WCC Bible Study Day 3

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One of the features of the Assembly is the possibility for shared small group Bible study on the suggested texts. Today's was on the words ofAmos 5:14-24. It's a powerful passage that begins 'Seek good and not evil' and goes on to hear God say, 'I hate, I despise your festivals.....take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream'.

The energy level of the group grew as we shared our reflections on the emphasis the text contains. Why is God so angry? It is because there is a disjunction between the practice of the worship offered and any ethical dimension; even worse the worship, the rituals are carried out in order to manipulate or control God. The vineyard that people have planted and which the text refers to are perhaps like the constructs that we ask or expect God to bless, such as the international economic system which must be served but itself only serves those who are rich or powerful. It is through this kind of vineyard that Amos says God will pass like a whirlind bringing the Day of The Lord that is darkness and not light. It may be the case that if one day the world economic system collapses and the power stations grind to a halt we will literally be in darkness!

It's a hard passage which brings us face to face with the anger of God and reminds us of Jesus' actions in the courtyard of the temple when he drives out the money changers and turns over their tables. The very last line of the text gives two images, of justice like a torrent of water that in a flash flood can destroy but also purge everything in its path.The second image is of an everflowing stream that irrigates the land, feeds oases in the desert and creates life.

It is a challenge to the church but by extension to the whole of humanity to recognise the imperative of justice that acts with force and rigour and to establish a fundamental principle of righteousness, that is to say ethical integrity, that undergirds everything we do and nourishes life.

[My own particular interpretation is that the passage is set against a world view that is fundamentally superstitious, that is to say it is concerned with trying to control the forces of the world by the use of magic in order to ensure survival so that morality is irrelevant, only the effectiveness of the rituals that are used, hence the tendency to develop more and more complex rituals in order be more likely to succeed.

The developing Jewish understanding is in contrast to that with its focus on there being one God and creator who asks his people to relate to him and accept morality as being an essential aspect of that, integral and indivisible (love The Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself....).

The prophet criticises any expression of faith that has slid back into a superstitous ammoral world view just as Jesus later attacks some the Pharisees of his time who should be the very ones to expound an internalised relational faith but who instead have slid back into a legalistic essentially ammoral and perhaps subconscioulsy superstitious world view.]

 

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