Every once in awhile I’ll talk to another pastor or someone who looks at Bethany Presbyterian Church from the outside and says:

“Wow. Things really seem to be going well at Bethany! The congregation is growing. There’s a ton of children and young families. You’re situated in the middle of a thriving, growing area on property that lots of churches would die to have. I run into Bethany people all over that take leadership in schools and businesses. I’m sure your budget is growing, and you’ve been there seven years now. I mean, things seem really, really good…”

(Steve Lympus bursts through back door, interrupting)

Steve: “Dan, hey Dan!”

Dan: “Steve! What’s up?”

Steve: “Sorry to bug you…but this envelope just came in addressed to you, and it said “URGENT” on the outside, and I thought I’d better get it to you as soon as I could.”

Dan: “Hmmm. Seems a little irregular, I mean I was just getting started on a sermon and all. What is this, anyway?

[Steve walks away, Dan opens envelope]

Dan to congregation:

Sorry about this, you guys…Hey, actually it’s not addressed to me. The package says: Bethany Presbyterian Church, and this letter inside says “To Whom It May Concern:

This is what God says:

• You are a long way off. You have rejected my words and refused to walk with me. (2:4ff)
  
• There is injustice all over your land. The poor and needy around you are constantly taken advantage of. (2:6-7) (8:4ff)
  
• There is sexual promiscuity of every kind going on. (2:7ff)
  
• Some of you live in fine houses with nice clothes and good food while others live on the streets. ( 3:15, chpt 6)
  
• You seem to not know how to do right. ( 3:10) or to speak the truth ( 5:10).
  
• You put together nice worship services (4:4-5 and 5:22ff), but your lives are a contradiction to what you say you believe.
  
• You do not look to do good. (5:18)
  
• Seek God and live. (5:6)

signed,…the prophet, Amos

Please stand for the reading of God’s Word.

As I have read in Amos this last week, “Thanks be to God” is not usually what I find myself saying. More often it’s been. “Wow, this is so uncomfortable!”

Around 740 BC, things in Israel were really, really good. [You’ll remember from last week that the kingdom of King David and his son Solomon split in two around 922, and from that point “Israel” usually refers to the northern country, while Judah refers to the south, centered in Jerusalem.]

Things in Israel were good. The country was prospering. In fact, economically, Israel was at its peak of wealth and prosperity. Things were so good. The economic indicators were strong, interest rates were low, exports were outstripping imports, new markets were opening up all over and the military powers of the Middle East were busy off in other sectors. Things were good, really good! So when some surly prophet like this guy Amos from the south brought such doom and gloom forecasts for the future, who could believe it? Especially considering the source.

Who was Amos? First of all, he wasn’t even from Israel. He was from Judah, in the south. And frankly, the north and the south didn’t get along very well. Amos had a lot of nerve, heading north with this huge word of warning. In fact, at one point, the high priest of Israel told him “Go away, get out of here, go back to the south and sling your words down there, we don’t want you.”

So it was hard for Israel to hear Amos, since he wasn’t “one of them.” It also was hard to hear Amos because no one knew him. Amos didn’t go looking for a job opening for a prophet. He was a herdsman, a farmer, a gardener. He was one of the countless people just living life, content to herd his sheep when God called him and told him to go north and speak.

But mostly it was hard to hear Amos because his word said “God is so unhappy with you. There are dark days ahead, so dark you cannot imagine them. Your armies will be crushed, your cities will be conquered, you will be killed and imprisoned by your enemies, you will be sent to exile. Return to God, change your ways. But that was hard to hear because things were so very, very good in Israel. Who could imagine such bad things happening?

Within 20 years, the country of Israel no longer existed. The superpower of Assyria (Iran/Iraq) had turned its attention westward, taken over land and people, carried some off, brought exiles from other lands in, everything was different. 20 years.

Last week we labored over a different prophet, Hosea, and his difficult words. Hosea lived at roughly the same time as Amos, and in the same place, Israel in the North. Hosea’s words also foretold disaster approaching…but they were sprinkled with hope. There was the repeated litany of God saying “ Israel, return to me, come back to me.”

Hosea was tough, but Amos is much tougher. And while Hosea’s God said “Return to me,” Amos’s seems to say “the way you live proves you don’t know Me.” Here in Amos there are few glimmers of hope, and many of judgment. God is dreadfully unhappy with the way his people live. Disaster is coming. Israel will fall. We have to read through all nine chapters before we barely get even a glimpse of blue sky, and it’s really only a glimpse. It is uncomfortable.

Most people, somewhere through a book like Amos, say something like “Whew…glad I’m a New Testament Christian. I’m glad it’s all about faith and not works. I’m glad I’ve got Jesus’ soft love so I don’t have to worry about hard voices like Amos.”

But not so fast.

• Remember the passage Mike read earlier, where Jesus talked about the sheep and goats. Those who inherited the kingdom were those who had fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the lonely, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, visited those in prison. Serving the “least of these” was the same as serving Jesus, and not doing it was a one-way ticket with the goats.
  
• Remember Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, where the man who cared for the injured man was the one who did right, not the religious.
  
• Remember that Jesus said rather emphatically that he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them.
  
• Remember the apostle Paul pleading in Romans, “hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Share with those in need. Practice hospitality.”
  
• Remember the writer of the letter I John ( 3:16) saying “this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” We readily accept the grace of the Jesus who comes and says “Neither do I condemn you,” but we don’t want to get too close to the Jesus who says “Go and sin no more,” or “Give away everything you have and come and follow me.” It’s uncomfortable.

What’s clear to me is that the New Testament will not save us from the wrath of Amos’ fire. It is inconceivable to the writers of the New Testament that one could proclaim faith in Christ and not have it abundantly evident and lived out in life. So---What exactly is God looking for?

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Three times Amos links these two things together: Justice and righteousness.

Justice in this sense had everything to do with the judicial system of Israel. Several times, Amos mentions the poor being taken advantage of, “the pushing aside of the needy in the gate.” The “gate” was the entrance to a town, and it was generally where the decisions of the town were made, where the judicial judgments occurred. Many times in Amos’ day poor landowners had their precious lands confiscated from them by backroom deals by powerful people. Wealth was being built on the backs of the poor. Those who could have stopped it did not. The court system was corrupt, and those without influence suffered.

I mentioned a book to you a couple months ago that we’ll offer later this year for our Read Good Books reading called Blood Done Sign My Name. It’s a true story from NC, of a young black man who was beaten and killed by a white shop owner and his son. When the case went to court, it went to an all-white jury, selected from a county that was 2/3 black. Systemic racism, systemic injustice. Oh, we might say, but that was so long ago? 1970. It couldn’t happen today…right?

Today... 1/6 of the world lives in slums. Much closer to home, it’s not a coincidence that those from poor families, broken families remain poor, that those from drug-addicted neighborhoods get caught in drug addiction, that a boy whose father spends time in jail has a 70% chance of ending there himself. The gap in our country between rich and poor is getting larger and larger. And we who live on Queen Anne, in Kirkland, Ballard, Greenwood, West Seattle, Magnolia. Do we perpetuate such things? Not intentionally. But insofar as we don’t take action specifically against them means we do perpetuate them, doesn’t it?

It was so interesting this year to follow the controversy in Bothell and Bellevue over the temporary location of a Tent City for the homeless. No community, of course wanted it. Part way through those debates and legal proceedings…I realized that I knew both some of those negotiating and some who needed a place to live. It’s amazing how your view changes when you know some of the people it affects.

At Bethany we’ve just set up a Transitional Housing fund because we feel like the need for housing is so pressing. I have no idea what that will end up looking like. But what if? What if we wanted to operate a transitional housing apartment say right on Queen Anne Ave? What would the Queen Anne community say? Who would the “system” be concerned about? It’s uncomfortable.

“Let justice roll down like waters…

The third year we were in Minneapolis, our church hired a new janitor named Jimmy Joe. Jimmy Joe was single, from the DC area. I found out later he had grown up in a “Boystown” disciplinary facility for most his adolescence. He had a drug addiction we knew about, and had been through treatment.

One Christmas Eve, after our beautiful candlelight service, I drove up to where Jimmy Joe lived in North Minneapolis. Tough neighborhood. Street lights out, rusty cars all over, people hanging around the street corners, drug dealers, prostitutes. I found his dingy little apartment with no furniture except one chair and a television set. When I left, I cried all the way home. I realized that Jimmy Joe had an addiction (which he still has not overcome), that the only place he could afford to live had temptation on every corner. That he had no education, no family, no furniture, no future, no chance.

“Let justice roll down like waters…

And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Not self-righteousness, not smugness, but righteousness. The word basically means what it says. Right. Do right. Please God.

In Amos, “righteousness” has to do with relationship between God and Israel, but also between people. Are people treating each other well? Graciously? If you want to honor God, honor each other! Let these things, justice and righteousness, mark your lives. And not just sometimes, but all the time, continually.

Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Unceasing. Like standing by a waterfall high up in the mountains that, even when its summer and no snow is in sight, keeps pouring water down.

It is no accident that these verses and ideas have become the rallying cry for people in this culture who have battled oppression, a corrupt legal system, the ambivalence of good people doing nothing in the face of evil. When John Perkins, the founder of Mendenhall Ministries down in Jackson Mississippi (whom our high school students got to visit with) and an early leader in the civil rights movement wrote his autobiography way back in the 1970’s, he titled it “Let Justice Roll Down.” When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in:

• Detroit June 1963 (not the I have a dream speech), Yes, I have a dream this afternoon that one day in this land the words of Amos will become real and justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
  
• Atlanta 1967 Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God (Micah). Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
  
• Memphis April 1968, the day before being assassinated (spoke to a group of pastors), Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones, and whenever injustice is around he must tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, who said… “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Okay. Justice and righteousness. We hear you, Amos, we hear you. But is that for us, today, out there (world) or in here (church)?

To talk about our culture is too easy. We live in a crumbling culture that is reeling with no moral base whatsoever, and the laws protect many unjust situations. I feel like every week I encounter new things. Just randomly. This week I was in a coffee shop (shocking) and I picked up The Stranger and The Weekly, 2 alternative newspapers. Pornographic personal ads, the detailed pictured advertisements for prostitutes, the filthy language…routine.

Those publications sit free in ¾ of the coffee shops on Queen Anne, free for my kids and yours to pick up at will. Turn on the television at night and you’ll get sex or sexual innuendo that 20 years ago would have gotten someone thrown in jail. Now it’s routine.

On a different note, I was reading last night that almost all of our U.S. senators and many of our congressional representatives are millionaires. I thought, “Does that sound like a group that will take care to protect those who have less, that will watch out for justice?” And though in one sense it’s pretty frustrating, in another it’s not surprising. We do not live in a Christian culture. We don’t. If people don’t know God there is no real basis for pursuing love and offering grace.

But what about in here? In the church. If Amos sent the church a letter in 2006, wouldn’t it indict us terribly for being no different than the culture? Wouldn’t it say “I see your worship services, but how are you living? “ Care for the poor, the widows, the weak. Are we doing it? Only after work, school, soccer, piano lessons, house remodels, vacations. Only when we have time or feel interested.

In general, in the church, we spend a lot of time looking like the culture. But I’m more and more convinced we have to look different. And that we need desperately to push each other toward lives that please God.

In our day, it’s become very fashionable to say “Let everybody know how broken you are, that you are not perfect.” That’s great. We need to be transparent, to not hide things. But shouldn’t it also be fashionable to say one another “Quit putting your marriage in jeopardy. Let me walk you into treatment for alcohol. We have to stop the violence in your home. Let’s talk in our home group about where we are spending our money. You have no time for ministry or your own family because you work so much.”

The justice Amos calls for says we have an obligation before God to watch out for our neighbors’ best interests, all of our neighbors. The righteousness that Amos calls for says there is no separation between experiencing God’s love and the way we live our lives.

To whom it may concern:

“Let justice roll down like waters…
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Uncomfortable? I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be.