|
"What do you see?"
"A basket of ripe fruit."
Amos was a prophet, a seer. He declared the word of the Lord to Israel in the 8th C BC.
I first studied his writings when doing 'A' Level RE at school.
The title of one of my essays was:
"Amos believed that an affluent society which ignored moral principles was doomed to destruction. How did he express this belief?"
As today's Old Testament reading shows, Amos 'saw' things. Ordinary things like a basket of ripe fruit. He saw this as a sign of God's impending judgement.
In the Hebrew language of Amos, it's a word-play.
The Hebrew word for 'ripe fruit' is 'qayitz', which sounds very like the Hebrew for 'the end', 'qetz'. In other words, 'the end' was near for the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
It was ripe for the plucking and would soon be taken and consumed by more powerful nations in the jostle for supremacy in the Middle East, which was as vicious then as it is now.
A basket of ripe fruit. Its end is near. It's here today and gone tomorrow.
That's OK for fruit, but it's a scary thing to say to a nation.
In fact Amos' message was so unpopular that he was accused of treason.
Amos believed that an affluent society which ignored moral principles was doomed to destruction. The message of Amos makes sobering reading, especially if you and I open our eyes and see that there are many parallels between what was happening to society in the time of Amos and what is happening around us here and now.
So here are a few things to think about from today's Old Testament reading:
1. Amos believed that God is the Sovereign Lord of history and of nature.
That God can and does work through both the political circumstances of peoples and nations and through natural calamities. God is the Sovereign Lord - of all the forces of nature and of all the nations of the world. Do we share that belief?
2. Amos believed that the Sovereign Lord sees the way in which a society conducts its business, does its trading and commerce, whether or not its economic standards are fair. Especially, God cares about how society treats its poor people, the under-privileged and marginalised, the widows and orphans, sick and frail members - those who can so easily sink into poverty, even slavery.
Amos believed that a society that allows the gap between rich and poor to get bigger and bigger is under God's judgement. What do we think about that?
3. Amos believed that simply going through the outward motions of religion was not enough. Turning up at a place of worship, celebrating religious festivals, singing hymns and so on - all that is unacceptable in God's sight if it is not matched by a real hunger to hear God's Word and a real commitment to put that word into action.
Hearing and doing the word of the Lord is at the heart of a living faith, for individuals and communities alike. How do we respond to that prophetic challenge?
4. But Amos also believed that access to God's Word should not be taken for granted.
If God's Word is ignored and neglected, scorned and rejected for long enough, then the day would come when people might again search for it, but not find it.
And what a terrible day that would be, said Amos.
It would be as devastating as famine; but this time, "not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord" (8:11).
Human society - both in the time of Amos and still today - has so much about it that is wrong: unfair, unjust, greedy, selfish, sinful. So much that is ripe for judgement.
And in the eyes of Old Testament prophets like Amos, there was, frankly, little real ground for hope. In most of his oracles, Amos was a prophet of doom.
In chapter 5, for example, he lamented over Israel in these words:
"Fallen, fallen is Virgin Israel, never to rise again, deserted in her own land, with no-one to lift her up".
The writers of the New Testament were also well aware of the mistakes and mess of human society. They never once suggest that God condones sin or takes it lightly. The entire Bible consistently warns that sin is a serious deadly disease, and that to remain in it has dire consequences. And yet, it is through the New Testament that we can see that there is a cure for our sinfulness, a remedy to be found only through the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Our second reading is from St Paul's letter to the church in Colosse (that's in present-day Turkey). Paul wrote to the Colossians:
"Once you were alienated from God" - you were enemies of God in your thinking and in your evil behaviour.
"But now" - that's one of Paul's favourite phrases whenever he wrote about the contrast between the darkness and despair and destruction caused by sin, and the light and hope and freedom that God offers us through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the Cross.
"But now", because of the Cross, you and I and anyone who truly wants it, can find forgiveness, reconciliation and peace with God.
Unlike the people to whom Amos prophesied, God's word to us is not that we are "fallen, never to rise again", but that in Christ we can be raised from sin and death, if we continue firm in our faith, not shifting from the hope held out to us in the gospel (Col.1:23).
A book I'm reading at the moment reminded me of the old story of the blind men who encountered an elephant. None of them had ever seen an elephant or even heard of elephants before. So when they met one, all they could do was grope around touching the part nearest to them, and since they all felt a different part, they couldn't agree on what the elephant was really like and they got into fights about it. And, of course, they were all wrong and deluded because none of them could actually see the elephant
The moral of that little story is supposed to be that, when it comes to matters of faith and religion, all human beings are just like the blind men, groping about in the dark, arguing about something we can never see or comprehend. To put it another way, we are just like ants crawling around on the ground, unable to see anything beyond the next blade of grass, let alone grasp the mysteries of the universe.
Well, that's not the teaching of the New Testament.
That's not the message of Christianity.
Nobody has ever seen God, says St John; but in Jesus, God has come near to us and become one of us. (John 1: 18) The Son has made the Father known to us.
God is invisible, says St Paul; but Christ is the image of God and God chose to have all His fullness dwell in Jesus Christ - so that the mystery that had been kept hidden for ages is now disclosed, available for everyone to hear about.
I wonder if anyone here in church this morning stayed up all night reading the final 'Harry Potter' book? Folk have been waiting for its publication for ages! What actually happens in the end has been one of the world's best kept secrets; and in case you want to read it for yourself, don't worry, I'm not going to disclose it now!
The publication of the New Testament is a little bit like that - except of course that it's a true story, and what happens to Jesus in the Gospel account is far more important to the whole human race than what happens to the fictional Harry Potter!
Christianity is Jesus Christ. Many people, many religions, many systems of philosophy have admitted that there is 'something or somebody out there'. But the Christian Gospel says that in Jesus we find ourselves looking at the true God Himself.
And the Good News of the Christian story is that what we discover, the more we read it and reflect on it, is not a cold and distant divine dictator, not a wicked wizard manipulating people by magic, not an unforgiving tyrant of a god who enjoys punishing people. No. The more we look at Jesus, the more we realize that the true God is the God of undying self-giving love.
Mary Barr
Click to return to the list of further sermons.
Go to top
|
