We Are the Water

Text: Amos 5:18–24

There have been in the press lots of comments about John McCain’s concession speech on Tuesday. It was gracious, relaxed, and forward-looking. Many people have said that the real John McCain had re-emerged. They said that this was the McCain they had known and admired. Some people speculated on whether the results of the election would have been different if this McCain, this brave and gracious man, had been the one who had campaigned over the past few months. For the general consensus was that in the campaign the candidate had not been true to himself. That in the campaign he had been fighting against his own nature.

It is a common failing. And an understandable one. The parts of us that are fearful and greedy—fear and greed being two sides of the same coin—those parts of us make us do things we rather not do, really. Or to put it more strongly, to do things that go against the person we really are. Or to say it in another way: to do things that go against the person God made us to be.

Amos was the earliest of the prophets of Israel. Unlike the prophets we read more frequently, Amos wrote before the fall of Israel, the northern Kingdom, and before the fall of Judah and the exile of most of Israel to Babylon. Unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, or at least portions of them, who try to make sense of the destruction of Israel, Amos has no explanations. There was nothing yet to explain. Israel was whole and strong and its people prosperous, more or less. The criticism of the nation that the other prophets saw as a reason for the exile, Amos shares. He criticizes, too. But he offers not an explanation but a warning.

The book of Amos is for the most part dark and gloomy. Amos does not warn the people with the expectation that they will mend their ways. For Amos, the time for repentance has passed long ago. Too late for all that. Amos says that the people have abandoned the ways of God. And as a result, Israel will die. The nation will be destroyed and the land taken away. And the people exiled. Which is what happened.

Israel, Amos says, has gone against its own nature. And for that, it will suffer. Not as punishment, but as the natural result. It’s biology. Going against who you are causes suffering.

The nation of Israel was God’s creation. There was an agreement between God and the Israelites. I will be your God, you will be my people. A covenant, as we say. The covenant was like a design document. It was more than just a series of laws. The agreement between God and Israel—this formal relationship—defines Israel, defines its nature. And essential to this nature, a defining characteristic of this nation, was the idea and practice of justice. Justice. So in the passage we heard today, God says through Amos, I’m not really interested in all this worship stuff right now. Take all that stuff away. What I’m concerned about is justice. It is as if God were saying, You are not the same nation I created and thought I knew. For I see that you have forgotten to be just.

When we talk about justice these days, it often means something about courts and jail and punishment. The justice system, or bringing someone to justice. But that’s not what is meant here.

First, justice primarily is enacted (and justice primarily is demonstrated) through the nation’s treatment of the poor and the outcast. The prosperous and the strong can take care of the themselves, but in Israel’s time, as in every time, the poor have little power and few friends in high places. God’s people watch out for all people, and especially those that no one else watches out for. The sick and the crazy and the inelegant and the uneducated and the hard to understand and the ones that make you uncomfortable. In a just nation, the people care for all the outcasts.

Second, to be just is to be aligned with God’s intentions for the world. Justice and righteousness are intertwined and inseparable. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, God says in Amos. Righteousness does not mean holy and proud and right and good. It means to be in agreement with God. To be on the same wavelength. Righteousness is like having a friend who finishes your sentences, or one with whom you can just sit quietly together, being with them in harmony, or one whom you haven’t seen in a long time, but when you do, you just start up the conversation as if you were never apart. In a just nation, there is no tension between the intentions of God and the actions of people.

And third, justice is in the nature of humans. As Israel is created to be just, and as Israel becomes ill and confused when it forgets that, so people are created to be just. And we get ill and confused when we forget that. When we see injustice, things seem out of kilter. When we are perpetrators of injustice, it makes us sick. It weakens us inside and takes away our capacity for pleasure and joy. We cannot easily oppress others nor leave the poor and the outcast on the roadside. We do it, but then we pay a price, not through some divine punishment, but in painful and queasy souls.

When we act unjustly, or condone injustice, we are going against our nature. We are not the people we were created to be. We are at odds with ourselves.

When we hear what God says through Amos, we might think that God despises the worship of Israel—”I hate, I despise your religious feasts,” it says—we might think it is because Israel has violated some rule. But it sounds to me that God is more sorrowful than angry, the same way you might be if you saw someone act against his or her own best self. Alas, says God. The word in Amos is a word for grief, not anger. What is happening to Israel is tragic and sad. Israel dies, according to Amos, because it is no longer the nation that God created.

Let justice roll down like waters. If justice is like a river flowing, then we are in the river. When we act in or tolerate injustice, we swim upstream. It is tiring and ineffective. When we act justly, we float downstream. When we put aside our fear and greed, we are able to be the people we really are, God’s creatures. But the river of justice is not something that surrounds us. It is us. There is no such river that exists without us. We are not only in the river of justice, we are that river. When in our daily decisions, large and small, global and personal, we are just, then river of justice flows. And we pray that the world may become what God hoped for in its creation.