Amos 5:18-24
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13
Psalm 70
In the winter of 1952-53, a 23 year old graduate student at Boston University was studying the prophets, and like all good students, he made notes reflecting on the texts he was exploring.
When he came to today's passage from Amos, the earnest and ambitious young man, already ordained Baptist minister by 19, wrote to himself:
" This passage might be called the key passage of the entire book. It reveals the deep ethical nature of God. God is a God that demands justice rather than sacrifice; righteousness rather than ritual. The most elaborate worship is but an insult to God when offered by those who have no mind to conform to his ethical demands. Certainly this is one of the most noble idea ever uttered by the human mind.
" One may raise the question as to whether Amos was against all ritual and sacrifice, i.e. worship. I think not. It seems to me that Amos' concern is the ever-present tendency to make ritual and sacrifice a substitute for ethical living. Unless a man's heart is right, Amos seems to be saying, the external forms of worship mean nothing. God is a God that demands justice, and sacrifice can never be a substitute for it. Who can disagree with such a notion? "
Certainly, in the 1950s when this studious young minister encountered the words of Amos that we heard today--many would have disagreed with such a notion. It was the 1950s, a time that we remember for the growth of the middle class and the suburbs. Of the dawn of television and fast food. The golden age of the nuclear family and the high point of church going in the United States.
The high point of tuna casserole, the ultimate comfort food.
Sure, there was a war on, in a poor country far away, but what we were doing was fighting for our way of life, after all. And if some citizens were not quite equal or equally sharing in the country's expanding wealth----well, they probably liked being where they were.
And many of "those people" weren't "nice."
Yes, Americans could look into a mirror and see their own goodness. They could join together in droves and worship on Sundays, with people who looked and spoke and dressed and acted just like themselves. They could move from the cities into new communities where their children would never know the cries of the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the oppressed.
What a world to be thankful for.
And just as Amos had warned Israel of its empty rituals, speaking for a God who despised those who worshipped grandly, but with hollow hearts, that young man studying in Boston would call his nation into account. All the wealth and glory meant nothing if we did not live with justice in our hearts and walk the walk.
His name was Martin Luther King and he left Boston to take a church in Montgomery Alabama. Along with Rosa Parks and thousands of others, he demanded that the United States live up to its promises, that we treat all with equal justice and walk in the path of the lord.
You've heard the prophetic echo, in his famous "I have a Dream" speech, the echo of this passage from Amos:
That these words can gain so much strength reminds us that we must never hold the prophets at arms length, whatever odd ducks the likes of Amos and Hosea may seem to us now. Amos, that migrant sheep farmer, was moved the Spirit to speak to the heart of King, the long dead civil rights leader.
For many of us, surely the waning days of the Korean War and Jim Crow are as distant as ancient Israel.
Why, my father was just getting drafted while King sat reading Amos, and I wasn't yet born.
What could any of this have to do with me now?
PErhaps if I look carefully at those words and see them a new, I'll get it. Amos was called to describe God's thirst for justice and righteousness in natural terms: "like waters, "like an everflowing stream."
Now, here in the land of 10,000 lakes and lots of rivers--I believe Minnesota has more rivers and streams than any other state, this imagery is easy for us to get our minds around.
We can go outside and walk a few blocks, and see a river, a falls. It may seem like a cliche.
Let's make it new. Let's see it through the eyes of those to whom Amos spoke. For Amos's audience, the notion of a everflowing stream was a surprising and power symbol. God's thirst for us to follow in the ways of justice was as powerful as a flooding stream in a desert land where the streams were usually dry beds.
Sure, the Israelites could enrich themselves on the back of the oppressed, make the poor poorer, and offered the best of their ill gotten gain to the Lord. But God spoke through Amos of the coming flood of justice and righteousness.
And it's perhaps in these terms that I as a self-satisfied, comfortable American should view Amos' scolding words. I remember the great floods of 1965, of the 1990s, of this summer, and I should not comfort myself that somehow going to church and playing Christian will defer the very nature of God.
Every day I hear the voices of prosperity and self-congratulation, those pats on the back we Americans love to give ourselves. We are so good, we are so rich, we are so powerful. We are Christians and our enemies are evil. We can pick lives of rich comforts and ignorant bliss.
If I do not stand up and demand justice for all, the poor, the oppressed, the resident alien, all of the sheep whom Jesus loved so dearly, then I will drown in the rolling waters. If I do not heed the great commendment to love my neighbor as myself, then I will drown. If I do not bring the oil of justice and righteousness to my daily life, choosing instead the empty lamp of worship without love and justice, I will be a foolish bridesmaid indeed.
I will be locked out and I will drown.