Biblical Text

You can read Amos 3.1-15 here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

The Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokai in the kingdom of Hawaii was a place where the residents of Hawaii never wanted to go. It was a secluded place to which people of a certain kind were sent. But on 15^th of April 1889, the Kalaupapa Peninsula witnessed a remarkable death for it was the death of a person who had willingly gone there. Sixteen years before that Father Damien had traveled from his native Belgium to Kalaupapa to work among the inhabitants.

When he reached Kalaupapa, he was truly an outsider. Quite obviously, he was not Hawaiian. But more to the point, he did not meet the criterion that all the other inhabitants fulfilled. But eleven years after he began his work, he truly became an insider for, after being with the inhabitants for so long, he finally fulfilled the singular condition, dying some five years later from complications arising from the condition for, like the other inhabitants, he had become a leper.

On 3^rd of August 1833, Westminster Abbey was blessed to receive the remains of another Christian just four days after his death, a week after being assured of his greatest triumph. Forty eight years before that, a year after he began his career as a Member of Parliament, he had experienced a conversion and became an evangelical Christian. From then on he had a singular vision – to rid the British Empire of a practice that he firmly believed was opposed to the teachings of Jesus.

He believed that God had placed him where he was so that he could be a messenger of God’s kingdom in the British Parliament and through his career he championed various causes. Knowing that God’s concern stretches beyond the confines of the human race, he founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. And days before he died, he was assured that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 would be passed. And so into his rest entered William Wilberforce.

Unlike Father Damien, who used a position of weakness to earn a right to proclaim the gospel, William Wilberforce used a position of strength to further the cause of justice for humans who had been stripped of their dignity and for animals whom he knew were a good part of God’s good creation. Unlike William Wilberforce, who did not actually witness his greatest triumph put into effect, Father Damien, having truly become one with the lepers, saw many respond to his work and believe in Jesus.

Two completely different types of stories. One person traveled far from the place where he was born. The other worked in his native country. One person emptied himself and used that to work for justice to proclaim the gospel. The other used the prestige given to him to proclaim the gospel by working for justice. One earned the right to speak through his deeds. The other transformed the deeds of others through his words. For the gospel can be proclaimed and justice pursued in all situations.

In his seminal book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer introduced the idea of cheap grace. He writes, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” I’m afraid that the Church around the world today needs this reminder.

But I would go ahead and add justice – something that the Lutheran Bonhoeffer forgot to add simply because the great German reformer Martin Luther had very little to say about justice. He was focused primarily on justification and it was left to his namesake, Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights activist, to take up the torch four and a half centuries later. Unfortunately, the church has forgotten about justice and has been content with preaching about individual salvation.

Today’s message will ruffle some feathers. But because the passage assigned to me from Amos is so inextricably linked to the historical context of the Israelites in the eighth century BC, today’s message will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we shall try to understand Amos’ message to the people of Israel. And in the second part, we shall consider the implications of Amos’ message for us today. And it is not going to be a message of comfort.

The prophet Amos prophesied in the mid eighth century BC, during the reigns of Uzziah, king of Judah, and Jeroboam II, king of Israel. It was a time of unprecedented prosperity in both kingdoms, actually dwarving the prosperity the Israelites had experienced during the reign of Solomon. Military conquest and expanded trade relations with neighboring nations had given the Israelites some decades of relative peace and a sense of security till then not experienced.

But this economic prosperity covered widespread social decadence and degeneracy, with the rich exploiting the poor and even selling them off as slaves when they could not repay the loans they had taken at exorbitantly high interest rates. Human life had become just another commodity to be traded in order to enrich oneself. And chasing after the Amorite gods, Israel had surrendered its vocation of being a light to the Gentiles and instead had become an agent of deep darkness.

And so God declares, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” We must not be pedantic about our scriptures and think that this means that God was incognizant about the other nations of the world. Rather, the Hebrew word יָדַע (yada) very often refers to a deep, intimate knowledge that results from a very close relationship. Israel had an intimate relationship with Yahweh and they consequently knew right from wrong.

Because he had a unique, intimate relationship with Israel, Yahweh had revealed his deepest concerns to the people of Israel. As we saw last Sunday, the three main things that distinguished Torah from the law codes of other Ancient Near Eastern societies were an inbuilt economic reset, a prohibition against idolatry, and a rejection of ritualism. And we saw that these were unique ways in which the Israelites were able to love God and love their neighbors as themselves.

I did not mention the Sabbath last week, except to summarize Leviticus 19. However, we Christians, most of whom have a superficial understanding of the Sabbath, need to recognize that the Sabbath was intended as a day in which all three distinctions came together. It was a day when the Israelites did not work, recognizing that it was Yahweh who provided for them. It was a day in which the Israelites were freed to practice their royal priesthood without worrying about livelihood.

In Amos 3, Yahweh declares that, since the Israelites had a unique, intimate relationship with him, they knew what the purpose of humans was and what genuine humanness looked like. Yet, the Israelites turned their backs on this divine vocation, thereby thwarting Yahweh’s plans for creation. And it is in this context, the context of a broken covenant in which one partner has refused to fulfill their responsibility, that Yahweh announces that he would be punishing Israel.

It is crucial to note that the punishment is announced in the context of a covenant that has been broken, a relationship that has been strained. We Christians, who are brought up to believe that the height of Christian doctrine is justification by faith, will not be able to understand this very easily. But if we look at all the places where the doctrine of justification by faith is discussed, we will find that it is always in the context of the covenant God has made, first with Abraham and then with the Israelites.

Here in Amos, it is the latter covenant, between Yahweh and the Israelites that is the context. In Exodus 19, Moses declares the terms of the covenant to the Israelites and, to a man, they agree to them declaring, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” It is in this context that Yahweh, through Amos, asks, “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” The Israelites had come to an agreement with Yahweh that they would adhere to the stipulations of the covenant. 

In other words, Yahweh and the Israelites had agreed to walk along one path. However, the Israelites had turned aside despite the agreement. And Amos declares how stunned he was. Could you expect two people to walk the same path unless they had agreed to do so? Or conversely, if two people agreed to walk the same path, wouldn’t you be justified in expecting them to actually be together on that path? Amos then lists some other conditions that would have been surprising. 

The idea behind these rhetorical questions is that Amos is thoroughly confused about how Israel is behaving. They had made an agreement with Yahweh. They had entered into a covenant with him. Despite this, they were doing things that clearly indicated that they had deserted Yahweh and had strayed down some other path. But what exactly was it that the Israelites were doing that Amos objected to? Before Amos gets to that, he tells the Israelites what to expect.

If you recall from last Sunday, the way Amos announces his prophecy to Israel was to first announce judgment against all its neighbors. As he denounced them one after the other, he stirred the Israelites into a frenzy as they reveled at the fact that God was judging all their enemies. However, they were finally silenced when Yahweh announced, “For three sins of Israel, even for four” and they realized that they too were going to face the judgment of the living God.

But now their ignominy was increased as Amos tells his audience, “Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt.” They were to announce to these enemies, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria, and see the great tumults within her, and the oppressed in her midst.” Israel’s enemies were being called to assemble at the capital city of Samaria to witness its atrocities and to listen to the summary judgment Yahweh was going to announce.

It was bad enough to have to hear that God had determined that you had broken the covenant. It was worse to hear that God had, therefore, decided to pronounce judgment against you. But the worst was to know that your enemies were going to be called to witness your being shamed as God laid bare all your atrocities for all to see and declared publicly what he was going to do to rectify the situation. After that initial sense of jubilation, the Israelites were now finally silenced.

These witnesses were called to assemble at Samaria where they would witness the Isralites who are described as those who “do not know how to do right, those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds.” The Philistines were one of the most brutal people groups ever to have existed and Egyptian society was one of the most inequitable of the biblical times. Yet these people groups were invited to be a witness to the abominations of the Israelites. 

I don’t think we fully understand what this would be like. What would this look like today? It would be like calling Stalin to be a witness to how unconcerned a leader was about the welfare of the citizens of the nation. Or like calling Hitler to be a witness to how prejudiced you are. You get the picture. In Yahweh’s eyes, Israel’s practices were so violent that even the Philistines would have been appalled. Israel’s society was so unjust that even the Egyptians would balk at the inequities in it.

And so Yahweh announces what the punishment would entail. Amos says, “On the day I punish Israel for his transgressions, I will punish the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off and fall to the ground.” Notice that the punishment involves demolishing the altars of the false gods that the Israelites had worshipped. It was the false gods that had led Israel away from the path of justice and righteousness and those gods would be judged when their altars were destroyed.

Amos declares that only a small part of the people of God would survive this judgment. He declares, “As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and, in Damascus, a bed.” This is the beginning of what is known as remnant theology, even though, if we read the bible from page one onward, we would first encounter it in the book of Isaiah.

However, Isaiah ministered a few decades after Amos and so, chronologically, Amos’ prophecy here is the original description of the remnant. But the intriguing thing is that, despite there being only a small group who survives the judgment, this small group is still expected to fulfill the vocation initially entrusted to the whole. This should not be surprising for when God was faced with a human race that rejected their vocation to be his image bearers, he began anew with Noah.

And again, when humans continued their downward spiral of turning their backs on God, God decided to call Abram from Ur of the Chaldees. This whittling down of the group that truly represents him is somewhat of a theme in the Old Testament and finds its most succinct expression in the idea of a remnant that, despite the failure of the group as a whole, remains faithful to their vocation to be a light to the Gentiles and a hope to the nations.

So despite the fact that Amos announces that only a very small fraction of the Israelites would survive the judgment, that fraction is still expected to do what the whole group had been called to do. So what does this have to do with us today? We are those who have believed in Jesus. We are those who have received his promises. We are heirs of the New Covenant, not those tied to the Old Covenant that Israel repeatedly broke. How would this passage from Amos be relevant to us today?

In his magnum opus, the letter to the church at Rome, Paul writes, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” This is part of Paul’s argument defending the continued calling of the Jewish people and the adoptive calling of those who believe in Jesus. The whittling down of the people of God had become so severe that, in the end, there was only one faithful Israelite, namely Jesus. But because Jesus had been faithful, those who believe in him are included in the blessings given to Israel.

But the blessings come along with a call. Israel was chosen to be a light to the Gentiles, that is to those who were not descended from Israel. And so also the Church is called to be a light to those who are outside the Church, that is to those who do not yet believe in Jesus. Along with the blessings that we have inherited through our faith in Jesus, we have also inherited the lofty calling to be the unique people on earth who represent the living God to other humans and to the rest of creation.

But when have you heard the gospel presented in this manner? When have you heard the call to believe linked to the call to be a disciple? When have you heard the promise of blessing associated with the promise of vocation? To the contrary, we present things like the four spiritual laws or the sinner’s prayer or the Romans Road or the peace with God method or the five finger method, and believe that we are being faithful to God’s call.

But all of these are travesties. None of these are methods of evangelism that are true to the εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), the gospel. And there is one major reason for this. You see, the word εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion) means “good news” and news is about something that has happened in a particular place at a particular time involving particular people and effecting particular results. The gospel is rooted in history and we cannot divorce it from that history and remain faithful to it.

You see, without the story that makes what we present as the gospel into “good news” we do not have any news to declare, let alone good news to declare. For Jesus is unintelligible except as the fulfillment of a story that involves the calling of and promises to Abraham, the giving of the Torah through Moses, the wandering in the desert, the conquest of the land by Joshua, the promise of the kingdom to David, the judgment of the exile, and the disappointing return from exile to the promised land.

Without his being rooted in a story that involves the living God creating humans to be his just regents in this world, then calling the people of Israel to be his just human representatives in this world, and finally seeing his unique Son die a faithful death as the only just Israelite in this world, the Jesus we conjure will be an idol of our design, a Jesus that does not exist, a Jesus that allows us to entertain the delusion that we are being faithful to God while reinforcing the injustices of the world.

We have been sold a lie. We have been sold cheap grace and have believed that God has no expectations of us. We have been fed a mess of pig’s slop and made to believe that justification by faith is the be all and end all of the Christian faith. And even those of us who think of sanctification do it in such a way that it clearly has nothing to do with the God revealed in the bible, the God who rights the world’s wrongs, the God whose Son’s death was required for the effecting of justice.

The Church has taken the easy way out because we want to bloat our membership figures and our annual collections. Attend a few catechism classes and be baptized and you’re all set for life. Oh yeah. Do say some prayer of confession, preferably one in a format we prescribe, so that we can put our stamp of approval on your profession of faith. And then it’s just grace from then onward. It would be good if you attended church regularly and perhaps also a bible study. But we understand if you don’t.

And all the while the world for which God’s unique Son died languishes in the mire of injustices that we have allowed to perpetuate. We Christians in India need to ask ourselves why we are silent when our government targets other groups but raise a cry when we face the brunt of their targeting. We Christians need to ask ourselves why it is not the churches that are at the frontlines of the fight against this pandemic. Oh I don’t mean the medical frontline. We are definitely there. 

Christian hospitals and healthcare professionals have done a remarkable job through this entire trying time. Hats off to them. We would be in a much worse situation were it not for their commitment and perseverance. The frontline I am talking about is the frontline of justice. When migrants were targeted last year, where were we? When lockdowns were imposed that adversely affected the poorest of the poor while leaving the rich relatively unaffected, where were we?

When people in apartments were allowed visits from their family members, but required their household workers to show negative test results, where were we? When the government closed our schools, denying the children their right to education and setting the stage for an employment and economic disaster some years down the line, where were we? When the government promoted a vaccine that had not successfully completed clinical trials, where were we?

We were hunkering like cowards behind the doors of our homes, ensuring we had sanitized our hands after every visit outside. We were ensuring we had sufficient groceries and toiletries to last us the difficult days we had to face. We were convincing ourselves that we have a functioning church by the blessings of Zoom. I am disappointed and dismayed, feel depressed and dejected at the despicable and deplorable side of humanity that has been revealed through this pandemic.

But more appalling is the way Christians around the world have responded, most betraying, by their decisions and lobbying, such a great fear of death that I wonder if we are the spiritual descendants of the same people who first discovered, to their utter surprise and astonishment, that the tomb was empty on that first Easter. We have, and here I charge myself as a Christian leader, not even tried to have small group gatherings in which we worship together and study the scriptures.

In contrast the Roman governors of the late first and early second century were surprised that there was a group of people who, when plagues ravaged their cities and towns, were spurred to help those who needed assistance the most. They were like Father Damien. And this same group of people came to the defence of those who were vilified and ostracized, those who were treated poorly and without dignity. They were like William Wilberforce. 

It is time for the church to wake up from its individualistic, self centered slumber in which going to church has become a source of entertainment and sermons are expected to be short and sweet and uplifting. It is time for the church to turn its back on the inward focus it has developed over the centuries in which the work of Jesus is viewed solely through the lens of the salvation of individual humans and the rest of creation is considered to be something outside the scope of his work.

It is time for the church to recover its role as salt of the earth and light of the world, to speak against the injustices perpetuated by the powers that be and to refuse to comply with any policy that dehumanizes any human or that defaces any part of God’s good creation. It is time for the church to remind itself that election implies commission and salvation involves vocation. It is time for the church to be stirred from its soporific stupor and to once again hear the clarion call for justice.

What would this look like when the Church once again recovered a focus on justice rather than the easier method of superficial evangelism? Father Damien stepped out of the system and entered a new one in order to do his work. William Wilberforce worked inside the system in order to challenge and transform it. Martin Luther King, Jr. worked against the system in order to shock it into changing. Archbishop Desmond Tutu works as a bridge to bring warring parties together.

Justice manifests itself in different shapes and is made visual in different colors depending on the situation. There is no one size that fits everything. We need to be keenly aware of, deeply attuned to, and wholly committed to the fresh leading of the Spirit. We need to understand that God never calls anyone without also having a task for that person. This is our dignity as humans made to bear the image of God for he calls us to partner with him. 

Each one of us who has heard, responded to and surrendered to the call of Jesus has a unique role to play in his kingdom. We need to prayerfully struggle with him, as Jacob wrestled the angel, to figure out what this role might be. We need to incline our ears to that voice that is audible despite the clamoring noises in which we immerse ourselves, that speaks in a silent recesses of our hearts. And then we will hear and I pray that we would also accept the clarion call for justice.