In our sermon text this morning, God speaks to us through the prophet Amos with a message that is direct and uncompromising. Over and over again, he announces to the people of Israel that, because of their social injustice and religious arrogance, the Lord will punish them by means of a total military disaster.
To understand why God felt the need to confront Israel with such a powerful, challenging message, we need to go back in history to the mid-eighth century B.C.E. Amos comes on to the scene during one of the most prosperous periods of Jewish history. Israel is free from hostile enemies; the economy is sound; society is stable. But God sees that within this outward peace, there is a creeping rottenness at the core of society that will bring destruction in the end. God sees rampant cheating going on in business; Israelite justice has become a tool for the powerful with judges being bribed in the courts; there is gross mistreatment of the poor, and religion is shallow and meaningless.
So into this scene, God calls an unlikely prophet…Amos. He was not a trained prophet. He was a layman. Some suggest that since he called himself a herdsman, a cattleman…or as it is translated in my Bible…a shepherd as well as a dresser of sycamores. He was also from the town of Tekoa which was in the southern kingdom of Judah. At that time, Palestine was divided into the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel. So he traveled north to Israel to deliver his powerful message that Israel would suffer a huge military defeat, its temples would be destroyed and Israel must then go into exile from their land. Can you imagine if someone traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to tell us here in Massachusetts: you are corrupt…you are unjust… you are trampling on the poor? God is going to destroy your state and the few of you who survive this will be exiled. You can imagine Israel's reaction. We actually get to see a glimpse of this reaction if we go a few chapters ahead of our sermon text. Amos speaks to the priest of the temple in Bethel and this is his reaction: (7:12) "O seer, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there. But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary and it is a temple of the kingdom." Basically, Amaziah, the priest, is saying: Don't come to us. Go back to your hometown. Go back to the country you came from and prophesy down there.
Let's take a closer look now at our scripture text this morning: The first few words are: "Seek the Lord and live". It sounds deceivingly simple, doesn't it? Seek the Lord and live. What does it mean to seek God? From my vantage point it means to go into God's presence and walk in God's ways, doing God's will. Seeking God means making God the center of your life…making God the touchstone that you look to for every action, every decision.
If we do seek the Lord….if we seek the Lord with our whole hearts, what has God promised us?...life…yes, life. In Hebrew, the word for life ("hay") did not just mean existence. It did not just mean…your heart is beating, you can get up and make coffee in the morning. It didn't just mean being alive to drive to work or change the baby's diaper or mow the lawn. Life in the Hebrew context meant possession of full vitality, of robust health, or prosperity, of well being. God promises that if you seek the Lord, you will have life and have it abundantly, in all its fullness but …does there always have to be a "but"? We read on: "Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like a fire, and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it. Bethel, by the way, was a famous religious center in Israel. Through Amos, God speaks very clearly that if we do not seek the Lord, if we choose to pursue other priorities in our lives, there will be grave consequences. As we move on to the next verses, we begin to understand why God is so angry with the people of Israel, angry enough to threaten to burn down Bethel…one of the great religious centers. Next, we read: "Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood and bring righteousness to the ground." Before we can understand this, let's talk about wormwood. Wormwood is a plant that gives off a promising odor but it delivers a very bitter taste. In this case, Israel is a nation of law but the laws have been interpreted to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. Israel stands accused of turning justice into bitterness for the poor.
We continue to read: "They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. In this verse, the gate refers to the city gate. The city gate was the site of the most public activity during the day and it was there that anyone with a complaint could expect to find the elders of the community, who acted as judges because of the knowledge of the customary law.
So again, we see that Israelite justice has become a tool of the powerful and those who object to this state of affairs on moral and humanitarian grounds are despised in the places of power. In the next verse we hear: "therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain". The powerful in Israel are gaining their wealth and power at the expense of the poor and are literally taking their grain from them. And because Israel is doing this, Amos reports that God will not let them live in their fancy homes built of hewn stone and God will not allow them to drink the wine from their beautiful vineyards. As we read on: "For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins… you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate." God sees all these sins. God sees the judges who succumb to bribery or self-interest so the weak cannot obtain redress for their complaints. God sees the comfortable, prosperous people in Israel pushing aside the needy! God sees and God judges. Through Amos we learn there are severe consequences when God is angry. God insists on absolute values. God will not tolerate cruelty. God will not tolerate oppression. God will not tolerate injustice.
When God asks us to seek the Lord and live, God is calling us to follow a very defined path. God has a plan for our daily living. And through Amos, God makes this plan abundantly clear. God wants us to always seek justice…to live our lives according to justice principles. Justice seeks well-being for all human beings. Justice seeks equal access to livelihood and opportunity, regardless of status, power, or role in society. Justice is blind to color, to clothing, to gender, to creed. Justice sees all people as equal. All people deserve an equal opportunity to share in the abundant life God has promised in God's covenant with us. We are all brothers and sisters in God's world. There are no distinctions, no hierarchies.
Amos tells us about the state of Israel in 8th century B.C.E. As God looks at our world today, have we made any progress? Have we learned from the hard lessons God taught Israel centuries ago?
How do we divide up the abundant resources that God has so blessed us with? In the 1996 United Nations Human Development report, the poorest 20% of the world's people saw their share of global income decline from 2.3% to 1.4% in the past 30 years. In that same period of time, the share of the richest 20% rose from 70% to 85%. That change over just a 30 year period basically doubled the ratio of the share of the richest to the share of the poorest from 30:1 to 61:1. I would like us to personally experience what this looks like this morning. The choir will represent the richest 20% in the world (that's mainly us in North America). Everyone seated in the congregation will represent the rest of the world. (Cut bread and distribute appropriately)
We here in the United States live in a world in which we are bombarded with messages that tell us to focus on ourselves, to focus on our own welfare. We hear our politicians say, the priority for our foreign policy is the national interest. We need to do what is in the national interest. All our energy is focused on the race for success and achievements. Here is the U.S. we lift up our individual needs as the ultimate priority. But this morning Amos breaks through the din of our materialism, the blare of the TV ads, urging us to buy more. Amos interrupts this broadcast to bring us an important, vital, lifesaving message from God. "Seek the Lord and live". This is an urgent message Amos tells us because the Lord will visit judgment on those who claim the name but refuse to observe God's decrees for justice and compassion. The Lord has promised blessings on obedience and judgment for disobedience. "Seek the Lord and live". Seek God's presence and follow God's guidance for daily living. Seek justice and always offer your compassion to others so that you and our whole community of brothers and sisters may have life and have it abundantly.
During my trip to India in January 2000, I came across a poem on the wall of the Whitefield Christian Ecumenical Center near Bangalore. It really spoke to my heart and I would like to share it with you as we celebrate World Communion Sunday with our Christian brothers and sisters around the globe.

We are birds of the same nest.
We may wear different skins.
We may speak in different tongues.
We may believe in different religions.
We may belong to different cultures,
Yet we share the same home…our earth.
Born on the same planet.
Covered by the same skies.
Gazing at the same stars.
Breathing the same air.
We must learn to happily progress together
or miserably perish together.
For humans can only live individually
but can only survive collectively. Written by Atharva Vada

Let us seek God so that all may have life and have it abundantly. May it be so.