[Dialogue] Spong: 12/18/08: Amos: The Prophet Who Transformed God Into Justice

[Adam Thomson]

Concerning Bishop Spong and his essays - at the 
risk of saying something that some might consider 
taboo, I do want to make this point:

Bishop Spong has a website where one can 
subscribe to his weekly essays at just under 
$30.00 a year. I cannot see how this sum is a 
major barrier to benefiting from Spong's insights, for most people.

Why should we not give financial support to this 
site? I think it is wrong for us not to - and I 
have subscribed to the site for several years.

It isn't as though we are in the business of 
"in-kinding for the sake of the mission" any more.

Best wishes to all

Adam

END OF MESSAGE

At 23:01 18/12/2008, you wrote:
>Hi Ellie,
>Thanks so much for forwarding Spong to all of 
>us.  I was afraid I might lose touch when Dick 
>Kroger.  Thanks for continuing the flame bearing.
>Charles Hahn
>
>
>From: "elliestock at aol.com" <elliestock at aol.com>
>To: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net; OE at wedgeblade.net
>Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 11:26:04 AM
>Subject: [Dialogue] Spong: 12/18/08: Amos: The 
>Prophet Who Transformed God Into Justice
>
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>Thursday December 18, 2008
>Amos: The Prophet Who Transformed God Into Justice
>Not every character in the Bible starts out to 
>be a hero. Indeed, one of the great themes of 
>biblical literature is that it is the meek and 
>the lowly who become the channels through which 
>God is known in new ways. Mary, the mother of 
>Jesus, is portrayed as expressing this theme in 
>the Magnificat when she is made to utter these 
>words, "For he has regarded the low estate of 
>his handmaiden," but later generations "will 
>call me blessed." The Old Testament prophet who 
>makes this truth powerfully real is named Amos. Today we turn to his story.
>Amos was a citizen of the Southern Kingdom of 
>Judah in the 8th century BCE. He lived in the 
>village of Tekoa where he was a herdsman and a 
>keeper of sycamore trees, employment that hardly 
>demanded high academic achievements or the 
>credentials that produced great expectations. In 
>those days Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam 
>II was on the throne of the Northern Kingdom. 
>The major powers of the world were preoccupied 
>with their own problems and with each other, 
>which allowed these two small Jewish states to 
>bask in an Indian summer of prosperity, peace 
>and wealth. The distribution of that wealth was, 
>however, hardly balanced. The worship places of 
>the Jewish world were crowded on holy days and 
>religion was popular among the greedy ones who 
>dominated the social order. There thus appeared 
>to be little relationship between the words of 
>the popular religion and the practices of 
>people's lives in the public arena. In many ways 
>that is not dissimilar from the current 
>situation in the United States, where a few have 
>achieved fortunes by greed and manipulation of 
>the markets, creating a situation in which the 
>wealthy are increasingly wealthy and the poor 
>are increasingly poor and people even now seem 
>not to be concerned. This dichotomy, however, 
>burned itself into the consciousness of this 
>simple herdsman named Amos and, like the 
>proverbial "Hound of Heaven," it allowed him no 
>rest until he had addressed this issue overtly 
>and publicly. Amos packed his suitcase and 
>journeyed from Tekoa in the land of Judah to the 
>shrine of Bethel in the Northern Kingdom to make his witness.
>When he arrived Amos entered the courtyard of 
>this holy place, where all of his suspicions 
>were confirmed. He saw the crowds dressed in 
>their finery busily attending to holy things 
>while the poor outside the city gates were 
>largely ignored. Amos wondered how he might get 
>the crowd's attention. He was a clever man, 
>however, and knew how to appeal to the instincts 
>of the people. He found a corner in the 
>courtyard, set up a soap box and then, using one 
>of the oldest tricks in human history, he began 
>to solicit first the curiosity and later the 
>full attention of the crowd. Let me try to re-create the story.
>"Come closer," Amos shouted from his ma keshift 
>pulpit, "Let me tell you about the sins of the 
>people of the city of Damascus." Amos knew that 
>everyone likes to hear gossip about the moral 
>weaknesses of their neighbors and so as he 
>excoriated the Damascans the crowds grew. Next 
>he turned his judgment first on the people of 
>Gaza and then on Tyre, condemning the sinful 
>practices found in both cities. The crowd, 
>loving it, grew even larger as Amos continued to 
>appeal to their prejudices about and suspicions 
>of their neighbors. This strange looking rube 
>from the south said the things they wanted to 
>hear. Then Amos moved to larger targets and his 
>oratory rose to new heights as he focused on the 
>nation states surrounding the Northern Kingdom. 
>First it was the Edomites and about their sins 
>Amos got more specific. The Edomites had pursued 
>"their brothers with a sword, showing them no 
>pity and they had allowed anger to tear 
>perpetually" at the fabric of their society. The 
>ecstatic crowd began to shout, "You tell 'em, 
>preacher." With every loud voice of 
>encouragement, the people gathered in ever 
>greater numbers. Next it was the Amorites' turn. 
>According to Amos, they had attacked Gilead and 
>"ripped up the women with child in order to 
>enlarge their borders." As Amos pronounced his 
>message of doom on these nations, the people 
>gathered around him roared their approval. When 
>he turned to the very unpopular Moabites the frenzy of the crowd exploded.
>Next Amos, with the crowd in the palm of his 
>hand and fully attentive, spoke in a bare w 
>hisper. "Now let me tell you about the sins of 
>the Southern Jews," he said. These Southern Jews 
>were the people with whom the Jews of the North 
>were the most competitive and with whom they had 
>the deepest rivalry. The relationship between 
>Judah in the South and Israel in the North was 
>like that of New Zealand and Australia today. 
>Signs in shops in New Zealand announce that "New 
>Zealanders have two favorite teams, the All 
>Blacks (the name of New Zealand's national team) 
>and anyone who is playing Australia." So to hear 
>their Jewish rivals in the south be condemned 
>was music to the ears of the Northern Jews. The 
>crowd pressed closer to this strange messenger 
>and its size continued to increase dramatically. 
>Those Southern Jews, Amos said, "despised the 
>Torah; they did not keep God's commandments. 
>Their lies caused them to err constantly," but 
>God's justice is sure, he promised, and so 
>Jerusalem will be "devoured by the fire of God." 
>The crowd was ecstatic with enthusiasm, clapping 
>and cheering. No one budged as this 
>crowd-pleasing evangelist reached his climax. 
>Now with every ear straining to hear, this 
>herdsman arrived at the conclusion for which he 
>had journeyed from Tekoa to the King's chapel in 
>Bethel. His message was ready and so Amos turned to his climax.
>"Now," he said, "let me tell you about the worst 
>people in the world." The crowd could hardly 
>wait to hear who that would be. They were not 
>prepared, however, for what was to come. "You 
>Jews of the Northern Kingdom," he said, " are 
>the ultimate culprits in God's world. You are 
>the ones who worship ostentatiously in the 
>sacred shrines, but even as you worship, you 
>sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a 
>pair of shoes. You trample the poor in the dust 
>of the earth. You violate one another sexually. 
>You worship at every altar in garments stolen 
>from the labor of the poor. You profane holy 
>places with heavy drinking of wine purchased 
>with fines levied against the meek. You corrupt 
>holy people, encouraging them to violate their 
>sacred vows. You even silence the prophets." The 
>crowd was suddenly silent and the smiles 
>disappeared from their faces. Then Amos spoke of 
>the punishment that God would send. "This 
>judgment is inevitable," he screamed. It was a 
>devastating message. The stunned crowd took a 
>while to recover from shock, so Amos continued 
>to drive home his key insights. "Worship 
>isolated from life is of no value. Worship is 
>nothing but justice being offered to God, and 
>justice is nothing but worship being lived out. 
>If worship and justice are ever separated, 
>idolatry is the inevitable result." It was a 
>stirring message, but suddenly it was not a popular one.
>When the members of the crowd recovered 
>sufficiently to respond, they sent for a priest 
>from the Shrine at Bethel named Amaziah and 
>asked him to come to their defense, for they 
>said, "Amos has conspired against you and the 
>land and we are not able to bear his words." 
>Amaziah was the voice of the established 
>religion. He would brook no more of this 
>interference with worship at the King's Shrine 
>and so to Amos he said: "O, Seer, go home, flee 
>away to your land in Judah. Prophesy there if 
>you must, but you are never again to come again 
>to Bethel for this is the king's sanctuary. This 
>is the temple of our nation. Your words are not welcome here."
>Amos responded to Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor 
>even a prophet's son. I am a herdsman, a dresser 
>of sycamore trees, yet the Lord took me from my 
>flocks and called me to prophesy to the people 
>of Israel." Once again, he repeated his charges. 
>"The songs of your holy places will become 
>nothing but wailing to the Lord. You cannot 
>worship while you trample the poor. You cannot 
>wring money from the poor to line your pockets 
>with greed. God will turn your sacred feasts 
>into mourning and your pious songs into 
>lamentations." The preaching of Amos was now 
>more than the people were willing to tolerate 
>and so Amos was physically driven from the 
>shrine. Rejected and defeated he returned to his 
>humble life in Tekoa. In this newly imposed 
>exile he wrote out his prophetic message, and 
>that message became known as the words of Amos 
>the Prophet. In time people heard transcendent 
>truth in his words and finally these words were 
>added to the sacred text of the Jewish people 
>and were thus read in worship settings in the 
>temples, synagogues and holy places. That was 
>when people began to recognize that in the words 
>of Amos, they were beginning to hear the "Word 
>of the Lord." That is=2 0how the words of Amos 
>came to echo through the centuries. In that 
>process, God was inevitably redefined as 
>justice. Worship and justice could never again 
>be separated in true Judaism and worship came to 
>be viewed, as Amos had suggested, as human 
>justice offered to God while justice was seen as 
>divine worship being acted out. In this context 
>justice became another name for God.
>It was through the work of the prophets 
>primarily that God was redefined in Jewish 
>history. Love became the name for God through 
>the writings of Hosea. Justice became the name 
>for God through the writings of Amos. The 
>prophets really do matter, not because they were 
>the predictors of the future as so many of us 
>were once taught, but because they were able to 
>see more deeply into the meaning of God. The 
>prophets more than anyone else made it possible 
>some eight hundred years later for people to see 
>and to hear the presence of God in the life of a 
>crucified one named Jesus of Nazareth. The life 
>of Jesus pointed to a divine nature marked by 
>the dimension of love that Hosea had added to 
>the meaning of God and the dimension of justice 
>that Amos had added to the meaning of God. That 
>resulted in a new understanding of consciousness 
>in which divinity and humanity seemed to flow together as one.
>The biblical story was never static, nor is the 
>human understanding of God. It is idolatry and 
>an act of faithlessness that is being expressed 
>when any one thinks that all truth has finally 
>been reveale d and that someone or some institution actually possesses it.
>– John Shelby Spong
>
>
>----------
>Question and Answer
>With John Shelby Spong
>William from Newmarket, Ontario, writes:
>If the roots of the Christ story are indeed in 
>Egyptian mythology (according to Tom Harpur's 
>book The Pagan Christ) or the continuation of 
>Jewish Epic History (according to your 
><http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/Jesus_for_the_Non_Religious.aspx>Jesus 
>for the Non-Religious) then who were the writers 
>of the gospels? How did they acquire the 
>expertise to make such a complex adaptation and 
>what drove them, in spite of the risk of 
>persecution, to adapt these myths to the person 
>of Jesus of Nazareth, either as if this person 
>was an historical figure, or if he never existed?< /TD>
>Dear William,
>The writers of the gospels were Jewish people 
>who represented the second or third Christian 
>generation. They wrote in Greek, not Aramaic, 
>which was the language Jesus and his disciples 
>spoke. The gospels — at least the first three: 
>Mark, Matthew and Luke — are the products of the 
>Synagogue, which had shaped the Jesus story 
>dramatically over the 40-70 year period that 
>transpired between the crucifixion and the gospel writing tradition.
>I disagree with Tom Harpur's thesis, for I do 
>not think Egyptian mythology can shape the Jesus 
>story in as short a period of time as existed. I 
>note that Paul writes in Galatians, a book that 
>is usually dated in the early 50's, that he had 
>conversed with Peter and other "pillars" of the 
>Christian movement within four to nine years of 
>his conversion, which scholars date one to six 
>years after the crucifixion. Mythology needs more time than that to develop.
>People need to embrace the fact that the Jesus 
>story was kept alive, recalled and celebrated in 
>the Synagogue, for that is where the followers 
>of Jesus worshiped every Sabbath. The Synagogue 
>and the Christian Church did not separate until 88 C.E.
>I am quite sure Jesus of Nazareth was a person 
>of history20in whom and through whom Jewish 
>people believed that they had experienced the 
>presence of the holy God. It was in that 
>experience that Christianity was born. The 
>earliest articulation of that faith came from 
>Paul who wrote, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to God."
>How we tell the world of the meaning of that 
>experience is still what Christianity is all about.
>– John Shelby Spong
>
>----------
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><mailto:support at johnshelbyspong.com>support at johnshelbyspong.com
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