“Being About Our Father’s Business”

Amos 7:10-17

Luke 2:49b (KJV): …I must be about my Father’s business.

[prayer]

Years ago, in response to a question I had asked her, a friend replied, “Do you want the truth or a convincing lie?” I opted for a truth that I already suspected, but still did not want to hear. It confirmed my suspicions while popping my bubble. It hurt but I survived, and in the long run was much better off for it.

The truth can be painful. I keep thinking about the courtroom scene in the movie “A Few Good Men,” where under intense questioning, the character played by Jack Nicholson blurted out, “You can’t handle the truth!” There is some reality in that, but most of the time it’s a matter of us not wanting to handle the truth. And quite often those who tell it face an angry backlash.

There’s an old joke making the rounds that goes like this: “If you don’t believe that the truth will set you free, try telling your boss what you really think.” My cousin’s husband Ed encountered that reality several years ago. His boss asked him to tell her what he really thought of her management style. He did – and found himself unemployed. She asked for the truth, but she didn’t like what she heard. Rather than seriously addressing the message she fired the messenger.

A brief history lesson: after Solomon died the Kingdom of Israel was split into two smaller kingdoms, Judah and Israel, each with its own king, capital, and central religious shrine. Somewhere around 750 B. C. a prophet named Amos left his home in Judah to proclaim God’s Word up north in Israel. He didn’t do it because he really wanted to. He did it because God called him to do it. Inspired by the Holy Spirit Amos told God’s truth to people who had been fed a steady diet of convincing lies.

They didn’t want to hear or handle this truth. The professional prophets of Israel – those on the king’s payroll – had been telling them what they wanted to hear for years. They had been lulled into believing the following convincing lies: (One) They were eternally secure because God was on Israel’s side, no matter what. (Two) Their blatant disregard for their covenant with God, made clear by their unethical and illegal treatment of the poor and needy, didn’t matter as long as they maintained the outward symbols of their religion.

(Three) Their false piety, which consisted of attending the right services, joining in the right liturgy, and giving the right offerings, was enough to please or at least appease God even as they continued to indulge themselves in immoral, unethical, unrighteous, and unjust behaviors. (And Four) Their immoral sexual behavior, mostly carried out in conjunction with the worship of false gods, didn’t really matter to God.

Amos made it very clear that their covenant with God could not be disregarded with such impunity. God’s laws concerning ethical and moral behavior were to be obeyed not ignored. The poor and the weak were to be cared for and protected. The legal system was to be used to uphold justice and righteousness for every citizen of Israel. False gods were never ever to be worshipped. The sexual practices that were an adjunct to such worship were absolutely forbidden.

Amos stepped on some mighty powerful toes, including those of King Jeroboam and his high priest Amaziah. Finally Amaziah took it upon himself to tell Amos that he could no longer preach at Bethel, the national shrine and the king’s place of worship. As the chaplain to the royal family and the ancient equivalent of the office bishop, Amaziah was exercising his considerable political and ecclesiastical authority. As the official defender of Israel’s civic religion – the Secretary of Religion, as it were - he was trying to make sure that someone like Amos did not disrupt the peace and prosperity of the land by telling God’s truth. It was Amaziah’s job to make sure that the people continued to believe the convincing lies that he and his fellow clergy-types were proclaiming.

Did Amos stop preaching? Did he apologize for any trouble he had caused and go on back to Judah? Nope. His reply to Amaziah was scathing. First he reminded him that he wasn’t part of the official ecclesiastical brotherhood. He wasn’t a priest. Nor was he a professional prophet. He was a farmer whom God had chosen for a particular prophetic task. His ministry was “Spirit-led.” He was speaking God’s Word, and if that Word contradicted the conventional wisdom of the nation’s civic religion, then so be it.

Furthermore, to oppose him was to oppose God. Telling him to shut up and go home was the same as telling God to hush. Therefore judgment was coming, and although most of the words spoken by Amos in verse 17 are specifically addressed to Amaziah, they are a snapshot of the judgment about to befall all of Israel.

Hear again those verses, this time from The Message: “Your wife will become a whore in town. Your children will get killed. Your land will be auctioned off. You will die homeless and friendless. And Israel will be hauled off to exile, far from home.”

We don’t know what eventually became of Amos. As one wit puts it he was the prophet who blew in, blew up, and blew out. One theory is that he did what he was sent to do, and then he went home. Maybe, maybe not. There is an old tradition that Amos was eventually stoned to death for audaciously proclaiming the truth of God’s Word. If so, then once again, instead of people taking the message to heart and applying it to their lives, they chose to kill or otherwise silence the messenger. They really couldn’t handle the truth.

When God’s people faithfully go about doing the business to which he has called them, to a lesser of greater degree they risk Amos’ fate. God’s business often conflicts with the world’s business. God’s truth will always contradict the world’s convincing lies. The Gospel doesn’t always jibe with the civic religion of a nation, including ours. Quite often those who are opposed to the just and righteous demands of God cloak their opposition in the garb of patriotism, free enterprise, or some nebulous definition of national security.

Or in some cases ecclesiastical pragmatism - you know, that old going along to get along strategy by which we think we’re preserving the church. And we may very well preserve its place in the social hierarchy, but in the process totally strip it of its integrity. It’s a sad, sad thing to hear and see the Gospel message corrupted by the inclusion of the tenets of whatever brand of civic religion that happens to be in vogue.

I wonder what message Amos would speak to modern American Christians. More than that I wonder what Jesus would have to say to us. Might they both point out the incongruities of believing that we are one nation under God while ignoring the fact that ours is a nation where there is not always liberty and justice for all? Might they point out the further incongruity of upholding the motto “In God We Trust” while many of us trust everything but God for our national, personal, and even eternal security? Might they express God’s displeasure with us for wasting billions of dollars every year on stuff we don’t need while people around the globe starve to death or die from easily preventable diseases?

Or his displeasure with certain leaders of our nation’s government for the way they so glibly promote spending millions on a broken public education system while many of them send their own children to private schools? Or for so loudly beating the drums of wars in which they ask other people’s children to die while protecting their own? Or for being more concerned about publicly displaying the Ten Commandments than they are about keeping them? Or for going on and on about the right to life of unborn children while they slash the budgets of programs that promote the right to life of children already born? I don’t agree with many Republicans about many things, but I do agree wholeheartedly with Mike Huckabee’s insistence on the right to life of all children before and after birth.

Essentially we know what they would say for we have the Biblical record of what they said. The real question is what do we say? What do we say in the face of our culture’s moral and ethical excesses? What do we say to those in the government, the business establishment, and even the church who advise us to go along with injustice, unrighteousness, and immorality in order to get along? What word do we speak in the name of Jesus to those who lead us when it is obvious that they are leading us astray? How do we respond to those who would try to prevent us from being about our Father’s business? What comes after the phrase, “Hear the Word of the Lord?” All that depends on how willing we are to speak God’s truth instead of echoing our culture’s convincing lies. Amen.