Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost September 30, 2001 Year C
Amos 6 : 1a, 4-7
Title: “Danger of prosperity being placed before God.”
Amos is prophesying in the northern kingdom, whose capital is Samaria, shortly before its fall to the Assyrians. Many Israelites, certainly the prominent ones, will be exiled. Although this doom looms on the horizon, the prominent people of the land fail to see it. Their focus is on enjoying the present prosperity. Amos preaches pretty much to deaf ears as well as blind eyes. He warns them that their behavior has consequences; their neglect and exploitation of the poor will be the cause of their downfall and that of the nation.
In verse one, Alas for those who are at ease, “Alas” is a warning, not a wish for calamity or a curse.
In Zion: Zion is the mountain in the southern kingdom, Judah, on which Jerusalem, its capital, is built. This is a poetic way of addressing the whole southern kingdom by reference to its capital mount. Whether Amos so addressed the south or whether this was later adjusted to apply to the south at the time of the Babylonian exile, what is said of the northern kingdom, Israel, is also true of the south.
Mount of Samaria: Samaria was the capital of Israel, the northern kingdom, and, like all cities, was built on a mountain for defensive purposes. So, the complacent and over-confident of both north and south are addressed through their mountainous capitals. The height, prominence or preeminence of these mounts gives a false sense of being protected from the foe.
Leaders of a nation favored from the first: The Hebrew has “the notable men of the first of the nations to whom the house of Israel come.” Israel was the “first” or “head” of the nations because God had chosen her. So she was preeminent among the nations, high like the mountain her capital was built on. The notable men, the ones the rest of the people looked to and came to for just dealings, were doubly preeminent since they ruled as first or head in a nation that was herself first.
In verse two, Calneh…Hamath…Gath! Are you better than these kingdoms? : Calneh is probably a city-state in the north of Syria. Hamath was on the Orontes River and was in Amos’ day the capital of a Syrian kingdom bordering on Israel’s northern frontier. Gath was a Philistine city-state west of Judah. Exactly what is the prophet’s point is not clear. Some think this is a later insertion addressed to Judah by a later prophet citing examples of kingdoms already destroyed by Assyria. If so, the point would be that Judah should not expect to escape destruction when all the kingdoms around her have fallen. She will be no exception. If, however, this verse is pre-722BC and these city-state, petty kingdoms are being cited to say that Israel is indeed bigger and better than they, then the point would be that the people erroneously thought they would be exempt from destruction by Assyria because of her divine election as well as her being larger in size than all the surrounding kingdoms. Whichever the case, the prophet warns that nothing will stop the inevitable.
In verse three, you would put off the evil day, yet you hasten the reign of violence: The Hebrew has “seat of violence.” The idea is that the leaders, the judges, the prominent men, ignore the external threats from Assyria foolishly thinking that if they do so they will go away. In fact, they are hastening the day of judgment and destruction by their unjust rulings at the seat or bench of justice. There is more “violence” in the kind of injustice the poor suffer every day at the hands of the rich and famous than all the violence suffered on the one day when the city will be captured by force. In ignoring the daily violence they do to the poor they are, in fact, unwittingly hastening their own “day in court.”
In verses four to six, these verses paint a picture of the self-indulgence, opulent living, and hardy partying on the part of the prominent and preeminent in Israel’s society. Just as the women of Samaria were bashed by the prophet in Chapter four verses one to three, calling them “cows of Bashan,” so now the men are similarly painted as overeating, overdrinking couch potatoes.
In verse six, yet they are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph: “Joseph” is a poetic way of referring to the northern tribes of Israel, and so, Israel. Many in the north claimed descent from Joseph through his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. The prophet condemns the prominent and preeminent who might get sick from overeating and be grieved the next day from overdrinking, but are unaffected by the present and future condition of “Joseph.” The political judgment- of invasion and destruction- is but a future expression of the present divine judgment upon the situation as it now exists. The social fabric is stretched thin by the rich’s ignorance of the poor, then torn by their neglect of them and, finally, totally ruined by their exploitation of them. In God’s eyes this is an intolerable disconnect that cannot continue for long. The core of Israel’s society is already rotten long before the Assyrians arrive on the scene to expose it.
Now they shall be the first to go into exile: The preeminence of the mountain cannot protect the people from God’s judgment. The preeminence of the prominent cannot protect the leaders from God’s justice. Ironically, just as they were “first,” at the top of their game, now they will be “first” in disgrace. Amos predicts their situation will be another instance of “See how the mighty have fallen.” Those who were the leaders in revelry and debauchery will lead all right. They will be first, at the head of the line, prominent and preeminent in disgrace. There is just no future in injustice, especially insensitivity to the poor and needy, neglect and exploitation of those less fortunate.
Sermon
Who of us cannot remember being told by our mother to eat a food we did not like because of the starving in Europe or India or China or Africa or wherever? And who cannot remember saying to themselves, “Then, send this wretched stuff to the starving in Europe because I do not want it?” Of course, we dared not say it aloud for fear of the consequences. Yet, this somewhat humorous reverie holds a profound, if not obvious, truth, a truth Amos brings out in this reading. The starving people of the world failed to move us as children because we were not even hungry, let alone starving. So long as I am well fed, clothed and housed, what care I of those who are not? True, even as children, we could see right through the logic or lack of it, in telling someone to eat more because others had nothing to eat. The premise that I should stuff myself with stuff, I do not like just because someone else is starving, carries little weight. However, the injustice of it all can easily escape us, children and adults alike.
There’s the rub with injustice. We fail to even recognize when we are being unjust or acquiescing in injustice. The problem is not the enjoyment of the good things in life. God created them and wants us to enjoy them. The problem is the cost. At what cost to others do I enjoy the benefits of earth? Which is better? For me to enjoy more and thereby deprive others of even necessities? Or for me to share more of what I have that more, others, may enjoy?
Amos did not need to go to school or do studies or take surveys to know that the great imbalance between the rich and poor actually destroys, like a moth eating cloth, the very fabric of society. He knew that the cost for that imbalance was too high. Eventually, there would be a foreclosure. But the problem is, just as with the child balking at dinner, that we are not aware of the cost at the time. Our insensitivity to the hidden ill effects of even the slightest injustice also makes us insensitive to those effects as and when they become more obvious. We deny until the pain is so great that it is undeniable. Yet, we are still stunned as we walk in line into exile- disgrace and destruction. True, there is the final judgment where everything will be righted. But, just as God let both the north first and then the south go into exile as a salutary, if painful, reminder of that final judgment, so, too, God lets similar things happen in everyone’s life. If only we would learn the lesson and stop being like the stubborn child who refuses to eat what is good simply because he or she is not hungry enough to try something new. Children who are not lovingly forced to eat such food are condemned to suffer the consequences of bad eating habits for the rest of their lives. So it is with every other challenge.
We just do not recognize the effects of our behavior. In Amos’ day the prominent people were having too good a time to be concerned about those who were not, those upon whom the prosperity of the day had yet to “trickle down.” It was not their enjoyment of life that did them in, it was the cost of it. They were building up a national debt that was to come due soon, but they ignored it. Amos calls us all to become aware that any injustice on any level affects us all. It may affect the victim today, but tomorrow it will turn around and attack the perpetrator. In this sense, injustice is as “blind” as justice should be.
Complacency inures us to injustice.
Ignoring or denying injustice is as bad as committing it.
Both injustice we do and the injustice we ignore will come back to haunt us and harm us.
Complacency: Our older brain, the hypothalamus, impels us to seek comfort, even comfort at all costs. Our higher brain motivates us to contribute something good for others. Our older brain tells us to secure our own needs period. Our newer brain, the cerebral cortex, tells us that the needs of others are as important as our own needs. Thus, a healthy person seeks to do both: to secure one’s own needs and also to see to the needs of others. Complacency, that is, comfort, becomes bad when it stops at our own needs. Let us take eating as an example. We see in the animal world that the individual animal can eat to its heart’s content and be totally unconcerned that the other animals, even animals of its own species, are standing by starving. The one exception, of course is motherhood. A mother animal is programmed to see to it that her babies are fed, even fed first. She will stop at nothing in order to feed her young until they are old enough and strong enough to feed themselves. This “instinct,” namely, to care for others at one’s own expense, developed in the human species into a major aspect of the higher brain, male and female. Fundamentally, though, it is the maternal animal instinct, come of age in the human being. In other words, when a human being, male or female, mother, father, sister brother, friend, or no friend, is concerned enough about the plight and the needs of others and does something about it, that human being is exercising the maternal instinct on a human level. That maternal instinct is freed from the confines of an actual animal mother and can now be more universally practiced. In the human being, complacency is, or should be, balanced by concern. And not merely an emotional concern, but one that moves beyond emotion into action. The people the prophet Amos is talking to and talking about got stuck in complacency. They were retrogressing to their old animal state. They were eating while others were standing by, so to speak, starving. They were feasting while others were fasting, but fasting out of necessity, not voluntarily. Unlike the overfed, they could not afford the luxury of “dieting.” In the human being, this complacency, self-satisfaction with one’s lot in life, can infect the higher brain so much that a person can no longer receive or accept a new idea. The person prefers the status quo and will defend it at all costs, lest any change threaten complacency. When complacency rules the higher brain, calcification sets in. The newer brain becomes numbed, frequently requiring drugs both legal and illegal, to keep it numbed. Instead of thinking, the newer brain prefers to be entertained, passively amused and distracted, lest a new thought enter and upset the uneasy peace the higher brain has made with the inconsistencies of life, not to mention its injustices. The prophet Amos was trying to jolt his audience out of their denial, for complacency is a form of denial and denial is the firewall for addiction.
The boomerang: Turning a deaf ear, having a blind eye, a cold and unresponsive heart to injustice always comes back to a person, if not in this life, certainly in the next. Although we may actually commit few injustices in our lives, we cooperate with injustice when we ignore it, especially the injustice of some of us overeating while others of us starve. If there is only so much to go around and we hoard more than our fair share we may not be going up to a hungry person and flaunting our obesity and saying to that person, “I have got something you do not have and you are not getting any,” but the effect is the same. So, ignoring the plight, the needs of others, when we can do something about it, is as bad as actually committing an injustice. The effect is the same. If we were animals we could excuse ourselves, since we would have only our lower brains functioning. But we are humans and the excuse will not hold water. In truth, the ability to ignore or deny the plight of others is an illness of our higher brain. We are the ones in need of help. For the ability to deny or ignore reality like the plight of others will eventuate into our ignoring or denying our own plight. The well-to-do people of Amos’ day could not see disaster coming, as Amos could, because they were so used to denying reality that they could kid themselves into thinking it was not true. That left them vulnerable, more vulnerable than the poor they refused or neglected to help, to an even worse fate than the poor. After all, the poor were used to hunger; the rich were not. The rich would feel the sting of deprivation far more than the poor. Justice will rule, sooner or later. Amen.
