[Dialogue] Spong: 12/18/08: Amos: The Prophet Who Transformed God Into Ju...
Elliestock at aol.com
Elliestock at aol.com
Thu Dec 18 21:37:45 EST 2008
You're welcome.
Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.
Ellie
In a message dated 12/18/2008 5:28:38 PM Central Standard Time,
cdhahn at flash.net writes:
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
(https://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_spong_account.asp)
(http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/calendar.asp)
(http://forums.prospero.com/sp-bishopspong) (http://secure.agoramedia.com/story_home_spong.asp)
Print this Article
Not a member?_Subscribe now!_
(http://clk.atdmt.com/AGM/go/ups0120000005agm/direct/01/)
____________________________________
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 _Jesus for the Non-Religious_
(http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/Jesus_for_the_Non_Religious.aspx) ) 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
____________________________________
Send your questions to _support at johnshelbyspong.com_
(mailto:support at johnshelbyspong.com)
_Print this Article_ (http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/34631.asp)
Not a member? _Subscribe now!_
(http://clk.atdmt.com/AGM/go/ups0120000005agm/direct/01/)
(http://www.everydayhealth.com/)
Thanks for joining our mailing list, _elliestock at aol.com_
(mailto:elliestock at aol.com) , for A New Christianity For A New World on 11/09/2008
_REMOVE me from this list _
(http://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_subscriptions.asp?email=elliestock@aol.com&nlid=71&hsheml=moc^loa~kcotseille) | _Add me to
this list_ (http://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_subscriptions.a%20%20sp) |
_Manage my e-mail settings _
(http://secure.agoramedia.com/manage_subscriptions.asp?email=elliestock@aol.com) | _Contact Customer Service_
(mailto:support at agoramedia.us)
Copyright 2008 Waterfront Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
4 Marshall Street, North Adams, MA 01247
Subject to our _terms of service_
(http://www.everydayhealth.com/pop_tos.htm) and _privacy policy_ (http://www.everydayhealth.com/pop_privacy.htm)
____________________________________
Listen to 350+ music, sports, & news radio stations – including songs for
the holidays – FREE while you browse. _Start Listening Now_
(http://toolbar.aol.com/aolradio/download.html?ncid=emlweusdown00000013) !
_______________________________________________
Dialogue mailing list
Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net
**************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail,
Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now.
(http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000025)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20081218/31f5fc14/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Dialogue
mailing list