Amos 7:7-17
Towson Presbyterian Church, Maryland – August 3, 2025
Today’s passage from Amos is not one of the easier or friendlier passages of the Bible. To be honest, it’s hard to find much comfort from Amos at all. You may well wonder why we would read such a difficult passage for our focus this morning. Who was this Jeroboam? Why is there a priest at a place called Bethel anyway? Wasn’t the Temple in Jerusalem? Why are sons and daughters going to die by the sword? I’m sure that most preachers probably do what I’ve often done: skip over the tough passages of scripture in favor of verses that are more uplifting and comforting. The book of Amos isn’t like that. It’s full of heavy consequences for uncaring behavior.
There are times when we need to hear and understand the difficult parts of scripture. Amos teaches us that our choices in life have real consequences, and sometimes terrible consequences. The word of God comes to us in love, but it also comes to us with demand. Amos 5:6 says, “Seek the Lord and live.” Put another way, Amos tells us that we must continually pursue a healthy spirituality if we want to live a full and meaningful life. When we fail to do that, we allow ourselves to slide unthinkingly into an unhealthy spirituality, focused entirely on ourselves. Amos fought against that.
When scripture makes us squirm, perhaps it’s alerting us to something within that needs our attention. Amos reminds me of Jacob Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge begs the ghost of Jacob Marley, his old business partner, to “Speak comfort to me, Jacob.” Jacob Marley replies while he has indeed come back to help, he has no comfort to give. Like strong medicine that tastes bad, Marley’s “help” was an uncomfortable warning that worked ultimately toward Scrooge’s good.
The prophet Amos was at least as terrifying as Jacob Marley’s ghost. The warning from Amos to Israel was, “You’ve ignored too many other warnings. Now it’s too late: you are doomed.”
We have to wonder: Why? What has Israel done to deserve this? And the next question is, “What could this possibly have to do with us today?”
Here’s the background. The prophet Amos lived in the 8th century BCE, roughly two hundred years after King Solomon and the building of Solomon’s Temple. One key fact helps us understand Amos better: not long after Solomon’s reign, the nation of Israel had a civil war. It divided into two kingdoms: one still called Israel in the north, and the other called Judah in the south. Judah was composed of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin; it contained the historic capital city of Jerusalem with Solomon’s Temple. The ten tribes to Judah’s north formed the kingdom still called Israel, whose capital city was called Samaria.
That can be confusing for us because by Jesus’ time seven centuries after Amos, the word ‘Samaria’ had come to refer, not to a city, but to the whole region separating Galilee in the north from Judah in the south. That’s what Jesus was talking about when he told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But in Amos’ time, Samaria was known as the fabulously wealthy capital city of the northern kingdom known as Israel.
Earlier, the mighty nation of Assyria to Israel’s north had become weak and disorganized. That power vacuum left the two kings David and Solomon free to usher in Israel’s glory days, expanding Israel’s territory and commerce. Within two or three generations, the nation moved from an agricultural society where most people lived in more or less similar circumstances, to more of a merchant-based economy where a few people had great wealth, while others could barely survive.
This growing inequality was a huge concern for Amos. Listen to some of the indictments Amos brought against Israel in the north:
- Amos 2:6-7 – Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way.
- Amos 6:1, 4-7 – Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria… Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches… who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp… who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile.
In the new merchant economy, a few had done very well and had become extremely wealthy. Apparently, a number of these had lent money to poor families and then foreclosed on them for lack of payment, confiscating their land and throwing the poor out into the street. Wealthy and powerful people corrupted the government to enrich themselves and live in luxury.
Since Solomon’s Temple was in the southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel at first had no place to worship, so it set up two new places at Bethel and Gilgal. But Amos said that these places did more harm than good – because they favored the rich.
In addition, Amos proclaimed that God was disgusted by worship in Bethel because it carried no ethical commitment. It wasn’t much different from pagan worship. Pagan gods didn’t care about your morals; they just wanted ritual sacrifices to keep them happy. People in the northern kingdom decided that the pagans had a pretty good system. At Bethel and Gilgal, you could worship without worrying about your neighbor.
But listen to how Amos quotes God:
“I hate, I despise your festivals, 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… Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:21-24)
“Seek good, and not evil, that you may live… Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.” (5:14-15)
Unlike pagan gods, the God of Abraham, Jacob, and David demanded moral character. The northern kingdom known as Israel, where Jeroboam was king, ignored that demand. Amos called him on it, and Jeroboam’s priest, Amaziah, defended the king and told Amos to go prophesy somewhere else. But Amos’s warnings came true: Assyria again grew strong. Its armies swept down and absolutely annihilated the northern kingdom of Israel. Most of Israel’s people were either slaughtered or carried into exile; the kingdom’s ten tribes never reappeared. If you’ve ever heard of the “ten lost tribes of Israel,” that’s how they were lost. The two tribes that comprised the southern kingdom of Judah were all that was left of the kingdom of David and Solomon.
So how does a book from the eighth century before Christ, a book about a tiny kingdom that hasn’t existed for nearly three millennia, relate to us? Read the headlines today. In our lifetime, much religion has become empty of ethical demand or even spiritual content. It has become tribalized: what matters is whose side you’re on. In addition, religion and spirituality have often become completely individualized, with no sense of accountability or community. We’ve reduced Jesus from a spiritual teacher and savior on whom we should pattern our lives, to nothing more than a team mascot.
Over my lifetime, wealth inequality in our own country has come to resemble what Amos found so objectionable. The latest statistics I could find show that the poorest half of our country now owns just one percent of the country’s total wealth. The top ten percent of U.S. families own three quarters of the wealth. That kind of inequality seems unsustainable if we want to remain a strong nation.
I don’t bring this up to be political; there’s a spiritual lesson in this. What was true in Israel 2,800 years ago is true today: this kind of inequality isn’t just bad politics: it is bad for our souls. We can address the inequality in different ways, and we can honestly debate which ways are best, but whatever options we choose, the fact is that many of our neighbors today have a very hard time getting by. I grew up with an inadequate spirituality. It led me to focus exclusively on myself – whether I behaved myself and whether I got into heaven. Amos tells us: that watered-down version of spirituality is not good enough. God wants us to care actively about our neighbors.
It’s not a sin to build a life for ourselves and our families. But if we’re not poor ourselves, it’s easy to be blind to the poor around us. Amos preached against a relative few people living in luxury while many others live in great financial and emotional distress. To Amos, that is not justice.
Reading national headlines, it’s not hard to find evidence of a callous disregard for the poor – and the blind, uncritical worship of wealth and greed that increasingly infects our national culture. That’s why I believe that faithful churches and community organizations are more important than ever. For example, our congregation is part of a coalition of churches known as ACTC – the Assistance Center of Towson Churches – that provides food every weekday to people who need it. Many of you have joined Linda Lotz in carrying on that work for some years now.
We who consider ourselves people of faith need to emulate the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable. We need to do it for others’ benefit, yes, but also for our own spiritual health. When someone asked Jesus to define “neighbor,” seeking to limit his responsibility, Jesus told the parable, essentially replying, “Just go be a neighbor like the surprisingly good Samaritan.” Be a neighbor when no one expects you to be. Go thou and do likewise.
To be honest, it’s sometimes hard to be a good neighbor. People’s problems can get complicated. But the message of Amos is that there’s a connection between our own spiritual health and the level of justice in our community. A healthy community requires moral and spiritual work from us. It won’t do to sit back and worry or complain about the poor if we intend to be the neighbors Jesus told us to be. We have to do our part. The work begins with prayer and imagination and spiritual growth, but those things, if we do them right, will lead us actively to seek justice for all – just like it says in our country’s Pledge of Allegiance.
That’s why what we do in our church matters. We have action teams that actively address our neighbors’ hunger, our community’s need for peace, and our stewardship of this world that God created and called good. Through our tithes we provide pastoral care for people who hurt. Each of us can find avenues here through which we can exercise our callings and gifts.
None of us can do everything. We all have different gifts: some can pray, some can carry out programs. Some can advocate for good policies or just help people as individuals. But biblical justice calls us to work together, regardless of which gifts we have. Let’s remember the message of Amos – that God cares about justice in our world. When God pulls out his plumb line to check us, may we be found faithful to his call. Amen.
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