our fractured national pantheon and demands us to bow the knee to
Baal. You can worship whoever you want in private, but your public
actions – business decisions, political or charitable donations,
acts of speech – will in time be judged for compliance with the law of this
“temple of the kingdom.” As in Jeroboam's Israel, so in five
justices' America.
How
does Amos respond to Amaziah's ruling of exclusion from Israelite
society? Amaziah had made a claim, an accusation against Amos, that
Amos is just out to “earn [his] bread” in high-profile places
through his prophetic ministry. Amaziah accuses Amos of being
motivated by the quest for personal benefit. Amaziah has become so
compromised that he can't imagine being motivated by a conviction
about truth. Motives that pure are actually incomprehensible to
Amaziah. He doesn't think in terms of truth; he thinks in terms of
interests. About thirty years ago, the late Richard John Neuhaus –
one of the leading thinkers on issues of church and state in America
– wrote:
Without
a transcendent or religious point of reference, conflicts of values
cannot be resolved; there can only be procedures for their temporary
accommodation. Conflicts over values are viewed not as conflicts
between contending truths but as conflicts between contending
interests. … In a thoroughly secular society, notions of what is
morally excellent or morally base are not publicly admissible. That
is, they are not admissible as moral judgment: they have public
status only as they reflect the “interests” of those who hold
them. … In that approach, as we have seen, all values and all truth
claims are reduced to the status of individualistic “interests.”
Amaziah
is alive in America today! Just like Amaziah, many of the architects
of the modern American state pretend that truth is irrelevant, that
all that matters is balancing the interests of one group with the
interests of another. And many of those crowing in triumph in the
wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges
verdict accuse disappointed Christians of just being upset that we
didn't get our own way, of being sore losers. Just like Amaziah,
they can't see any issues of substance at stake, only the will to
power of one group pitted against the will to power of another. If
anything, through sleight-of-hand they'll proclaim that “love
wins,” that that's what this case was ultimately about. But “love
… does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Who here better stands for the real victory of
love: Amaziah or Amos?
Amos
rejects the not-so-subtle insinuation that his public stand is a
mercenary one, for sale to the highest bidder and peddled like vacuum
cleaners at people's doorsteps. Amos disavows any professional
status: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I am a herdsman,
and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the LORD
took me from following the flock, and the LORD
said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel'” (Amos 7:14-15). He
isn't in it for the money. He isn't in it out of choice. This
wasn't a life that Amos chose for himself, and it doesn't serve his
interests. He didn't pick it; God did. God wrenched him from his
peaceful, quiet life and tossed him into the thick of conflict with a
controversial message to bring, stoking the fires of public passion
and getting him nothing but ill-treatment and mockery. That's often
where God sends his unlikely messengers.
Amos
refuses to leave things at a secular plane, as though they could be
fully accounted for just by counting up the contents of the prophet's
wallet or seeing if he gets his kicks out of controlling others.
Amos instead jarringly reintroduces what Neuhaus called “a
transcendent point of reference,” saying that it was a divine call
that broke his life and gave him a mandatory message. Amos refuses
to assent to Amaziah's reduction of truth to interests. Amos insists
that self-interest takes a backseat to truth. The value of his
message isn't whether it helps Amos get ahead in life, the value of
his message isn't whether it wins him popularity contests, the value
of his message isn't whether it makes him feel good to think about
it. The value of his message is that it's true, and the truth has
practical consequences. And because Amaziah threw his hat in with
the authorities under judgment, the authorities insistent on censoring
Amos, he'd join their fate; Amos said that Amaziah would personally
“die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away
from its land” (Amos 7:17).
On
the other side of that face-to-face confrontation, Amos gets one last
vision from God: a bowl of fruit (Amos 8:1). It sounds like a cheap
painting you'd pick up at a yard sale! But there's a point being
made here. This is no plastic fruit; it will spoil and rot. And
Israel's shelf-life isn't looking so great. God actually gets a bit
punny here with Amos. He sees a basket of qayits,
summer fruit, and it shows the imminent qets,
the end, the doom of Israel. God repeats exactly what he said
before: “I will never again pass them by” (Amos 8:2). No more
second chances. When the fruit spoils, it's gone. When the doom
comes, the door's shut.
The
list of problems is familiar by now. They're the same ones that Amos
has been hammering at for the whole book: the corruption of the
judges, ensuring that the system can be manipulated to keep the poor
downtrodden. The elite class of Israelite society “trample on the
needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4). Some of
them pretend to be pious, devoted to the LORD.
But Amos has exposed that pretense. Even when they have to observe
the sabbath for outward appearances, Amos sees through the display.
Instead of finding joy in the rhythms that God established for our
benefit, they're eager and chomping at the bit to get back to their
real passion: commerce and deceit (Amos 8:5-6). They check their
watches when the sermon goes over, worried they'll miss the first
minutes of the big game. They find God's laws constricting and
unfair, and if they follow the big ones at all, it's only a
hypocritical show for the sake of social respectability, and not
because of any serious commitment to discipleship and transformation.
To
emphasize his seriousness, God swears an oath not to let Israel off
the hook; and he swears, not by himself, but by “the pride of
Jacob” (Amos 8:7), the very thing that he hates the most (Amos 6:8). To get out from under this divine commitment, they'd have to
repent! God swears that he will never forget what they've done,
never forget that they've decisively rejected him. And he promises
judgment that would shake the land like the rising and falling of the
Nile River (Amos 8:8; 9:5). Around the time Amos was preaching, a
massive earthquake struck Israel around 760 BC – stronger than
anything the continental United States have ever seen.
With
that on everyone's mind, God warns that he can make the land tremble
indeed. And, he poetically adds, “I will make the sun go down at
noon and darken the earth in broad daylight” (Amos 8:9). In books
of prophecy, it's common to use the sun, moon, and stars as a symbol
for nations and rulers. Think of the way Joseph dreamed about his
family government – the sun, moon, and stars – bowing down to
him. Think of the way Revelation talks about Jesus holding seven
stars in the palm of his hand. The imminent downfall of Jeroboam's
dynasty, and the disaster it will spell for the nation within a
generation, is serious enough to use the same language. And Amos was
right in prophesying a sword against Jeroboam's house: his own son
Zechariah wouldn't last six months before being assassinated by
Captain Shallum, who reigned a month before being assassinated
himself. God will indeed turn their feasts into mourning, their
songs into laments – because the fruit of sin is bitter, and God
won't restrain them from tasting it as it is. Over the last couple
of days, we've seen a great deal of celebration by the worldly –
including some who profess to belong to God's people – over the bad
law, bad philosophy, and bad culture-making in which a narrow Supreme
Court majority has been engaged. The official state ideology
collaborates with the desires of the elite American leisure class.
Let's pray that, unlike Israel in the days of Amos, the
plumb line hasn't been dropped just yet. Let's intercede on their
behalf more urgently even still.
We'd
like to think, as Americans, that we're special. So did Jeroboam's
nation. But they aren't as special as they assume. Sure, God saved
them in the past, leading them in an exodus – but God's had his
hand in plenty of national pies before and since: “Are you not like
the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? Didn't I bring Israel up
from the land of Egypt, and
the Philistines from Caphtor, and
the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). If even Israel wasn't chosen
in a way they could honestly brag about in front of even their worst
enemies, can we seriously think that America is? Aren't we like
Ethiopians or Philistines or Arameans before the LORD?
Amos
warns that the final curse is “a famine on the land – not a
famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of
the LORD”
(Amos 8:11). This is the last straw. Having shown Amos the door,
the people of Israel are going to find that this amateur prophet was
their final lifeline. When all grows dark, when the time of luxury
unravels, when Jeroboam's twisted parody of Solomon's glory loses all
its lustre, the people will wish they had a word from God to get
through it. They'll want that comfort, that hope, that glimpse of
light at the end of the tunnel. And with Amos gone, they'll come up
dry. God has said all he has to say to them.
That
sounds cruel, almost – but it isn't. The people will “run to and
fro, seeking the word of the LORD,”
they'll “wander from sea to sea,” they'll go questing in the
north and searching in the east – but there's one direction they
won't go: south (Amos 8:12). South to Judah, where they sent Amos
packing, where the LORD
still sends prophets to his people. This famine is largely of their
own making. That old “pride of Jacob” will keep them stuck in
their sin. They're desperate, they'll go anywhere, they'll do
anything – except the right thing. They'll ask anybody – except
God.
See,
Amos does end his book with a prophecy of hope and restoration (Amos 9:11-15). But Israel chose not to even hear him out to the end of
his case. They chose to stop up their ears, they chose to avert
their eyes, they chose ignorance of the truth. They don't want to
hear it. Their minds are made up: Amos is nothing but a bigot and a
hater, he's on the wrong side of history, he has no place in the
national conversation, his voice is a danger, he must be silenced.
So they don't know that the bad news always gives way to good news!
They don't know that there's always a gospel after the earthquake! They
don't know that comforting word of peace and security, through the
falling and rising of David's booth in Jesus Christ (Amos 9:11).
Unless they know to store their life in what will rise even though it
falls, they're doomed to “fall and never rise again” (Amos 8:14),
the fate of everyone whose ultimate allegiance is to the official
ideology of any earthly power, including our own impulse to play at
being kings for a day.
Amaziah
can evict, Jeroboam can frighten, the elites can bribe and feast and
lie – and, to be sure, many well-meaning people will be swept up in
the currents of culture that Amaziah's kin are stirring. It's no
surprise that “distressing times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). But
Amaziah does not last. Amaziah does not have the last word. The
LORD
does, even when he chooses to bring it through unlikely figures like
Amos and you and me. The recent Orthodox saint Elder Paisios of the
Holy Mountain once remarked, “What I see around me would drive me
insane if I did not know that, no matter what happens, God will have
the last word.” And God will have the last word. Amos had no
reason to be afraid of Amaziah. Amaziah can do his worst, but God's
call is God's call, and while Amaziah is dead and gone, our God is
alive! So even today, Amaziah's followers can mock us, they can
belittle and misrepresent us, they can accuse us of acting in bad
faith, they can try to shut us out of the public square, they can try
to exile us into insignificance, they can even go so far as to
challenge our livelihoods. But God's people have seen plenty worse.
If
we're thinking with the mind of Christ, this should scarcely faze us.
It's sad, it's bad for people both within the church and outside of
it, but we will get the message out. Like Amos, we persist in
proclaiming a message “by which all existing establishments and
revolutionary would-be establishments are brought under divine
promise and judgment,” to quote Neuhaus again. We dare to
contradict the new gods of identity politics, just as we contradicted
the gods of Greece and Rome. They called it blasphemy then, they may
do the same now. If we have to proclaim it from the margins of
society instead of the halls of power, so be it. If we have to
proclaim it from poverty or prison or exile, so be it. The people of
the truth cannot be silenced. With gentleness, with respect, with
winsome words backed up by actions of evident love, we will not stop
living according to the word of God – not just teaching our faith,
but exercising it also. “I have kept for myself seven thousand who
have not bowed the knee to Baal,” says the LORD
(1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:4). Whatever happens to to our bodies or
our possessions, no disciple of Amaziah can destroy a believer's soul
(cf. Matthew 10:28). Whether in this age or the age of resurrection
to come, you and I will see the end of this Court term. You and I
will see the end of the next election cycle, and the next, and the
next. You and I will see the rise and fall of nations. When
proclaiming the good news, the church has the mandate of urgency; but
when weathering the changing winds of culture and law, the church has
the luxury of God's own patience: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Peter 3:8). This will pass. “The grass
withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God will stand
forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
