"Zephaniah: The Problem with the Prophets" - Richard R. Crocker

Richard R. Crocker

Zephaniah: The Problem with the Prophets

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

July 14, 2013

Zephaniah 1:10-16

          Today, in the third of our series on the minor prophets, we consider Zephaniah. Zephaniah brings us face to face with certain problems that most of us have with these prophets – problems that we have acknowledged in the earlier two sermons but not really addressed. The first problem is that we often do not like what they have to say. The second problem is that their messages, delivered in the name of God, often seem to some of us to contradict the God we know and worship in Jesus Christ.  And the third problem is that they require us to read the Bible with a degree of sophistication that goes against the way that many of us were taught to read the Bible. Today we will try to deal with these problems head on.

          But first a little background. The book of Zephaniah is very short – only three chapters. If you haven’t read it, you can do so in about ten minutes. Unlike Amos and Hosea, Zephaniah prophesied in the southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah sometime around 630 BC, during the reign of the good king Josiah, after the northern Kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians, and Judah had been reduced to a vassal state, paying tribute to Assyria. In the opening verses of the book, Zephaniah traces his ancestry back to Hezekiah, which was the name of a previous king of Judah – so, in fact, Zephaniah may be a royal descendant – but this is uncertain.

          What is certain about Zephaniah is his message. In three short chapters, he proclaims doom, gloom, and resume. Aside from the strained  rhymes, this three word summary is actually pretty accurate – not only for Zephaniah’s prophecies, but for many of the prophetic messages we have heard before.

          Doom. The first chapter of Zephaniah’s message is overwhelming doom. Beginning with verse two, he says (speaking for God): “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.” His message is one of utter destruction. Why? Because of idolatry and false worship: the people of Judah have worshipped Baal; they worshipped Milcom (the god of the Ammonites) and worshipped the astrological gods of the Assyrians. The king’s sons have “dress(ed) themselves in foreign attire, and some of them have “leap(ed) over the threshold.”

But in addition to these idolatrous acts, the people have practiced violence and fraud and have been indifferent to the God of Israel. And for this, utter destruction is promised.

Now this seems pretty extreme to us, doesn’t it? Utter destruction for leaping over the threshold? Maybe for fraud, maybe for worshipping Baal with ritual prostitution, but for dressing in foreign attire and leaping over the threshold?

Now we need to confront the problems of this passage directly. Granted, we know that these words were spoken (and written) 2600 years ago. But they are part of our holy book. They are words spoken on behalf of the God we worship, claimed as being the words of God.  Do they mean anything at all to those of us who hear them today – or are they only of quaint historical interest?

Do we believe that our God threatens any nation – or humanity itself – with utter destruction because of false worship? Will God actually destroy a whole people because some of them have leaped over the threshold? What does leaping over the threshold mean, anyway?

Here we confront a very basic problem. This God does not seem very likable. More important, this God does not seem to be the God with whom Abraham argued. You remember how God threatened to destroy the city of Sodom, but Abraham argued with him – you remember how: Abraham asked God; would you destroy a whole city if there were as few as a hundred righteous people in it? And God says no. And Abraham argues with him further, reducing the number each time, and finally asks: would you destroy the city if there were only ten righteous people in it, and God said, No – I will not destroy it even for ten righteous people. Is this the same God who says he will destroy all humanity? What happened to the story of Noah and the rainbow – the promise that God would never again destroy the earth?

And then, of course, we face the fact that this God does not seem the same as the God we know in Jesus Christ – the one in whom God offers salvation to the whole world.

So how are we to understand these words of Zephaniah? Is he just being dramatic? Is he exaggerating? Or is he speaking an important truth that we need to hear, even though the language makes us cringe with  discomfort? How do we discover the God of love, whom we know in Jesus Christ, in the words of Zephaniah?

Let us grant the words of the prophets are frequently dramatic- designed to get and hold our attention. But can they be therefore dismissed as irrelevant? Can they be reduced to words that are more pleasant, less drastic, and perhaps more forgiving? Only by the most strenuous effort. We must start out by facing the fact that these words are very hard to hear and understand; they were hard to hear and understand then, and they are hard to hear and understand now.

But, as Christians, we believe that those words both hide and reveal the same God we know in Jesus, the one in whom we put our trust. Jesus also is reported to have spoken some harsh words – words that are also prophetic and hard to hear – words like “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword;” and “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;” (Matthew 25:41) and “if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off;” (Matthew 5:30) and “if you eye offends you, pluck it out” (Matthew 5:29). The problem is not  that we cannot envision a God who loves us; most of us can, since we have heard the gospel – and the story of the rainbow -  preached to us since childhood. But we have a much harder time (those of us in the liberal tradition, anyway) picturing and understanding a God who judges us.

In the Presbyterian tradition, worship services begin, after a hymn of praise, with a prayer of confession, in which the congregation acknowledges its collective and individual sin and asks for forgiveness. One of my colleagues (the same one I mentioned last week, whose church is a union church of several denominations), after trying to introduce the prayer of confession into the morning worship service, reported a conversation with a parishioner – a conversation that is probably more common than not, in which the parishioner objected to this confessional prayer, saying: “Why should I say a prayer like this? I don’t have anything to apologize to God for.” My feeling, when I heard this was, “This church definitely needs to be more Presbyterian.” Such words remind me of Zephaniah’s, when he said: “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.” (Zephaniah 1:12)

So often, we say that we believe in God, but we don’t expect God to do anything.

That belief, of course, can be a reaction to those who believe that God does everything, whether it involves helping us with a parking place or helping us pass a test for which we have not prepared, or inflicting illnesses on us or destroying cities with tornadoes and hurricanes. Once perhaps people believed that everything that happened was an act of God; some of us may still believe that, but now, many of us see no room at all for acts of God – only the acts of chance produced at random in a vast and impersonal universe. Unlike Zephaniah, we do not want to see anything as God’s blessing or God’s punishment.

Certainly we do not believe, do we, that God caused Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans, or Hurricane Irene to wreak havoc in Vermont, or super storm Sandy to destroy whole sections of New York city and New Jersey? Do we, or do we not? Certainly some Christians believe that such events are punishments for wickedness; most of us, however, have a hard time believing  that. Well, then, if God didn’t cause it, who did? No one, we say; it just happened.

What the prophets are trying to say is that the way people live has consequences. Beneath our too easy embrace of tolerance sometimes lies the assumption that nothing really matters. The prophets remind us that things matter very much. Where we put our heart, our allegiance, our hope matters very much. And from that we can say: the kind of God we worship matters very much. Not the God we say we worship, but the God we really worship.

And prophets remind us that we may say we worship the God of Israel but our behavior proves otherwise. Whether our words are compromised by partaking in rituals that we know are disgraceful, or whether our professions of faith in God are compromised by our worship of things we can make and buy, prophets call us to account and remind us that our worship has consequences. Not every disaster, of course, is directly attributable to our actions – but some are. We are properly horrified to think that God would destroy a city, but let us remember: who has destroyed cities in our lifetimes? Certainly, there have been tsunamis for which we have no explanation at all, but we do have an explanation for the monstrous destruction of Hiroshima – and Sarajevo and Baghdad? We do have an explanation for the destruction of the World Trade Center and for the bombing of Baghdad. Who did that? People. What we do matters; what we believe to be true matters, where we put our hearts matters.

I said earlier that Zephaniah, like many of the prophets we are reading, proclaims doom, then gloom, then resume. The doom is painted as absolute, but it frequently softens to simply being a period of gloom, when what had been depended upon for wealth or safety no longer provides wealth or comfort or safety. When security falls away, be it our finances or our health or our family stability, we experience gloom. But gloom is rarely the final word, certainly not in Zephaniah. In the third and last chapter, Zephaniah’s words become more comforting. After chastisement and failure there is hope and comfort – not because people become fundamentally better, but because they have learned humility. Here is what he says:

Therefore, wait for me, says the Lord,

for the day when I arise as a witness.

For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms,

to pour out upon them my indignation,

all the heat of my anger,

for the fire of my passion

all the earth shall be consumed. (Zephaniah3:8)

But then, the tone changes:

At that time I will change the speech of the people

to a pure speech,

that all of them may call on the name of the Lord

and serve him with one accord.

…

On that day you shall not be put to shame

because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me,

for then I will remove from your midst

your proudly exultant ones,

and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.

For I will leave in the midst of you

a people humble and lowly.

They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord – the remnant of Israel;

they shall do no wrong and utter no lies,

nor shall a deceitful tongue

be found in their mouths.

They will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid. (Zephaniah 3:9-13)

Doom, gloom, resume. What dooms us is our unaccountable pride. The gloom that follows is painful. This is a continual theme in all of scripture. What results is a new humility. It is a mistake to read the Bible unhistorically. Indeed, it is dangerous to do so; it is dangerous to infer from prophets like Zephaniah any precise predictions about  specific events of our time.  But, as extreme as the prophetic language may be, it is still valuable for us. We too have been through destruction. Our pride has been, and will continue to be, our downfall, resulting in suffering and destruction for many. From all of this, we – by which I mean all of us – may learn a proper sense of humility. We are not God. Our knowledge will always be incomplete, and sometimes simply wrong. In such a world, humility is appropriate, even though it is not popular. It is dangerous and arrogant to proclaim that any disaster is God’s doing, But it is also ignorant not to see God’s presence with us even in those situations and circumstances that overwhelm us. Doom, gloom, resume – having learned not to trust our own goodness, but  the goodness of God. We don’t always like this message, but there it is. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Hosea: Love that Will Not Let Us Go - Richard R. Crocker

Love that will not let us go …..

Richard R. Crocker

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

Hosea 11:1-9

            I have chosen for our text this morning one of the tenderest parts of the book of the prophet Hosea. Those of you who read the entire book, or who plan to read it, will note the difference in tone between this passage and many of the others, which are not nearly as tender.

                        This is the problem with prophets. Their words are so often disturbing, provocative, extreme, and unsettling that we don’t want to hear them. Only later, in hindsight, can we say they were right and appreciate the severity of their language. In the present, prophets do not make pleasant dinner guests.

            A contemporary example: Bill McKibben is a very kind man. But when you talk with him about climate change, his language is not measured. His warnings are severe, unsettling, disturbing, and downright unpleasant. It is much nicer to have dinner with those people who assure us that nothing is wrong.

            But back to Hosea.  You remember that after King Solomon, the united kingdom of Israel broke up into the Northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Last time we spoke about Amos, a southerner who went to the more prosperous north to proclaim the priority of justice over greed. Hosea was Amos’ contemporary. He also prophesied in the northern kingdom – just a little later than Amos.  Amos, as you remember, spoke during the time of the great king Jeroboam II, under whose rule Israel had prospered. Hosea began prophesying under Jeroboam, but saw four kings assassinated in the next fourteen years. Things were falling apart, and the kingdom of Israel was struggling to come to terms with its great   neighbor, Assyria.

            Assyria. 2700 years ago, the nations of Judah and Israel were constantly worried about their more powerful neighbors – Assyria to the northeast and Babylonia to the southeast. Fast forward 2700 hundred years to today, and the nation of Israel is still constantly worried about its more powerful neighbors – Iraq (formerly Babylonia) to the south, and Iran and Syria (formerly Assyria) to the north. We are talking here about enduring geo-political realities, and about an enduring faith. What we consider ancient history is also quite contemporary.  Neither Assyria nor Babylonia exists today as an empire, but the geo-politics remain. The fragile coalition of tribes who struggled to remain faithful to the revelation of the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who brought the children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt and established them on the strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean, still struggle to understand and embody faithfulness, and prophets have continued to encourage them, to condemn their faithlessness, and, alas, to proclaim the calamities that will result when they forsake the commandments of their God.

            As a side note, let me remind you of a singular resource that some of you may not know about. Only two blocks from here, in the Hood museum, in the first room you enter, is a permanent exhibit that will bring you into immediate contact with the Assyrian empire. There you will find a marvelous display of stone plates, spread across an entire wall, that were taken from the palace of Ashurnasipal II at Nimrud near Ninevah – stone reliefs that decorated the palace of this ruler of Assyria in the years around 850 BC. The story of how these stone reliefs came to Dartmouth is quite interesting and is outlined at the exhibit. Suffice it to say that it had to do with the influence of American missionaries and British archaeologists in the 19^th century, along with the rivalry between Dartmouth and Williams colleges.  It is a fascinating story – and you should go and look at the exhibit, which is permanently on display. But my point now is that the exhibit reminds us of the reality of the situations that Amos and Hosea addressed; a struggling small kingdom constantly at the mercy of a larger empire. Both Amos and Hosea were right in asserting that the northern kingdom of Israel would be destroyed. In the year 721 BC, after several more minor invasions, the northern kingdom of Israel was devastated by the Assyrians, who populated the area and produced, by intermarriage and conquest, the people known in New Testament times as the (despised) Samaritans.

            Are prophets always speaking doom? No, not always, but frequently.  Both Amos and Hosea called Israel to account, calling them to return to the true worship of God, but the two prophets are very different. Hosea’s message was, like Amos’, a call to repentance, but it was also, and perhaps primarily, a message of God’s faithfulness, even amid and despite the faithlessness of the people of Israel.

            As you will know from reading the book, Hosea’s message begins with a very dramatic event. He feels called to go and marry a prostitute – one whom he knows will be unfaithful to him, even while he is faithful to her. This marriage symbolizes God’s faithfulness to Israel, even when his bride, Israel, is unfaithful to him. Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, the prostitute, is the central metaphor of Hosea’s prophecy – but it is not simply a metaphor, it is a reality. Scholars have debated – did Hosea really do this, or was he just speaking metaphorically. The strong opinion  is, yes, he really did it.  Prophets often really did (and really do) strange things that other people only talk about. But Hosea’s action makes more sense when one looks more closely at the situation he was addressing.

            You see, when the tribes of Israel established themselves in the land called Canaan, contrary to the impression given in some parts of the Bible, they did not really obliterate the people living there. Rather, they inserted themselves into a culture that already had its own religion – and this religion was quite typical of the fertility cults that were prevalent throughout the middle east, and, indeed, elsewhere. Fertility cults were based on the need to seek good conditions for crops and flocks. Today, many of us have forgotten what our ancestors knew – that we human creatures are dependent upon the earth for our very survival, and that we cannot control all the conditions that make for good crops. Therefore actions and imprecations to the powers beyond us have been prevalent throughout history. In ancient times, often these actions and imprecations involved ritualized sexual activity, designed, it seems from a removed perspective, to encourage fertility in the earth and powers beyond us. So sites of sacred or ritualized prostitution were part of Canaanite religion – practices that occurred on the “high places” where cultic prostitutes were part of the sacred rituals to the God called Baal. Israelite religion, of course, was incompatible with such practice. We know that Israelite religion involved the sacrifice and sacred consumption of animals and fruits and grains: Israelite worship was something like the annual homecoming service at my church in Alabama: an hour of prayer and sermon and singing, followed by a gigantic feast.  The sacrifices offered to Yahweh were consumed by the priests but also by the people. Food is still a part of our worship experience. But fertility cults, the worship of the god often called Baal by having sex with sacred prostitutes – this was not part of Hebrew worship. Still, one can perhaps understand its continuing appeal. By contrast, Hebrew worship was somewhat austere, and the emphasis on the holiness of the one God whose name could not even be uttered was hard to maintain. It faced continual competition.

It was in this context that Hosea was called to dramatize the nature of the God of Israel – by marrying one of these cultic prostitutes, having children who may or may not have been his own, and proclaiming thereby, dramatizing, that though the people of Israel were forsaking Yahweh, Yahweh, the true God, the holy one, would never forsake them. Yes, they were doing things that would lead to destruction; Hosea saw the coming Assyrian invasion as a direct result of God’s rebuke of his people. All Hosea could say was that, even so, God would be faithful, and his people would not be totally destroyed, and that Judah would continue faithful to Yahweh. Hosea continues to use the word Ephraim, as he does in the passage we read, to refer to the love that God has for the people who have forsaken him. Ephraim was, you may know, the favorite son of Joseph, who was the favorite son of Jacob. So Ephraim represents the beloved son of the beloved son (Joseph) – perhaps the most beloved. The genealogy in Chronicles indicates that King Jeroboam was in fact a descendant of Ephraim. So when Hosea decried the faithlessness of Ephraim, he was speaking of the pain of a lost son, and at the same time of the faithfulness of a loving God, a loving parent, who will never forsake the beloved wife, or the beloved child.

            And so, though Hosea’s words are word of discipline and destruction, they are also words of comfort and pleading, words of constancy and faithfulness.

            At Dartmouth, it has been a pleasure and honor for me to work with so many outstanding students, who are generally motivated by a great desire to succeed and, usually, to please their parents. These high achievers are often so motivated, but not always. I have also, over the years, seen the child who chooses a different path, sometimes a self-destructive path, usually marked by abuse of drugs and alcohol, whose parents mourn the loss of the promise that they had cherished in their child. Sometimes there is nothing a parent can do except stand by and watch and pray – like the father in the story of the prodigal son, when messages even of love and support are spurned and rejected. There is no pain like it, I know.

            And such is what we feel when we read these tender words from Hosea;:

When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more I called them,

the more they went away from me;

They kept sacrificing to the Baals,

and offering incense to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,

I took them up in my arms;

but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of human kindness,

with hands of love.

I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.

 I bent down to them and fed them.

…

How can I give you up,  O Ephraim?

The essence of Hosea’s prophecy can be summarized in one sentence: we are loved by a love that will not let us go.

Let us return for a moment to Bill McKibben, our contemporary prophet. Bill has spoken to us continual words of warning. He has pointed to our extreme climate events – floods and hurricanes and tornadoes. He has pointed to the melting icepacks, to the rising sea-level, and to the rising level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. There have been warnings and crises, but little change. I asked a student, a thoughtful, good student – the other day how he thought about the inevitable climate change that would create a crisis for his generation. He replied, honestly, “well, I guess I’ll just have to move to higher ground.” If Bill McKibben is right, it won’t be that simple. We continue, as a people, to live carelessly, extravagantly, and heedlessly. Unfortunately, humans, as a group, do not usually -change unless they are forced to do so by a crisis of gigantic proportions. And sometimes, it is too late. The warnings come; God’s love for us remains, but we sit like paralyzed frogs in a pan of warmer and warmer water until inevitable destruction comes.

Hosea wanted Israel to remember its history and its God. He counseled the nation to be aware that self-indulgence – whether it be financial or sensual - is not what the God of Israel expects from us; indeed, Hosea predicted that by such behavior we will destroy ourselves and grieve the God whose love for us is unfailing.  As another prophet – Jesus – said: “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.”

"God of the Prophets: Amos" Richard R. Crocker

God of the Prophets

Richard R. Crocker

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

June16, 2013

Amos 2:4-16, 7:10-17

               

I am honored to be asked to preach several times (six to be precise) during this summer when Carla is focusing her attention on preparing for the bar exam. I have decided to use this opportunity to preach a series of sermons on a topic that I have never addressed before. I will be speaking about six of the so-called minor Hebrew prophets  - so-called minor, not because their message was unimportant, but because their writings are concise. I have planned the series so that you can either go back and read the book of the prophet after you have heard my sermon on it, or, even better, prepare for worship by reading the book ahead of time. There is a schedule of the sermons in the bulletin.

          Today we begin with Amos. But before we dig in, there are a few things you should know.

          First, I have selected these minor prophets in chronological order, based upon the time of their ministries, rather than on the canonical order, which is the order of the books in the Old Testament. This arrangement will allow you to place these prophets in a chronological, historical context.

          Second, because these prophets must be understood in their historical context, you will be remembering, or perhaps learning, some of the basic, key events of Old Testament history. I will try to provide just enough context to make the messages more understandable.

          Third, I will often refer to these prophets, and their writings, as Old Testament. I notice that your lectors prefer to use the term “Hebrew Scriptures”. Such a preference is fine. However, I assure you that I have it on good authority that many biblical scholars, both Jewish and Christian, agree that, for Christians, the term Old Testament is not derogatory. It is simply descriptive. These scriptures are not only  Hebrew scriptures. They are also Christian scriptures. But for Christians, they are the Old Testament. I certainly mean no offense by using this term, and I hope that none is taken.

          Fourth, although often we have an Old Testament lesson in our worship service, it is unusual to have sermons and readings dealing exclusively with Old Testament texts. This series is therefore unusual. I will not be preaching from the lectionary, so there will be few or no New Testament readings during this series. I hope that the power of these prophetic readings will show why they deserve our focused attention. Often when Christians use texts from the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, they use them almost as proof texts, without paying adequate attention to their original context. I hope that this series will not make that error.

          Fifth, this series will certainly introduce us into the study of the nature of prophecy. While many of us think of prophets as simply predictors of the future, we will come to understand that they are more accurately understood as interpreters of the present.

Finally – do not worry – I will not repeat this explanation every Sunday. You’ll just have to remember it.

Now, to Amos. Chances are that Amos is better known to you than any of the other minor prophets, but he is still a mystery. To appreciate his message, you will need to remember the history; The twelve tribes of Israel, after the exodus, spread across the territory that we now call Israel/Palestine and lived under tribal rule until they demanded a king. You remember how Saul was anointed as King over all Israel – over all the 12 tribes - by the prophet Samuel. But the Israelites remained scattered and not united until King David and King Solomon conquered and centralized their authority in the Jebusite city of Jerusalem. The united kingdom of Israel reached its greatest height under Solomon in the year around 1000 BC. After his reign, things began to fragment once again, until by about 920 BC the kingdom had been divided into two parts – north and south. The southern part was Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem. The northern part was comprised of the other tribes and was called Israel, with its capital at Samaria. Each part had its own kings. There was tension and bitterness between Israel and Judah, and of course, both kingdoms were constantly worried about their more powerful neighbors.

          Amos, a man who called himself a shepherd and a pruner of sycamore trees, lived in the south, in Judah, in Tekoa, near Jerusalem. The south was the more religious part of the region. The northern part had become more secular and much more prosperous. Amos felt called, however, to go from the south to the north, during the time when the north was experiencing its greatest prosperity under King Jeroboam II. The Israelites attributed their power and prosperity in part to their formal piety and to the sacrifices they made at the official temple in Bethel. Amos made his way to Samaria and to the shrine at Bethel to deliver bad news – to tell the Israelites that their piety was not pleasing to the Lord. At the royal temple, he gained a hearing first by working up his audience  - by proclaiming God’s judgment on all their unrighteous neighbors. But then he turned the tables and saved his harshest words for Israel. When he started doing that, he had, as the saying goes, stopped preaching and gone to meddling. We read part of his word to the Israelites in our first scripture reading today. It is not surprising that Amos’  scathing indictment of Israel was unwelcome. In our second reading, we heard how the official priest of the national shrine, Amaziah, after speaking to the King, told Amos to go back home and never return. The words of a prophet can be very troubling. Israel was, in its own eyes, just fine. It was more prosperous and powerful than it had ever been. What right did that shepherd – not even an official prophet – what right did he have to challenge their wealth and comfort?

          Now it is important to understand that, in the time of Amos as well as in our time, there were many prophets – some officially commissioned by the king and priests, who only spoke good news, and some unofficial ones like Amos who told it like it was. This is the problem we have with prophets. There are always too many of them, and they speak contradictory messages. The prophetic writings that we have in our scriptures are, of course, highly selected. These writings are remembered because, in hindsight, the words proved so valuable and true. But at the moment, Amos’ words were disturbing. The king and the official priests found him a trouble-maker, not a prophet. Only in hindsight do we understand that his words were the true ones.

          And what were his words, precisely? Well, you can read them for yourself. Some of them, like the passages we read, are familiar to us. Here are others that Amos spoke to these very religious, very pious, very prosperous people who thought that the anticipated “day of the Lord” would bring them even greater triumphs:

                   Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!

Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light,

As if someone  fled from a lion and was met by a bear;

Or went into the house and rested his hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake.

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,

And gloom with no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your festivals,

And I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

And the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters,

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 515-24)

No wonder he was declared unwelcome. He was indeed a skunk at this garden party.

It was unthinkable to these people that their way of life was weakening them, so much so that, in about a hundred years, their land would be captured by the dreaded Assyrians. Many of them would be exiles; foreigners would come in and mix with them, so that the kingdom of Israel would be utterly destroyed, leaving in its place only the despised people known in Jesus’ time as the Samaritans.

When we read the words of the prophets, we are always tempted to overlook their original meaning and to apply them to our own situation.  And it is true, to a point,  that prophetic words are always pointing toward a future. But they are anchored in a concrete and immediate situation. Amos indicted Israel, not because it was impious, but because it was unjust; not because of its wealth but because of its greed; not because it was not religious, but because it was unrighteous. And these words of warning to Israel are, quite properly, a warning another nation which is, by all accounts very religious, but  which is arrogant, and greedy, and unconcerned about the gap between the rich and the poor. No thoughtful American can read the words of Amos without seeing their implications for our nation – or for any nation where the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, where some have far too much and others have far too little; where words of criticism, when offered, are called disloyal; where many so-called prophets proclaim our goodness, and true prophets are exiled. It is a message as unwelcome now as it was then.

When I was a pastor in New Jersey, I had a friend who was also a pastor, in one of the wealthiest suburban towns of New Jersey, whose church was generally recognized as the best (most prestigious) in town. Indeed, it was so prestigious that, in one of the state elections, both the democractic and the republican candidates for governor were members of that same congregation. The church, of course, had expanded, and it built a beautiful new stone addition to its original building, with an ornate entrance. Above the entrance was a space for an inscription. My friend, the pastor, was showing a few of us around the new edifice. He pointed to the entrance and asked for suggestions about what should be inscribed over the door. Such passages as “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go unto the house of the Lord” were suggested. I, being a contrarian, and also something of a skunk, immediately countered with another suggestion. I said, “Inscribe the passage from Amos: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” I do not think my suggestion was taken seriously, even though I meant it so.

For indeed, if we are to be Christians, if we are to follow the one, Jesus, who certainly stands in the line of the Hebrew prophets, then all of our worship should take place under that inscription. What is required of us is not piety but justice, not empty praise but honest concern for those who have become lost in the greedy rush for gain.

Last week at this hour I sat on the stage at Dartmouth’s graduation and watched the young graduates receive their diplomas, after they had heard a stirring address by Geoffrey Canada, challenging them to remember the children in Harlem, and in places like Harlem, whose opportunities are stunted by the culture of poverty. It was an address that I hope was heard by some, but I know how many of those graduates are headed off directly to lucrative jobs in finance, where they will soon absorb the pernicious message that they deserve to be rich. Mr. Canada left them an out: he said that he hoped some of them would make a lot of money, because he had tried raising money from poor people, but it didn’t go so well. And of course, he is right. It is up to those who have been privileged to carry the greater burdens in any society, and it is true that some rich people understand that. But many do not. Wealth has a way of expanding our sense of entitlement and diminishing our sense of responsibility.

The words of Amos are for me echoed in the familiar words of Lincoln, spoken at the dedication of the cemetery in Gettysburg, 150 years ago this summer: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

Our nation has endured and has increased in prosperity.  But the question posed by Lincoln, and by Amos, haunts us still with its truth: can a nation deeply divided between rich and poor long endure? Can a nation so obsessed with security that it undermines the liberty for which it was founded long endure? These are questions posed by prophets and answered by us all. The prophets who posed them, and the words they spoke, were judged so important by their descendants that they were enshrined in sacred scripture, where we read them today, and ponder them, and ask ourselves anew: what is the true religion which we should practice – the religion to which Amos and Jesus call us? And how have we answered?  Amen