Thursday 05 June 2014

Background

How often do we hear the accusation that religious people arehypocrites, going through the motions, but not really practisingwhat they preach? In this passage Amos condemns those whodemonstrate religious fervour, but do not live up to what Godexpects of them.

No work was permitted on the day of a new moon, for example, butAmos singles out the merchants who "observe" holy practices, whilstbeing impatient to then practice injustice. In the market thesemerchants were under-selling grain, practicing fraud through theuse of weighted scales, and exploiting the poorest who had nochoice but to buy "the sweepings of the wheat" (v. 6).

Such injustices have not only a social dimension - increasinginequality and poverty in society - but also a religious one.Pretending to be pious in one's observance, whilst all the timeplotting how to ruin the poorest, offends God. Worship requires oneto offer the whole of one's self before God, not just on holydays.

Amos is clear that judgement - complete, devastating and total -is inescapable for the people of Israel. God's people have abusedthe covenant, and as a result the end has come for them. Theconsequences of refusing to listen to God's word through theprophets means there will be an end to the divine word in Israel.God will never again show them favour, and the injunction "Besilent!" (v. 3) is a horrifying realisation that there is nothingmore that can be said. No intercessions, no repentance will be ableto repair the breach.

The devastation described by Amos is almost like creation beingput into reverse: "I will make the sun go down at noon, and darkenthe earth in broad daylight" (v. 9). The people of Israel will beput into mourning, both for what they have lost - food, plenty, ahome - but also for the word of the Lord. Wrongdoing against Godhas serious consequences.

To Ponder

• How would our churches measure up to Amos's charges ofhypocrisy today?

• Mother Teresa wrote: "As for me, the silence and emptiness isso great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." Many of us experience God's silence sometimes than we everdare admit.  In the light of reading today's passage, Have youever felt God's silence? What did it feel like? And what (ifanything) have you discovered from it?

• What examples of present day injustice should we be prophesyingagainst?