July 1, 2020
What are you doing here, Jesus?
Amos is famous, at least to me, for one line. Vineyard founder John Wimber riffed on this passage when he said forgiveness is like a waterfall. “Just get down under it, and let the river flow right on over every particle of your soul. Forgiveness is always free, and it’s for you.”
Amos knew people in his culture did everything BUT. They made noise, they blew horns, they prayed loud prayers. But they never wanted to get wet, not with that living water of God’s. Amos spoke up with fists and fury:
O I hate, I spurn your feasts!
The Lord says, I will not accept your offerings,
Your stall-fed peace offerings.
What I want is my justice to surge like water,
And goodness to fall like an unfailing stream.
Let judgment run down as deep waters
And righteousness as a mighty ever-flowing stream.
Let justice roll on like the river
Roll on, o waters of justice
That’s what I want, says the Lord. That’s all I want.
Hate evil and love good
Let justice prevail at the gate!
God’s frustration at our misunderstanding and our selfishness, God’s anger at how we do the same stupid thing over and over again, pours out of the mouths of his prophets, and then of course out of the mouth of Jesus.
Why do you recite my statutes and profane my covenant with your lips?
For you despise discipline and treat my words like trash.
We have not lived according to what we’ve been given.
Be fruitful
Multiply
And care for the earth.
Be responsible for every living thing.
James said the Father expects us to be a “kind of firstfruits of all his creatures.”
But just as in the Gadarene territory, sometimes …
We are so savage that no one can travel by those roads.
And we too might cry out, pretending …
What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Why torment us now?
That is not the way to talk to Jesus, Messiah, Christ, Son of David, Son of God.
But when Jesus does the town a favor and removes both their demons and their swine, which they aren’t supposed to eat anyway, the hog farmers and leaders of the town are angry with him. Also afraid, of course.
The whole town came out to meet Jesus,
And when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.
Of course they are no different from the rest of us. They kept their secrets from God, they circled up and defended each other, even when they were wrong. I too fall hard sometimes, fail to acknowledge my sin. I look instead for the praise of people instead of seeking the praise of God (John 12:43).
There are words for this, a liturgical form which can lift without meaning off my lips or convict me down into the depths of my soul:
I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers and my sisters
That I have greatly sinned
In my thoughts and in my words,
In what I have done and what I have failed to do
Through my fault, through my fault,
Through my most grievous fault …
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,
O please pray for me!
The hard work of humility, obedience, justice and goodness, and especially the work of “caring for all the earth” lies before us still.
As it always will.
           (Amos 5, Psalm 50, James 1, Matthew 8)
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