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"Don’t Talk Like That Around Here" | Amos 7.7-15 | July 11, 2004 |
The gloom and doom message is delivered by Amos, a shepherd from Tekoa which is the backside of nowhere. It is a desolate part of Palestine south of Bethlehem near the Dead Sea. It is virtually uninhabitable with its grey limestone hills, scrub grass and few trees. But it is a region where Amos’ people have lived untouched, uncontaminated by the incorporation of strange modern intrusions or prosperity. Amos has been in the desert school of vigilance where he learned to take note of every movement and sound. He also listened to the silence and meditated on the word of God.
So this nobody from nowhere pronounces judgment on Israel. How come? Why did he erupt with such volcanic furor? What stoked his white-hot anger?
It is what he saw. There was affluence beyond his imagination. Never before had so few had so much. While his folks lived in tents, some of these city folk had two houses. Their couches were made of gold inlaid ivory; they drank wine by the bucket full. But it wasn’t just the wealth that bothered him nor that the Jerusalem ‘J-Mart’ was open on the Sabbath, nor that the temple parking lot was filled with Sports Utility Camels or that the population was so obese that their robes needed to be super-sized. No, what upset him was that this life of ease was available only for some. There was an awesome gap between the haves and the have-nots. This nation which was supposed to be the chosen of God was no longer a family of people. The poor were unable to get a fair hearing in court because they could not afford to bribe the officials who were supposed to provide justice. The poor could not get honest treatment in the market place. The land was one of injustice, bribery and graft. He saw human beings being treated like animals and ox carts. In fact the poor could not afford so much as a pair of sandals. The poor, almost always in debt, were sold into slavery to pay those debts. Brother defrauded brother. Families were conned out of the home place and free people were turned into serfs.
So Amos says, “I have a message from God. God is like a builder who has come here with a plumb line and cannot find anything square. Nothing you have built here is secure enough to last. This house is going to come down on you. A community of such injustice cannot, will not survive. Look to the North. Assyria is poised to gobble up Israel. You are like over ripe fruit about to be plucked. You all are doomed! All your fancy religious festivals are meaningless. You have allowed idolatry and injustice to corrupt this nation. No clever alliances or trade agreements will save you now!”
When word of this blistering attack got back to the royal court they were not amused. Amaziah, who was chaplain to the king, who led the king’s annual prayer breakfast, who planned the religious festivals, who gave the invocation at the royal races and generally had the king’s ear asks the king if he would like for him to bring Amos in for a chat. “Whatever you say,” responds the king.
Amaziah has Amos rounded up and says to him (in effect), “Don’t talk like that around here!” You will disturb the king and the king’s standing in the polls. You will negatively affect the stock market and upset delicate negotiations with our neighbors. Why don’t you take your little tirade back into the sticks where you came from. Find some more primitive folk who enjoy the fire and brimstone stuff. But as of now, here, you are forbidden to touch the Assyrian issue. And if you don’t take my advice we will pull your credentials—passport, press pass, ordination and license—the works.
Amos is not intimidated and points out that he is not a member of the prophets guild nor does he have any credentials to lose. All he has is a message from God. “Build a just society on the principles handed down to Moses from Mt. Sinai.”
Some eight centuries later a man who had studied the Law of Moses asked Jesus a question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with a question: “What does the law say?” The man knows God’s plumb line: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
“That’s right,” replies Jesus, “Do this and you will live.”
Then the man asked the big, tough question – “Who is my neighbor?”
This prompted Jesus to tell one of his most memorable parables. We call it the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is so familiar to us that the placing of the hated Samaritan as the hero figure has lost its shocking punch. It would be like putting an Islamic extremist in the role of the Samaritan. Surely there were those who heard this story and said or thought, “He can’t talk like that around here.”
Samuel Wells in a commentary on this text in a recent Christian Century (June 20, 2004) invites us to imagine a report of a Congressional committee on the events on the Jerusalem-Jericho road.
“The Inquiry is satisfied that the priest acted in a thoroughly professional manner. We are aware that he is a man of high profile in Jerusalem society, and that his first priority is to conduct his temple duties in a proper manner. Getting involved in self-indulgent gestures of solidarity is not recommended: such projects are invariably underresourced, non-strategic and open to media misinterpretation. Moreover, such involvement can have dangerous implications: if the wounded man had been found dead, the priest would have made himself unclean and thus been invalidated from conducting his core task for several days. On the other hand, the half-dead man could have been bait in a trap: the robbers might have been lurking nearby. We judge that the priest correctly valued his own security to be more significant than a pointless gesture.
The Inquiry is similarly satisfied that the Levite did all that could have been expected of him. He showed commendable humility in following the example of his superior, the priest, and keeping to the policy of nonintervention in circumstances of profound emotional manipulation. The Levite was subject to the same dangers that applied to the priest. All the best health and safety advice points to supporting the actions of the priest and Levite. Theirs is a model of interagency collaborative thinking.
Turning to the actions of the third party, the Inquiry became suspicious on a number of grounds. We quickly realized we were dealing here with a person who felt society’s norms could be flouted at will. On the most generous reading, the man showed an unprofessional attitude by allowing his emotions to sway his judgment. Early signs were that he was not local to Jericho, and became embroiled in matters that had nothing to do with him. The Inquiry was alarmed at the man’s behavior in parading the half-dead man into Jericho on an animal. Either this was some kind of effort to show off a misguided gesture before the townspeople, on some puffed-up maneuver designed to shame them, or–and we suspect the latter–it was a foreigner’s attempt to humiliate the townspeople. Local speculation had it that the man had carried out the beating himself, and was displaying the victim in an effort to intimidate the townspeople through a shameless feat of bravado.
It has come to our attention that the man who performed this regrettable series of actions was a Samaritan. It is likely that he was a criminal who assaulted a Jew, paraded him through town and left him with crippling debts.
We conclude that the Samaritan was either a dangerous criminal or a naive fool. If everyone followed his example, we would all soon be half-dead and at the mercy of robbers. The only appropriate model of engagement with issues of social deprivation is that of the priest and the Levite, who acted with dignity and forbearance. We honor people of their caliber who establish careful codes of conduct, respect the privacy of the individual, follow health and safety legislation to the letter, and do not take on tasks that conflict with their roles. They make society what it is today.”
It is always difficult to speak truth to power. Pray that we are not among those who say, “You can’t talk that way around here!” Amen
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2004 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |