Let justice roll down like water - originally posted September 2010

Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? Amos 8:4-5 (NRSV)

Ah, the prophets. The Old Testament prophets, with their colorful language and sometimes difficult to understand metaphors and examples. Really hard to figure out sometimes, but oh, so important!!

Take the verses from Amos above. They’re from this Sunday’s reading. I had a hard time understanding what he was trying to say in the whole passage, so I read a couple of different translations AND the biographical information in the beginning of the book in my Bible. Turns out, Amos was a farmer who God called to be a prophet. And his message was all about social justice. He’s telling the Israelites that God is angry with them, in a nutshell, for being wayyy too selfish.

See, Israel was in a pretty good place at the time of Amos. They were at peace, business was booming, lots of people called themselves ‘religious,’ the military kept them safe…all in all, a good place to be – or it looked like that from the outside.

But was it? Welll…Amos says no. In this book, he exposes the rotten core of Israel. Selfishness. People were thinking only of their needs, what they could get for themselves, and the heck with everyone else! Amos talks about cheating on business deals, exploiting the poor, wasting money on things they didn’t need, corruption in government, and worshipping false gods.

So Amos says, guess what, Israelites? God’s had it up to HERE with you, and your day of reckoning is coming! Amos is hard to read because we don’t get the “change your behavior and everything will be ok” message of some other prophets. Amos tells the Israelites that things have gone too far and they are about to suffer the consequences of what they’ve been doing.

So what can we learn from this book? I think the message for us is, “don’t be selfish.” Look around you, listen to what’s going on, pay attention to how people interact and whether people are treated fairly. And if you see something wrong – do something about it! Advocate for social justice, and live your life that way! There are ways all of us can do that – giving food to PACS, speaking out when someone is being treated unfairly, making sure we treat everyone the way we want to be treated, and most of all, think of others as well as of yourself. Some of us can do big things, some of us can do little things, but if we ALL do what we can, then justice will “roll on like a river, righteousness like an everlasting stream!” (Amos 5:24)

So what can you do? My challenge to you this week is to think about how you can advocate for social justice – do your part to work towards everyone being treated fairly. Then…don’t just think about it…DO IT!

Have a blessed week, my friends!