As I look at the church today, sometimes it weighs heavily how divided we are. When I read the words of Amos, I realize this is not the first time God has dealt with a people who are deeply divided and deeply broken. At this time, Israel had divided into northern and southern kingdoms (Israel and Judah, respectively). In our divisions, and in our world, it seems those on the margins are the ones who become lost: "They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandles - they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the eart, and pursh the afflicted out of the way." As if this wasn't enough, all of the kingdoms located around Israel and Judah are the object of God's wrath as well. It's as though God is saying, remember me, "I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up some of your children to be prophets and some of your youths to be nazirites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel? says the LORD."
The destruction described in both Amos and in Revelation are chilling. They don't offer an easy way out; rather, they shine a reflection as though a mirror to what humanity is capable. Perhaps this is the point. What happens when we try to find our own way out, we end up with destruction. We end up with war. We end up with a world in which the hungry and the thirsty are reduced to holding up cardboard signs, to Ethiopian women abandoning their children along the roadside as they search for food, water, and refuge. We end up with empty hearts and lots of stuff to fill the void to find that the stuff does not fit the void within us. Perhaps these verses serve to point us away from ourselves toward God, toward the God who delivers us, who favors the poor, seeks the benefit of the widow, and who hears the cries of the oppressed. It is not we who can remove ourselves from our penchant for destruction; it is God alone. In turning toward God, we turn away from ourselves, away from our destruction, and seek a new way: a new way to be human, a new way to be Christian, a new way to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment