2. Now is the time!
Restoring justice to a damaged world
14 February 2010
Amos 5:14-15 
The need to see justice restored to a damaged world is the theme I have begun to explore in this series. It should not surprise us that Amos has a place in such a journey. We locate Amos in the first half of the eighth century before Jesus Christ and understand the words he wrote and spoke as relevant to a particular context … the reign of a king – Jeroboam II.
Now we read his words across the years – and to do so in the most helpful way, we hear them in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We apply them to a much broader context – and in a way that rings true. An intense awareness of God’s presence in the world led the prophets to think about the tenses of human existence – past, present and future. This was fresh and exhilarating. It was a call to the present moment – for now is the time!
Amos has great stature as a prophet and he still speaks to people in some of the most powerful and endearing words of the whole Bible: ‘… let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!’ (Amos 5:24)
For some people, justice can be a somewhat alienating theme. Religious people are often strong on ‘nostalgia’ and so the past will always feel worth ‘recovering’; others will seize the present with zeal. The prophets, however, were not afraid to alert others to the future. At their best, and particularly in the context of justice, all three tenses come together. To recall the past and how it has shaped us, to face up to the urgency of the present and to look at the future is the challenge!
So much of our life as a Christian church is caricatured negatively. We live in a city where tens of thousands of young people engage in the Christian community, but such commitment needs to be vitally connected to a specific social engagement.
The total disengagement of church from the issues that matter is illustrated by the humorous tale of the vicar who was ill in hospital and was visited by his churchwarden who said, ‘Vicar, we had a meeting of the Parochial Church Council last night and a resolution wishing you a speedy recovery was passed by fourteen votes to twelve!’
The prophets lifted religion into the public place and drove home the strong message of justice!
The prophets of the eighth century believed that God’s coming to judge his people was not to be separated from what was happening around them. The prophets brought a word of warning to a people who seemed to have a strangely ambivalent attitude towards their circumstances.
Amos reminded his audience that the times were not good; in fact they were anything but (5:13) … and what he told them was:-
Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph. (Amos 5:14-15)
These words remind us of the language of v.4, when Amos called people to seek the Lord and live. He encouraged them to seek good and not evil so that they might live in the fullest sense. Seeking good may seem a perspective that all people might reasonably want to affirm. For Amos, it is paramount to seeking God himself because ‘good‘ flows from knowing God.
In the most profound way, in the light of what has gone before, Amos is saying that an ethical response to God is essential for people to retain their land and live together in harmony. This ethical strain can be applied in today’s world and in our own Australian context. It underscores the fact that we must live with integrity before God if we are to be blessed in the present and the future. Such a way strikes at the very nature of credibility which is where we often fall down.
God has not revealed his goodness to us for our own sakes but in order that we might be a testimony to others (Deut. 4:6-8), and the gift of Jesus Christ is offered to the people of God to bear a witness for the world.
Bishop John A T Robinson was right when he said, ‘The Church’s perennial failing is to be so identified with the world that it cannot speak to it, or to be so remote from it that again it cannot speak to it.’
What does this mean today for a people who seek justice?
SEEK GOOD as a way to really live
Here is a foundational truth which is to be placed at the heart of life. This does not mean creating ‘God talk’ as necessary for every moment of life … but it does mean that we can talk about each and every aspect of life and not separate it from our understanding of God.
I recall an incident in the deep south of America, though it could have happened elsewhere. Prior to a speaking engagement, I was sharing a meal in a restaurant. Just before eating, an extremely loud gentleman at a nearby table stood up and addressed his party and asked that his group all stand up, join hands and say grace in a very public and embarrassing manner for another hundred guests in the restaurant!
A modest prayer would have done just as well in the setting. Such an example reminds us that seeking God is not just about outward display but sincerity of heart and life. Such life can be summed up as:
- A life which is not self-centered
This life is time enough for both individuals and our community to make a response which is not self-centred. I am conscious that selfishness is not new and can be seen across many cultures and throughout history. Yet there is a modesty about Amos. He refuses the title ‘nabi’ which was a professional prophet and designates himself as a person of lowly status.
Amos was a herdsman who looked after both sheep and cattle. He also dressed sycamore fruit, which was the fruit of the poorer folk. He may not have been a poor peasant, but his identifying with the poor is important. In the context of Wesley Mission there are lessons for us all. We position ourselves alongside those who have little. This does not mean we must give everything away to live alongside others, but it is bound to affect the way we view material things… and also our exercise of power.
We put life into a new perspective. The Swedes have a proverbial saying:
Fear less, hope more;
Eat less, chew more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Love more, and all good things will be yours.
A life that is centred on self cannot fully embrace what God has to offer to us, nor will such a life be fulfilled in the deepest sense. Amos was not professionally trained as a prophet, nor did he come from any prophetic dynasty (7:14) but this did not stop him from functioning as a prophet for a brief but significant time. His business-life as a herdsman probably took him to the northern kingdom of Israel and he was not afraid to look at people’s needs and to allow himself to be used as God’s mouthpiece.
- A life captivated by God
Amos was conscious of being called by God and ‘taken’ from his care of the flock to become a prophetic voice for God. One writer sums it up in this way: ‘This implies a sudden seizure by a power not of himself.’
This is further implied in Amos 3:8 –
The lion has roared –
who will not fear?
The Sovereign Lord has spoken –
who can but prophesy?
To restore justice means we are consumed by a burning fire locked up in our bones and longing to give expression. This life will be demonstrated by a concern for spiritual integrity and the consequences in our world. Amos could be considered the prophet who was:-
- brutally frank with his hearers.
- enormously courageous in his willingness to declare God’s word.
- demonstrably dynamic in his delivery.
George Caird, the New Testament writer, once reflected about Jesus in this way: ‘The only glory which Jesus ever sought for himself or offered to his disciples was to be caught up into God’s redemptive purposes.’
Likewise, we are called to be caught up in the God-centred purposes of Jesus Christ and not wrapped up in our own lives. Those purposes will always suggest that the needs of others are a deep priority for us.
HATE EVIL in all its forms but especially injustice
There were two sides to the commands of God through the prophet. As well as the call to seek God, there is the need to hate evil. Amos identifies a remnant, a small faithful group who remain, and they hold fast to what they know to be right. Amos expressly identifies two specific evils:-
- the oppression of the poor by the rich
- the corruption of the judicial system in Israel.
Amos commends an understanding of life which suggests that following God’s way preserves the best of life. This would certainly ring true with the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount where we are called to be ‘salt’ and ‘light’ (Matthew 5:13-16).
- Who are the poor?
Poverty here is not simply to be thought of in terms of material goods, but also as the lack of opportunity such a situation creates. Some writers comment on the sense of culture which Amos clearly possessed. This might hint at the source of Amos’ passion. It could indicate that knowledge and culture were not directly related to wealth and the professional classes.
Amos came from Tekoa, 16km or so south of Jerusalem ... and this hill country community knew something about genuine spiritual insight … which is not uncommon in rural or agricultural people. Those who live close to the land often have an acute sense of the ‘otherness of life’. It has produced many prophetic voices and especially when one considers, as in Australia, that many of the poor live outside our cities. Only last week I was in conversation with a person who was seeking to bring practical help to the almost 11,000 people who have left the land in recent years.
Though it is important that we remain committed to those who are nearer to what we might call ‘absolutely poor’ (those who are without food, with no roof over their head and forced to beg to live), there is a wider concept emerging in our day. Also ‘the poor’ must be those who exist by couch-surfing and are constantly navigating the social systems of our day in order to survive.
In Amos’ day, he exposed the needs of the poor by addressing the opulence of the elite. He confronted the upper-crust women of society … these were the Hollywood Housewives of their day. He saw them as pampered, overfed and self-indulgent. He would be unpopular when he called these people the ‘cows of Bashan’ (4:1).
A wave of indignation must have flashed through his audience. As a cattle breeder, he knew such cows needed special attention and what he is suggesting is that these women felt they were more important than the rest. What they forgot was that everything they wore actually belonged to God. The cows were hugely overweight in comparison to those who went hungry.
- Who are the corrupt?
The fact that Amos is concerned with justice would point to the difficult situation for people of the day. Amos (from the south) travels north and his message can seem austere as he brings a sustained message of God’s righteous judgment upon a people.
In Amos day there were those who lived in opulence (6:4-6) and who were indifferent to the plight of the poor. They engaged in elaborate but superficial religious practices (4:4-5, 5:21-23) and expropriated the land of poor debtors, then even subjecting them to slavery (2:6; 8:4,6).
Amos has this marvellous style of capturing his audience and if you read the Book from the beginning, you see that he condemns all the surrounding nations and was no doubt applauded for doing so, but then he turned on Israel and he charged them for selling the innocent and the poor. We must turn the circle to our own day and we see prejudice and inhumanity is all too prevalent.
It is too easy to identify the corrupt when they are in government, or are leaders, police officers, or of course lawyers! In doing this we distance ourselves from the issue.
To make sense of this, each of us must recognise an understanding of corruption much nearer home. The word can be used in the context of ‘to alter, debase, mar and spoil’. Such corruption happens every day!
MAINTAIN JUSTICE to enjoy real sustainability
Today we often talk about sustainability … and organisational sustainability and the contributions that assist this. We talk about environmental sustainability and hardly a day goes by without someone raising the matter. The deepest form of sustainability is about a people, a nation, a world … and how we can maintain the best of our life together, from one generation to the next.
We make the link between sustainability and justice. In a developed world … social welfare, education and health concerns are under great pressure. A cry is rising from among us that says it is only when we begin to make such a linkage that God’s healing can be received in the widest sense. Diagnosis is often difficult, but it must always precede that ultimate work of grace in our community. The vision of Amos concludes with an eventual future which embraces reconstruction. So the strong words about justice can … and often do lead to something better.
- Put real value on life
In both the way the poor were treated and the inaccessibility of justice for them, human life seems to be simply bartered away.
The poor were denied justice in the law courts (2:7, 5:10,12) and were cheated in the market place (8:5). This is possible if there is no real value on people’s lives.
I was preaching in Liverpool in the North-West of England and spent an afternoon in the Museum of Slavery. We walked behind a young black couple who experienced the awful horror of a past generation. Liverpool is a city that was built upon the wealth generated by slavery. I listened to the couple, who were clearly disturbed by their experience as they stood in a confined space … the size of a ship’s hull! … where people had been denied the basic quality of human life. Behind this lie questions relating to the value of life.
The way we consider people is often driven by the way we think about God – or don’t think of God! You can stand at two ends of this problem. I recall a thought that ran like this: ‘The more I see of people, the more I like my dog’ … or at the other end of the spectrum, the words of the psalmist: ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14).
- To live above pretension
The people of Amos’ day somehow believed that because they saw themselves as God’s people - and were attentive to all the intricacies of worship - that all would be well. To Amos these two pillars, however honorable, provided no guarantee that they would be blessed. Amos pointed to righteousness as the only foundation of hope. It is in this area that we find a way forward in each and every age.
You cannot read Amos without considering the hope found in Amos 9:8-15. Despite all the darkest aspects of his writings, he was not without an understanding of hope. Amos, like most prophets was a person of intense passion who saw purpose everywhere. His sense of hope was a reflection of his belief that God was himself a God of justice.
The life to which Amos calls us is to be entered now!
Grenville Kleiser, the Canadian-born writer, said on one occasion, ‘Today a thousand doors of enterprise are open to you, inviting you to useful work. To live at this time is an inestimable privilege, and a sacred obligation devolves upon you to make right use of your opportunities. Today is the day in which to attempt and achieve something worthwhile.’
For those who are captivated by the message of Jesus Christ, the way we see this theme of justice is by taking the ‘now moment’ as the time to speak about the value of all people. Charles Schulz, the author of Peanuts, summed up the danger of having grand ideas about the world and no connection with human identity when he placed on the lips of one of his immortal characters, ‘I love mankind: it’s people I can’t stand!’
The fundamental biblical thought is to ‘do justice’. Justice is a dynamic notion. Let that kind of understanding of justice ‘roll on like a river!’ Our western tradition often pictures justice as a static concept, a noun, describing the achievement of fairness in the state of balance. The image Amos calls to mind is that justice is like a surging, churning, cleansing stream!
If ever there was a time to affirm the God-given importance of people, the dignity of human life and the significance of caring for all in the name of Jesus Christ, ‘Now is the time!’
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