If you would like to spend some time settling before our reflection today, you might use this meditation by Molten Meditation, based on Psalm 130.
The Old Testament can be a little hard to stomach!
Take some time reading (slowly) this section from the Prophet Amos. (The lectionary- a list of suggested bible readings for churches to use on any given Sunday - offers Chapter 3, verses 1 to 8 and Chapter 4, verses 11 and 12. But try the whole passage, if you have time.)
Thanks to George Hoden for the image, which is in the public domain.
Amos paints a frightening picture of God’s anger and the imminent punishment on Israel, his chosen people, which has refused to live according to holy standards.
He challenges the comfortable, who have grown blind to the privilege and responsibility inherent in their ‘chosenness’.
Discussions about God’s wrath or punishment are tricky. They slide into judgement, scapegoating and have - justifiably - a reputation for being used to ‘control’. And, it must be said, the apparently vengeful, war-mongering God of Amos’ 8th century BC seems irrelevant today.
And yet. And yet.
Instinctively, something resonates in this idea that living ‘wrong’ will have consequences. There is something important to hear in the grating voice of the prophet who tells us that, especially when we least want to hear it.
We can all too easily skip past Amos into the Psalms (the second suggested reading for today moves into reassurance about God’s faithfulness to the righteous.) We can skip further, into the gospels, finding comfort in Christ. (Though even that can be misleading - today’s suggested excerpt is about Christ calming the storm but, either side of that, he chastises those who fail to follow him and casts demons into a herd of pigs! See Matthew’s Gospel chapter 8.)
But what have we missed by doing so? What is it we need to hear - and allow to sink in - from Amos, in these days? What is the discomfort we need to sit with? Where are the black lives, the polluted oceans, the abused children, the terrified displaced, that we need to contemplate?
Who are the victims of the ways we structure society and church? Who are those without privilege, to whom we turn a blind eye? Are there lessons to be learned from this pandemic, as it were a portent, even while we steadfastly refuse to fall into traps of laying the blame at someone else’s door?
“I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
I killed your young men with the sword;
I carried away your horses;
and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils;
yet you did not return to me”
If you feel able, spend some time in curiosity, wondering if this verse has anything to say to you.
If you are a survivor and not a perpetrator, there is no need: the anger Amos channels is not directed at you, but on your behalf.
A prayer
Eternal Lover,
You who inspired Amos,
Who invites us to Holy Living -
Not because you are angry but
Because it is better,
Comfort those we have damaged with our choices
Comfort us when we are damaged by others
But save us from distraction.
We want to see the truth,
Insofar as we are ready.
Amen.