Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85; Ephesians 1:1-14; Mark 6:7-13

First of all, I have to admit that today’s readings are some of my favorites, if only for Jesus’s command that his disciples wear sandals. And I have to confess that on certain occasions when people have looked at me rather disapprovingly for wearing sandals to church, I’ve urged them to read Mark 6:9 and meditate on it for a while.  I don’t know if they ever took me up on that suggestion; judging by their reaction, I’ll bet they didn’t.

On a more serious note, I have to say that I love the book of Amos, because Amos never minced words, and the words he spoke came directly from God. This is how Frederick Buechner describes him:

When the prophet Amos walked down the main drag, it was like a shoot-out in the Old West.  Everybody ran for cover.  His special target was The Beautiful People, and shooting from the hip, he never missed his mark. He pictures them sleek and tanned at Palm Beach, Acapulco, St. Tropez.  They glisten with Bain de Soleil. The stereo is piped out over the marble terrace. Another tray of bloody Marys is on the way.  A vacationing bishop plunges into the heated pool.

With one eye cocked on them, he has his other cocked on The Unbeautiful People – the varicose veins of the old waiter, the pasty face of the starch-fed child, the Indian winos passed out on the railroad siding, the ragged woman fumbling for food stamps at the check-out counter.

When justice is finally done, Amos says, there will be Hell to pay.  The Happy Hour will be postponed indefinitely because the sun will never make it over the yard-arm.  The Pucci blouses, the tangerine-colored slacks, the flowered Lillys, will all fade like grass.  Nothing but a few chicken bones will mark the place where once the cold buffet was spread out under the royal palms. [1]

But according to Amos, it won’t be the shortage of food and fun that will hurt.  It will be the shortage “of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). Towards the end, God will make himself so scarce that the world won’t even know what it’s starving to death for.

That’s the basic message of Amos: you better watch out if you’re at the top of the heap in this life, because everything’s going to be turned upside down and on its ear in the next.  For God is on the side of the poor, the outcast, the needy, the “Unbeautiful”.

But today’s reading from Amos doesn’t just talk about social justice; it talks about the relationship of a prophet to the government, and to the church.  And it also talks about what qualifications you need to have to be a prophet, which aren’t what you’d expect. That’s what I’d like to focus on this morning.

Today’s reading begins with Amos recounting a conversation he had with Lord, where the Lord told him that “the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”  Here the Lord pretty much covers all the bases: the “high places of Isaac” refer to the places of worship that were used before the Temple was built; the sanctuaries of Israel refer to the places where the people currently worshipped; and the “house of Jeroboam” referred to the kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam, which had reached its high point in terms of wealth and power.  The Lord is basically saying that He’s going to destroy the country and the church – nothing will remain, nothing will survive.

Then enters Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, who tells King Jeroboam that Amos has conspired against him by saying what he said, where he said it: namely, at Bethel, the holy shrine where Amaziah himself was the priest.  He tells Jeroboam that “the land is not able to bear all [Amos’s] words.” And then Amaziah tries to send Amos away, but what he says to Amos is really interesting.  He doesn’t tell Amos to shut up and be quiet. He doesn’t even tell Amos to stop prophesying such doom and gloom.  He tells Amos to “never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”  In other words, Amos, say whatever you want to say, but don’t say it here. Don’t say it in the seat of power, where the king rules over the land of Israel.  And don’t say it in the temple, where I’m the priest, the head honcho, the boss. 

Amaziah’s response reflects the roles the king and the priest played in Jewish society at that time.  The king obviously was the chief executive who controlled the army and the treasury.  But as anyone who’s even skimmed the Old Testament will tell you, being king was no guarantee that you were a good person. For every righteous king there were two evil ones who were more concerned with their own wealth than with the lives of their subjects. And that’s precisely what Amos was railing against.

The priest was also part of the establishment. It was the job of the high priest to anoint the next king, and the priests were mostly concerned with the rituals of the church.  They led worship services, told the people how to act, and basically kept the church going. In short, they were invested in keeping things the same, maintaining the status quo, and didn’t have much time, or use, for criticism.

Sometimes the roles of king and priest became blurred, and intertwined.  Jeroboam was accused in the book of the Kings of burning incense on the altar at Bethel, an act reserved for the priests. And certainly here Amaziah is watching Jeroboam’s back, and is more concerned with forcing Amos to get up and get out than with the truth.

Unlike the king and the priest, though, the prophet lives outside of society.  He has no obligation to the powers that be, whether they be the government or the church hierarchy.  The Hebrew word for prophet comes from the root “to call,” and it can work both ways: the prophet is called by God, and the mission of the prophet is to call the people back to God.  His role is to say the hard things that the king and the priest are too unwilling or afraid to say.  And the prophet doesn’t care where he proclaims the word of the Lord: only that the word is spoken, and heard, and obeyed.

The prophet doesn’t care about much at all, actually, because he isn’t obliged to follow custom or convention. Often he doesn’t have any formal theological education.  He may not have any money, or status, or prestige. All he’s got going for him is the fact that God told him to tell the people something.

So it is that Amos says to Amaziah, “I am no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was a herdsman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, ‘Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.’”  Amos is basically saying, “I’m a nobody. I come from a family of nobodys. I was just minding my own business, watching out for my sheep, when God shows up and tells me to prophesy to the people of Israel.  And before I knew it I was in the temple of Bethel, telling the king and the priests that they were on the escalator to hell, and I’ll keep telling you all that until God tells me to stop, which doesn’t look to happen anytime soon.”

Amos is an inspiration to those of us who fear to speak the word of the Lord to the powerful and beautiful people of the world. After all, who are we? Who are we to tell our mayor or our governor or our president what we think is right?  They’re the ones with all the power, and we might as well be tending sheep, or whatever the modern-day equivalent of being a shepherd is.  But Amos is saying is that having power doesn’t mean being righteous; righteousness only comes from God, and God’s just as likely – actually, more likely – to bestow righteous wisdom on shepherds than on kings.

In the time of Amos, Israel was one of the richest and most powerful nations on earth. So it is with the United States today.  To read Amos is to see that the call to repentance which he directed at Israel is just as applicable to America: Will we value wealth more than justice? Will we surrender to the powerful, or risk our comfort for the sake of the destitute? In a time when decisions about war and peace, economic justice, adequate health care, and all manner of questions of life and death face us: we must call our leaders to repentance in the words of Amos: “For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me and live; … Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; … Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice.” (Amos 5:4, 14, 15)

While prophesying to kings might be frightening, in many ways prophesying to priests is even moreso.  For we are conditioned, especially in the Episcopal Church, to defer to the clergy in matters of theology and worship. Only an ordained person can consecrate the bread and wine; only someone licensed by the church can administer the chalice or preach a sermon; and so on.  If called upon by God to prophesy, I daresay most parishioners would react much like Amos did: “I’m not qualified to be a prophet. I didn’t go to seminary. I don’t even know my Prayer Book all that well.  I don’t have the right to tell priests their business!”

Despite all such protests, God still called Amos, and Amos listened, and Amos spoke. He spoke in the halls of power – in the temple at Bethel, about the priests and the king, and about God. And that’s just what we must be prepared to do, should God call us.  The Book of Common Prayer is explicit: “The ministers of the church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.”  First among the ministers of the church are the people in the pews, who may well feel completely unworthy until God taps them on the shoulder as he did Amos, and calls them to tell the president, or the presiding bishop, to shape up, or ship out. 

In just a few weeks General Convention begins in Minneapolis, where important questions will be answered: Will the Church accept the election of the first openly gay bishop? Will there be a formal rite of blessing of same sex unions?  Will the church take a stand on the issue of stem cell research? And many more. In the time that remains, we must let our prophetic voices be heard, by contacting our deputies, telling them what we think, what God is calling us to say. 

And lest we feel somehow unworthy to do so, we need only recall that Buechner includes a “vacationing bishop” in his description of the Beautiful People who forsake justice for comfort. This is not to say anything negative about bishops per se or any one bishop personally, but only to say that being a bishop is no more a guarantee of righteousness than being a king of Israel back in the days of Amos.  The bishops and the deputies at Convention need our prayers, and they also need to hear the word of the Lord, and each of you here, as a minister of the church, may be the prophet called to speak it to them. And it’s no use pleading ignorance, or lack of qualifications, or humble station in life. Because anyone who dares walk through the doors of a church, and dares listen to God when He comes calling, is liable to be the Amos of our day, whether he, or she, likes it or not.

[1] Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1979): 11-12.

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