Go With the Flow

 November 14 2021

Amos 5:4-24

         A while back when my family was in to celebrate my parents sixty-fifth wedding anniversary we, of course had our family picture taken. So, when we had the photos in hand we had to figure out how we were going to display them. As it turns out the one picture fit very well in the frame that previously held a picture of Jennifer and I when we went white water rafting a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. To look at us now it may be a little difficult to imagine but, yes, we actually did go white water rafting not once but twice. The second time out was kind of a bust as there was a drought that year so the river was low and it was a lot of work to paddle our way down the river but the first time was how a white water trip should be-terrifying. We went with a church group mostly made up of young adults like we were at the time and we drove to a place in West Virginia where we could experience the New river in all of its splendor. Now, there was, of course, a class concerning safety while on the river, you know, you have to keep your life jacket on at all times, and how when one gets tossed out of the inflatable raft we were to go down the river in a seated position with our legs lifted up. In other words, when we found ourself caught up in the rushing flow of the river the best thing to do was to go along with where the river was going and eventually we would come to a place beyond the rapids where the river would be slow enough that we could climb out on the river bank. It sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Well, it was actually pretty terrifying to be on a raft with five other people, to be given a paddle and told that we had to steer our way through the rapids with them. So, off we went, the river at first quite calm and we were lulled into a false belief that this was not going to be all that bad and then, bam!, suddenly the river grabbed our raft and hurled us against the rocks, the water spraying us in the face and the raft began to lurch from side to side and then the nose of the raft disappeared and we were going down the river at a crazy angle struggling to remain in the raft. Then all at once we found ourselves in the river caught up in the swirling madness and it was then we had to recall the important safety lesson to lift up our legs and go with the flow. Once we did that then the ride down the river became quite fun as we floated and bounced along until at last we did come to a quiet place beyond the rapids where we could at last regroup.

         I feel very fortunate to have this experience of white water rafting because, I’m not up to trying it now. But it was through that experience that that I now have an idea of just what Amos meant when he told his audience, the people who lived in the Northern kingdom of Israel that they were to let justice roll down like waters and let righteousness flow like an ever-flowing stream. We may have heard this idea that justice is to roll down like water before but when we stop to think about it can you grasp the imagery that Amos is using? What would it mean for justice to be like a white water river rushing and crashing through the rapids, thundering headlong against the rocks threatening to leap out of its banks? Can we imagine that this idea that we call justice as being a powerful, terrifying, rolling, river, that is rushing forth, pouring itself out in sheer and utter power? Can we understand this concept that we know as righteousness as being a river that never ceases to pour forth in a cascade of torrents that threaten to flood everything in sight? You see, I believe, that to rightly understand Amos and his prophecy we must begin here with these images otherwise Amos will just sound like some grumpy old man who is speaking for an angry, upset, God. No, Amos rightly understood just what God was up to in his choosing of the people of Israel to be his people, to choose to covenant with them, to seek an everlasting bond with this one family out of all the families on earth. Amos, we are told in the first chapter, was a shepherd and as we are told later, he was also a tender of fruit trees, so he had much time to be alone with God and to meditate on what God was up to. It was here while Amos was in the fields that God called Amos. We are told that God took Amos from his flocks so that he might go and prophesy to the people of Israel.  At this time the people of Israel had become separated into two separate kingdoms, the southern kingdom which was called Judaea where the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were located and the Northern kingdom called Israel where the remaining ten tribes of the house of Jacob were found. Amos at this time lived in the southern kingdom but God was calling him to go to the northern house of Israel and prophesy to them that God’s judgment was being announced against them which meant that God was going to send them into exile for their sins.

         Now, here thousands of years after the fact, it sounds harsh that God would allow the very people that he had entered into a covenant with to be removed from their homeland by an invading army. Yet, in order to understand why he was going to do so, we have to go back to this vision that Amos had, that we must see justice as a raging mighty river, thundering down the canyon walls, leaping out of its banks.  This river of justice is what God is bringing forth upon the earth and the beginning of this river that God was pouring forth was to begin with the people he had chosen, the people he had saved from the injustice they endured while slaves in Egypt. These people, of all people, should have understood the power of God’s justice, how he had lifted them up from their oppression in order that they in turn, might lift up the oppressed. God would remind them again and again how they had been a stranger down in Egypt therefore they were to be those who watched out for the strangers in their midst. Through this remembrance the people of Israel were to understand that all people were equal in the eyes of God even though God held the people of Israel to be his beloved treasure. As his people they were to unfold the mystery of their daily prayer that God commanded them to say with their first breath that they were to hear, O Israel, that the Lord their God was one God and they were to love the Lord their God with all of their heart, and all of their soul and all of their might. Out of understanding that there is one God was to come the understanding that he alone is good, and if he alone is good then there can be only one good way that people were to live. If there was only one good way for people to live then it just followed that all people are equal under the God who alone could judge whether they were good as he was good or whether they did not mirror his goodness and did evil in his sight.  This is what Amos concluded that the God of Israel was not just their tribal God but he was in fact the God of all creation, the one God who is God over all peoples. Since this was true then their was a standard by which good and evil could be understood universally. This understanding that the actions of people could be separated into actions that were evil and those that are good is the essence of justice. Those actions which are good find their source in the very heart of God and it is this goodness that is the raging river being poured out upon the earth. As the goodness of God floods out upon the earth, it is to wash away the evil that attempts to find a foot hold in God’s good earth. Righteousness then was the acting out of the good, the good that is found in the heart of God so that the goodness of God is seen mirrored back to him in the lives of his people.

         So, the people of Israel, who God had rescued from Egypt were to be people who were willing to be people obedient to the commands of God because in doing these commands they would become people whose lives reflected the goodness of the God they believed in. As we are told in the fourth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, they were to keep the commandments and do them so that God’s commands would come to be seen as their wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations around them. When the rest of the nations surrounding Israel got wind of how they were living they would say of Israel, “What a great nation is this that has statutes and rules so righteous as found in the law that God has given to them! You see, this is how the righteousness of God’s people was to flow out to their neighbors because after they saw Israel living out the goodness of God they too would want in on the action. So, here we get just a glimpse that of what Amos understood that God’s justice and righteousness were to be lived out in the people of Israel but this justice and righteousness wasn’t to be their personal possession; no, this justice and righteousness were to flow further and further out until the whole world came to experience them.

         So, as Amos begins his writing he surveys the kingdoms around the people of Israel and he finds that there is much cruelty and injustice. Nowhere that he looked could Amos find any trace of anyone longing to enter into the flow of God’s justice and righteousness. As such, this prophesy against the pagan nations was not so much aimed at them as this judgment was instead coming against God’s own people because it was they who were to be people whose justice and righteousness were so evident that they would begin to influence the world around them yet such was not the case. You see, these pagan people had not entered into a covenant relationship with God to worship only him and to bear his name in the world as the nation of Israel had done so they quite rightly would have had no certainty of good and evil and no God given power to choose them either. But the nations of Judaea and Israel did have a covenant relationship with God and God had provided them with a place of worship where who he is was ever before them. To them alone had been given the law, the very way of life which reflected the good of the God that they worshiped. It is because the people of Israel alone understood good and evil as revealed to them by God that they alone could come under the judgment of God. They had become people who as Amos declared made justice into a bitter fruit and cast righteousness to the ground. So, the stream of justice that was to flow through their lives they thought they could simply ignore yet to do so was as if they had dammed up this ever flowing stream. Eventually as Amos so well understood, no dam could hold back the purposes of God and if they did not decide to go with the flow of God’s justice and righteousness then that same rushing river would wash them away out to live among the very pagan neighbors they were acting like.

         Amos understood correctly that where the stream of God’s justice and righteousness had become stopped up was in their house of worship. Amos writes in the fourth chapter, “Come to Bethel and transgress; go to Gilgal, and multiply transgressions; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim free will offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel” declares the Lord God. Bethel and Gilgal were where the Northern Kingdom of Israel worshipped God yet in spite of celebrating worship that adhered to the letter of the law it appeared that they came away from their time of worship worse off then when they arrived. This is why in the fifth chapter of Amos that we hear God cry out, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.” You see, what the people of God had so misunderstood is that the worship of God is to always lead to them being fountains through which his justice and righteousness flowing out upon the earth.

         We can figure out just how our worship of God is supposed to transform us into people who have lives the over flow with justice and righteousness from the first chapter of Romans where Paul writes, “For although they knew God, they did not glorify God or give thanks to God but they became people who no longer fulfilled God’s purpose for their lives and their foolish hearts were darkened.” When Paul writes that these people who knew God but they did not glorify God what you find in studying the Greek word for glory is that these were people who no longer valued God for who he is. You see, as we remember the worship that God commanded his people to observe, in the sacrifices the people were to realize that God so longed to have a relationship with his people that he was willing to give a life, the shedding of blood, all so that the sins of his people might be forgiven. In doing so God was showing how much he valued his relationship with even those who had sinned against him. It was this undeserved gift that God gave that was to create in the hearts of his people a sense of gratitude. As God valued  and treasured his people enough to make them his very own, they in turn would value and treasure him in return for this is what would be the just and right response for his people to give.

         As we also recall about the worship of God there was more than just the offering of sacrifices there was also the Inner Chamber where the perpetual light shone upon the bread of the presence representing that the light of God’s presence shown continually on his people. This was to remind them that the Lord is the one who blessed them and kept them safe. It was the Lord who was gracious unto them and it was the Lord who gave them peace and contentment. For all that it meant for the people to live in the continual presence of God it makes sense that their lives would be a continual offering of thanksgiving to God; this only seems just and right.

         When we ponder on what this worship experience God expected from his people then when the people just went through the motions in worship its easy to understand why God’s people failed to be people through which God’s justice and righteousness would flow. If God’s people were unwilling to treasure him and give him the thanksgiving that he so rightfully deserves then how could they be expected to do what is right and just to those around them. This is the conclusion that Paul comes to as we read once again from the first chapter of Romans that when people fail to value their relationship with God, when they fail to offer up thanksgiving to God, then they will become people unable to fulfill God’s purpose for them and in the end their hearts will be darkened. Surprisingly then, it is not idol worship that lures people away from their worship of God but it is rather when the hearts of people become dark, this is when they are consumed by idol worship.

         So, when we worship God, when we value God, when we treasure him for seeing us as his treasure and when we offer up an offering of thanksgiving to him for his faithful presence because this is the only just and right response that we can offer, this is what opens up a fountain of justice and righteousness in us. When we are in a right relationship with God then our desire will be that we will be holy as he is holy and our lives at last will be riding the rapids of God’s incessant outpouring of justice and righteousness from above. 

         This is what Jesus was speaking of when in the seventh chapter of John, he cried out that whoever believes in him out of their hearts will flow living water. Here Jesus is speaking about the Holy Spirit, the one promised to those who believe in Jesus that was to be given to them after Jesus was glorified. Jesus was glorified when he offered himself up on the cross as our once for all sacrifice for our sin, to ransom us not with silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ. This is how much our Heavenly Father treasures us. If this is so then how can we not, in response, treasure him? And as he promised, when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he sent to us the Holy Spirit, the ever present God with us, the God who blesses us, keeps us safe, is gracious unto us and gives us peace, is it not right that we in response should offer ourselves up as a continual offering of thanksgiving to God. You see, when we worship God as God so rightly deserves then out of us will flow life, a life of justice and righteousness for everyone. To God be the glory!Amen.