Sermon 15th June 2014

Today, Gill Tayleur, our Honorary Assistant Minister, continues our study of the Minor Prophets. This week, we are looking at Amos.

Two men are walking through the African savannah when they suddenly hear a lion roar. It’s terrifying! The first man drops his backpack, digs out a pair of trainers, and frantically begins to put them on. The 2nd man says, "What are you doing? Trainers won’t help you outrun a lion." "I don't need to outrun the lion," the 1st guy says. "I just need to outrun you."

As we’ve heard, today we continue our series on the minor prophets looking at Amos.

Before he was a prophet, Amos was a shepherd, possibly a sheep breeder rather than one man with a few sheep. He grew up in a village called Tekoa, 12 miles southeast of Jerusalem. This was nearly 800 years before Christ, roughly the same time as Isaiah, and the prophet Hosea we heard about a few weeks ago. Amos was a shepherd in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, but God called him to go and be a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  It was in the reign of Jeroboam 2^nd, probably about 50 years before the northern kingdom of Israel was taken in to exile by the Assyrians in 722 BC.

At this time, Israel was outwardly prosperous, but some terrible things were going on spiritually. Israel’s economic security had caused the people to become a selfish, materialistic society. Those who were well-off ignored the needs of those less fortunate,

caring only for their own comfort. Amos spoke out against those who were complacent, especially about injustice & oppression.

As Cameron explained last week, the role of a prophet was both to foretell and forth tell, messages from God. A prophet foretold what was going to happen in the future, and forthtold what God thought about the present, what was really going on now.

The book of Amos contains both these sorts of prophesy, foretelling and forthtelling.

The foretelling was a message of judgement, and the forthtelling a call to recognise

what was happening to cause that judgement. As we just heard, Amos begins with these words from God,  in chapter 1 verse 2:

“The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem”.

The word for “roars” is the same word used of a lion’s roar – to which the only appropriate response is fear and trembling! Not for Amos did God speak in a still small voice of calm, but in a voice like a lion’s roaring, and as a shepherd Amos would have known a lion’s roar would drive people & animals who heard it into a terrified panic.

These days, most of us choose to read and think about the pictures of God in the Bible

that are comforting: the caring shepherd of Psalm 23, God’s everlasting arms

keeping us safe in Deuteronomy 33, the nursing mother of Psalm 131 or the loving Father

of the prodigal son story. Of course they are true. But when we open the book of Amos we discover on the first page that encountering God is like meeting a lion! And the following verses announce God sending fire & an earthquake. Scary stuff indeed. This picture of God as a roaring lion conveys the ferocity and anger of a God we try to domesticate & tame.

So what has set off such a divine roaring? What has unleashed such fury against a people God still calls “my people”? What were they doing wrong? And might we be doing anything similar?

After this dramatic start to the book of Amos with the lion’s roar, the next two chapters

proclaim God’s judgement on a list of neighbouring countries that had sinned against God and harmed his people. Beginning with Aram, he moved quickly through Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab. All these enemies of Israel were condemned one by one. We can imagine the listening Israelites cheering their condemnation, “Yay! Gettem!” And then, even Judah, Amos’ homeland, was included in God’s scathing denunciation. How Amos’ listeners must have enjoyed hearing those words! But suddenly the smiles were wiped off their faces, as Amos turned to the people of Israel and pronounced God’s judgement on them too. Ouch.

The next four chapters describe their sin, and it’s ugly. More about this in a minute. It’s followed by a series of visions Amos had that relate to future judgement, often referred to as The Day of the Lord (as we heard from the prophet Joel last week). It’s described as being as dreadful as: if you run away from a lion – only to meet a bear! Or you go into a house & lean against a wall – and a snake bites you! Amos says, “Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light, pitch dark, without a ray of brightness?” And so on.

After this terrible message of judgement, finally the book of Amos finishes with a essage of hope, that God will restore his people and make them great again.

So, what is it that provoked God’s anger and judgement on these his people?

In chapter 4 there’s a refrain that “you have not returned to me”, in verses 6, 8, 9, 10 & 11, five times. The bottom line on what caused God’s anger, is the people’s refusal

to turn, or return, to God. They were far from him and from living his ways. Like the message we heard from the prophet Joel last week, Amos gives a call to repentance,

to turn, to return, to come back, to God.

Now the people of Israel at that time appeared to have turned to God, appeared to be religious, on the surface, they seemed to do the right things to worship God. In chapter 5 we read that they worshipped God with music and singing, they made the right sacrifices, burnt offerings, grain offerings and fellowship offerings. But through Amos God said he hated it all, that it was all a sham, just a show.

Because really, in their hearts, they were complacent. They were complacent to God,

and to the needs of others, to injustice and poverty.

First they were complacent to God, despite the outward appearance of attendance at worship and making offerings to him. Even while doing these ‘right’ things on the surface, underneath their hearts were not engaged. Speaking on this passage, the American Baptist theologian John Piper says, “Amos is a devastating book for people who give token attention to God through assembling for worship & songs, but whose hearts are much more genuinely engaged by sports, or business, or family, or hobbies. If your outward acts of worship are a mask to give you some respectability while your heart is really attached to the world and to your own comfort, then God hates your worship and despises your songs. The people’s hearts were far from God, and through Amos he cried out to them to return to him. Don’t equate God with places of worship

or acts of religion. He is real. He is a person. Seek Him. Know him. Love him. Have dealings with him. Return to your God.”

Are we complacent in our relationship with God? Do we turn up on Sunday and expect to enjoy singing the songs, meeting our friends, hear the message that “God loves me”,

but the rest of the week go our own sweet way? Do we really put knowing and serving God first, all the time? Or are we complacent, a bit lazy in our relationship with God? A bit lazy and complacent about the sin or wrongdoing in our everyday lives? Are we prepared to put time and effort in to reading the Bible, prayer, to the love and service

of God, or are we complacent?

In chapter 6 Amos describes one of the things that contributes to their complacency towards God, namely their love of comfort. Verse 4:

“You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile;

your feasting and lounging will end.”

The people’s love of comfort and luxury fuelled their complacency towards God. And our love of comfort, and luxury does too, because making our own comfort a priority, makes us pay less attention to those in greater need. It’s true isn’t it – speaking for myself too, very much so - we want to have comforts and treats for ourselves more than we want to care for and share with others. And that is a vicious circle that hardens our hearts: the more lovely and comfortable are the things we surround ourselves with, the more we want to hang on to them, and want even more of them, and want to put our own comfort first before others’ needs. One of the commentaries on Amos I’ve read this week refers to an “addiction to luxury”. Addictions want more and more, and get a greater and greater hold in our lives. [I don’t like hearing this any more than you do, but it’s true isn’t it?! I for one am addicted to comfort, and it makes me turn away from God, rather than toward him...]

John Piper again: “What governs your getting & spending? Is it the desire to fill your three score year and ten with as much comfort as you can? Or is it the God-given desire to do as much good for others as you can to the glory of Christ?”

And this love of comfort, addiction to it even, leads to the other thing the people were doing that led to God’s roaring judgement: injustice and oppression of the poor and weak. In chapter 8 we read they used dishonest scales to cheat people, they added a bit extra on to the price of things they were selling, they were dishonest, they cheated people.

What about us? We don’t cheat people do we? Well do we? When we buy goods at a price that means their makers, or growers, are paid a pittance and exploited, are we actually cheating them? And what are we doing about the needs of people less well off than ourselves here on our doorstep, in London? And do we really care about justice?

The word justice may bring to mind the picture you get when you Google images the word justice: a woman, blindfolded, holding a set of scales in front of her. Justice like that is a static concept, a noun, describing the achievement of fairness and equality

symbolised in the state of balance where all is at rest. But the image Amos calls to mind

is very different. Chapter 5 verse 24 famously says

Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Justice is like a surging, churning, cleansing river. All is in motion & commotion, nothing at rest. Justice is active! And we’re to be active in bringing justice about.

In his commentary James Limburg says that when Amos and the other Old Testament prophets speak of justice, “they lead us through those quarters of the city where the poor live, they invite us to look into the eyes of the lonely widow, the hurting orphan, and the hungry beggar. Or they take us through the countryside and introduce us to a young couple about to lose the family farm. Or we may be led through a home for the aged, where a lonely hand reaches out to be touched. When the people of God

expend their imagination and their energy in advocacy, in working to remove the discrimination built into economic and legal systems, in finding ever new and more effective ways to take up the cause of the powerless, then justice will begin to roll through the land like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

The challenge to complacency, to addiction to comfort, to hardness of heart toward the poor, and injustice, is a hard message to hear. You might be thinking how can she give this hard challenge today, at this time, when many of us may be feeling “battered”, as Cameron put it last week, battered by so much that is difficult and desperately painful, especially after the service for Nicky yesterday. Today we want

a message of comfort, about God as our loving Father taking care of us, not a lion’s roar.

Well maybe the day after a memorial service is exactly a good time to hear the call to come back, to return to God & be shaken from our complacency: none of us knows

how long we have to live, and every day counts. It’s a dire mistake to say, “I will come back to God and take him seriously, just not today. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll worship

and serve him better when I’ve got more energy, more resources, soon, but not today. And besides, I need a break after yesterday.” Yes, many people worked really hard to make yesterday go as smoothly as it did. The service, the children, the tea, the clearing up. But let’s not slip into complacency. It’s relatively easy to work hard in a crisis situation, to step up and help on a one-off basis, but what about making sure our worship is real and putting others’ needs before our own comfort, and working for justice, day in day out, year in year out?

Many of us are excited about the ways in which we serve the local community

and the new ways we hope to start doing so. Excited about what’s going to come out of the Discovery process, focusing on Milkwood, and about the new opportunities

we have with this newly refurbished building (St Paul’s).

New things to serve the community. But who’s going to make them happen? We already have many areas in church life where we’re short of volunteers: musicians, people to get out the chairs for worship each week, people on the welcome team

at the door, to help with the sound system, or OHP, to help with Children’s Church,

to name a few. / people to help with Children’s Church, with gardening, with coffee for playgroup, to name a few.

The Opportunities for Service Booklet at the back lists them. When we hear of the need for volunteers, from helping with children’s church to the Foodbank appeal for help, do we think, “why should I do that, why me?” Or do we think, “why shouldn’t I do that, why not me?”Of course there are people who already contribute massively to serving here

in this church and community. But every single one of us needs to play our part. There is no room for complacency!

I’d like to finish with the picture of God that Amos gives us. Three times Amos pauses

to paint a picture of who this Lord of judgement is. In chapter 4 v 13 he reminds us that God is the one who “forms the mountains, creates the wind and reveals his thoughts to man, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth – the Lord God Almighty is his name.”

In chapter 5 verse 8 Amos calls God “he who made the Pleiades & Orion, who turns blackness into dawn and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land – the Lord is his name.”

And again in the last chapter of the book of Amos, in verses 5 & 6 of chapter 9: “The Lord, the Lord Almighty, he who touches the earth and it melts, & all who live in it mourn – [the whole land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt ]– he who builds his lofty palace in the heavens and sets its foundation on the earth, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land – the Lord is his name.”

In all these 3 pictures of God, it’s as if Amos is saying, Remember who we are talking about here! This is the creator God! He makes mountains like Play-Dough, and mighty wind with a whisper. He knows the workings of the solar system, and steps across the Alps in one stride. We must listen! This is Almighty God speaking! He is the one we must come back to, return to – today.

So let us do that, especially as we come to Holy Communion, where we receive the tokens of God’s marvellous mercy and love, seen in Christ’s death for us on the cross,

and receiving the Holy Spirit to empower us to live differently.

This hard challenging message about complacency needs to be heard in that context,

this Trinity Sunday, having Father Son and Spirit with us & in us, to enable us to live for Him, so let’s hear it and receive it today. And now let’s pray...