Can you imagine a crowd of people in Israel listening to the first couple chapters as Amos speaks them? God's mad at the same people they're mad at. Ammon, Gaza, Damascus, Tyre, Edom, Moab, all of them ancient and powerful enemies of Israel. And now they're hearing about how God is going to destroy them. I can imagine them cheering. But then Amos talks about Judah, the other kingdom of the people of God. At this point, Judah and Israel have separated, but they hold the common bonds of being children of Abraham. Now I picture the crowd getting a little nervous. And then Amos points the finger toward Israel and exposes their sins in the longest of any section. Now I picture the crowd getting furious.
After all, it's easy to talk about the failings and frailties of other people. It is much more difficult to engage in honest self-reflection. That's tough! Israel was guilty of the same things as their neighbors- oppression, slave-trading, ignoring God and God's ways. But they were not willing to look at themselves and ask the tough questions. They went on with their lives assuming that their neighbors were more evil than they were. They were blind to the ways that they were hurting other people- and indifferent to them.
George Bernard Shaw tells us that "indifference is the essence of inhumanity." As long as we fail to ask ourselves the hard questions of our impact on the world around us, we will allow the worst things to happen. An ancient Christian practice is the practice of "examen." A person takes their lives and wonders how they fit into Christ's double law- to love God and neighbor. This doesn't mean we have to work to be saved, that is not what examen is about. It is only because we are soaked in grace that we can hope to examine ourselves in a prayer of examen. Let's engage in examen together as a community and as individuals, hoping that we would see our inhumanities and turn to God to bear good fruit. Amen.
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