AMOS The Wrath of Just Righteousness….. and Love

Reading about God’s wrath in the Book of Amos,  it might be easy to ask, ‘How can a loving God show so much anger?’, or ‘How can a God of mercy be willing to destroy towns and cities?’  Where is this forgiveness God asks us to give one another, ‘70 x 7’?  What about love and mercy?  What questions run through your thoughts?

For now, I invite you to put these questions aside and revisit Amos from a different perspective.  Remember the Gospel scene where Jesus overturns the table in the Temple because people are desecrating the Sabbath for the sake of profit?  It’s clear that Jesus is enraged in this story.

Intense anger, wrath, rage or whatever we choose to name this measure of confrontation usually comes  from one of two sources…and sometime from both: either pain or deep fear, or perhaps a sense of ‘just righteousness’.  In Amos, as in the Gospels, I believe God’s wrath expresses God’s pain and ‘just righteousness’, rather than just destruction. While this means of expression is not shown in ways you and I would desire ‘love and grace’ to be shown, at the chore of this wrath might there be a deep love?                                                                               


Sound strange?  How can wrath and love be spoken of in the same context?  In these passages, I hear God saying, “Look at how you are living out your lives without care for others or this land, after all I have given you?  Were you not created and freed to be stewards?”  Perhaps Gods expression of wrath speaks to people destroying themselves and their towns by their actions and disregard for life.

I am convinced that God is a God of relationships. (Genesis).  The close of Amos describes God’s desire to restore all that has been destroyed.  Herein lays mercy and love. 

In my own life, how often do I fall short of God’s righteousness.  It’s a process, a journey.  So I prefer to read Amos as God prodding me to live more mindfully with gratitude and prayer.  I believe Grace lives in the journey.  What about you?

Shalom,

Susan Moss

p.s.  What do you think about the powerful messages in Amos being conveyed through a field worker?  

Elijah Rocks

The story of El-ijah [Yahweh is my God] is dominated by the operatic scene where, in the contest with the prophets of Ba-al, he prays and down comes fire from heaven to illustrate to the [once again] wayward Israelites that Yahweh is the true God.

How many of us have that much faith in the power of our prayer?

At the devotional for the Vision Board this past week, Pastor Mark discussed the idea of Opinions vs Convictions. Many people have religious opinions, but fewer probably have convictions. What is a conviction?

Martin Luther King Jr.  -- “ I can’t promise you that it won’t get you beaten. I can’t promise you that it won’t get your house bombed. I can’t promise you won’t get scarred up a bit – but we must stand up for what is right. If you haven’t discovered something that is worth dying for, you haven’t found anything worth living for. “

Elijah placed not only his reputation on the line, but his life as well.  

Joseph Heller in his novel Catch 22 echoes this:
“Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," "answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."

We live in a land of religious freedom. We are free to worship God in whatever way we choose. But that freedom does not include a right to avoid criticism for one’s beliefs. Nor does that freedom protect us from harm.

Nor should it. Challenges to our faith should challenge, deepen and clarify our convictions. What separates our opinions from our convictions is our willingness to put “ blood on the word” as one of my college friends used to say. Will I stand up to the false gods of our culture? Will I challenge them at the risk of my reputation? My life?

Is my faith an opinion? Or a conviction? What is worth living for?

Will I allow God to show his power through what I do?

Convict me, God. Amen.
Paul S.

Elijah

Image courtesy of the Providence Lithograph Company [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


Happy New Year! And welcome to another blogging series. English Lutheran is participating in the ELCA Book of Faith initiative through a four week preaching series on prophets. Here is the line-up:

January 22  Elijah (1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2)

January 29 Amos (Amos 1-9)

February 5 Hosea (Hosea 1-14)

February 12 Jonah (Jonah 1-4)

We will be blogging along with this series, starting this week with Elijah.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to really dig into my Bible more. I joined friends on a facebook group called Read Through the Bible 2012. Each day, I am sent assigned readings and invited to participate in discussion. The group holds me accountable, and I am reading sections of the Bible that I'm not sure I've ever read before (Leviticus, anyone?). A side benefit that I didn't anticipate is that I am usually thinking about Bible stories that don't correspond to the lectionary readings, which changes how I listen to a sermon and reflect on worship through the week.

My lightbulb moment with Elijah was how often Biblical heroes seem to be in non-exciting places when God asks them to do something that seems impossible, they protest, God cares for and equips them, and then, with God's help, it all works out.

Moses, for example, was tending sheep when God called him to return to Egypt to save the Israelites (see Exodus 3).  He protests about being slow of speech, obeys God, and things miraculous things happen with God's help--ranging from a staff-snake to plagues to a stubborn Pharaoh relenting to Moses' request. Joseph spent time in a well and in prison before serving in a place of honor and power (Genesis 37).  Elijah, our focus for the week, was under a tree ready to die and 40 days later in a cave when God gave him a new mission (1 Kings 19). In all of these instances, God gave orders, but also lovingly equipped His chosen to serve.

As we continue through the week and a new year, I would invite you to consider your faith journey. Where is God? What is God equipping, and asking, you to do?

Prayers and blessings for your journey,
Rachel