And now for something completely different. Hosea whom we looked at two weeks ago was an 8^th century prophet who warned people that because of their lack of love for God and their prostitution of their faith through adulterous relationships with other gods they would go into exile. Then we saw Joel, who is not easy to date, believing that a plague of locusts heralded the start of God’s apocalyptic judgement, which might, however, be held back by deep penitence for sin. Now we come to Amos, a slightly earlier contemporary of Hosea, also ministering in the North, also predicting  judgement, but for very different reasons.

His message, and his style, were aimed at people who were basically complacent and self-satisfied. It wasn’t that they were bad at loving God, but that they were dreadful at loving their neighbours.

He begins to tickle their complacency by a cook’s tour of the surrounding nations, each of which is roundly condemned for some area of sin. You can just hear the applause after each nation is mentioned, as self-righteousness and xenophobia combine to make the people feel better and better. The penultimate straw is his condemnation of Judah, their despised brothers to the South: this would really have raised the roof. But then the hammer drops as in 2:6 Israel itself get exactly the same treatment. Not only does this condemn them for their sins, but also it tells them that they are no better than all these hated foreigners in God’s sight. All alike are ripe for punishment.

The sins of Israel, though, are not about their lack of devotion to God. Indeed their worship and music are exemplary (5:21-24). It’s just that it is so much hot air, and does not show itself in care and concern for the poor, needy and broken of society. Their worship really is the Tory Party at Prayer, while the humble poor are neglected. The rich get richer, and enjoy a life of ease, while the poor are further beaten into the dust. And no-one even seems to care, or even to notice.

It isn’t that God hasn’t tried to get their attention. In chapter 4 there is a list of disasters which have overtaken the nation: famine, drought, pests and plagues, warfare and destruction. But the refrain after each disaster is the same: ‘Yet you have not returned to me!’.

The Israelites could have done with being Anglicans. Merely to say to God ‘We do not presume …’ might have freed them from annihilation. But they would not, and their self-righteousness continued. Amaziah the shrine priest tried to send Amos back down South to do his preaching there (7:10ff) but he knew his calling, and he had no choice but to obey. His message was that those who longed for the Day of the Lord, that time would God would come and vent his wrath on all the foreigners, would be the day they too were on the receiving end of it.

I need not labour the parallels with our own age, with its injustice, inequality and violence. But as we’ll see next time, to do nothing is simply not enough. How tragic if the British Church heard God say ‘yet you have not returned to me’.

Image: By Jim Linwood [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons