A Reflecton on Amos 7

When I was in my 20’s and teaching school in the South Carolina Low County, I often visited my aunt and uncle when I would travel to Charleston for the weekend. They lived near enough to the city and on the way to the beach, so it was convenient to run by their house or even stay overnight with them when I wanted to do more than I could accomplish in an afternoon. Once, I went into their house, and I came face-to-face with a plumb line suspended from the ceiling in the family room. Of course, I asked my aunt and uncle what it was—after all, most people don’t usually hang strings with a weight on the end from their interior ceilings. My uncle explained that it had no function except to remind him of the teaching in Amos 7.

I realized that my uncle, who has had a love/hate affair with religion, was grasping for anything that would help him understand what he had been taught about a judgmental God. I longed to tell him, in my youthful arrogance, that it really wasn’t that way at all. I wanted to say that, yes, God gives us standards to live by, but God also shows mercy and relents of harsh judgments—even in the very same passage that God shows Amos the plumb line.

In Amos I see a conflicted God, one who so loves his people—even the people who go astray and worship idols—that God is willing to relent of the harsh punishments that Amos hears of the Lord sending to Israel. This God is a merciful God. I have somewhat irreverently imagined this passage in terms of a New Yorker Magazine cartoon where God, as a county extension agent dressed in khakis and a white shirt accented with a Bolo tie, is leaning against a fence conversing with Amos who is dressed in overalls and a John Deere cap, and absent-mindedly puncturing those mulberry figs on the sycomore tree.* God and Amos are chatting about God’s decision to send locusts and then fire as punishment on the idolatrous people of Judah. I can hear Amos’ whining voice respond, “But Lord, how can Jacob stand what you plan to do? We are so small!” I can also see the thought cloud above Amos’ head that says something like, “And if you stick to your plan, I’m going to shoot you in the eye with fig juice.”

God does, in fact, deliver judgment on Judah and Israel in the form of exile, and I think it is instructive in this Advent season to understand why God exacted such a huge price on the people of Judah and Israel. God warns the people that they will no longer hear the word of the Lord because they have refused to listen to the Word of the Lord. Perhaps when we, a people of God, make up our minds that we know what God’s concerns and interests are all about, we’ve effectively stopped listening to the Word of God. When we deliver dictates addressing how others should behave, delivering the judgment that only God should deliver (and chooses to step back from), then we have stopped listening to the Word of God. And perhaps we have failed to measure up to God’s expectations to be a people of hope carrying a message of good will to all.

For more information about mulberry figs and sycomore trees, see http://www.plantanswers.com/bible_fruit.htm.