When the Day of the Lord Comes

Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Amos 5:18-24

But let justice flow like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream [Amos 5:24].

Sunday’s alternate Old Testament reading, Amos 5:18-24, features pronouncements from one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. These writings are minor only in regard to their length. Many OT scholars refer to them simply as “the Dozen” [see, e.g., Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible]. Amos was a working-class sheep-breeder and a tender of sycamore figs. He lived in a small town in the southern kingdom of Judah. He spoke to the people of the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century before Christ.

Some in that northern kingdom were quite prosperous. Israel’s houses of worship were active. The people brought their offerings, celebrated their festivals, and sang their hymns. Many looked forward to “the day of the LORD,” a day when they expected the LORD to act decisively on their behalf. In Israel’s mind, when that day came, it would be a day of light.

In many respects, the northern kingdom was not unlike our world today. How many of us have desired, even prayed, for the LORD to intervene? We want Him to put an end to what is wrong. We desire that He set things right.

But Amos had a disturbing word:

Woe to you who desire the “day of the LORD!”

Amos told those in Israel that such a day would be one of darkness, not light. He cautioned that the LORD whose coming they longed for would indeed judge what was wrong. It’s just that Israel itself would not be exempt from that judgment.

He offered them a picture. The day of the LORD would be like a man who flees from a lion, only to be confronted by a bear. He manages to make it home where he can finally breath again. Exhausted, he rests his hand against the wall, only to be bitten by a snake [5:19]. Threatened by the Assyrians, facing other significant struggles, those in Israel longed for the day when the LORD would set things right. The LORD’s upheaval would not, however, deal just with the wrongs from without. It would deal with those within.

Consider the people’s worship practices. Speaking directly in the LORD’s voice, he says:

I hate, I despise, your feasts! I can’t stand the stench of your solemn assemblies [5:21].

The LORD adds that He will not accept their offerings. He will not listen to their music.

Elsewhere in Amos, we learn that it isn’t so much that the LORD abhors their specific hymns or their liturgy. He is rather angry that in their interpersonal activities, they trample the poor. They ignore the widow and orphan. The needy are turned away from the gate. Those in power lie and cheat. It is as if the mighty think they can buy off the LORD with a few hours of devotion each week. This isn’t so. The LORD tells them to be careful in asking for the day of the LORD, for when it comes, justice will “flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream” [5:24].

In His pronouncement to those in Israel, the LORD joins two important words: justice and righteousness. For Amos, justice meant primarily the court system, the method of resolving disputes among the citizenry. Here, in Amos, however, the LORD links justice with righteousness. The latter is what is good and right in the sight of the LORD. Neither can be reduced to the causes that we already favor or the outcomes that we already desire.

The words in Amos should make us uncomfortable, for we, too, pray for the LORD to set things right. We call for justice and are often sure we know what it looks like. We may imagine that one day—in God’s good time—He will affirm our convictions and correct the actions of others.

Have we considered that the LORD’s kind of judgment might reach us as well? Might there be people whom we have failed to see? Are there voices, both living and those yet to be born, that we have failed to hear? Do our habits, both explicit and implicit, leave the truly weak unprotected? Have we escaped the lions and bears of the world? Have we retreated to our private sanctuaries? Are we leaning against a wall, confident that now we are safe, only to be bitten by the snake?

As we hear the words of the prophet Amos, joined with those of the LORD Himself, where is our hope?

Amos himself does not end with the snake. His book closes with a vision of the LORD raising up David’s fallen booth and promising that Israel will never again be uprooted [9:15]. Yet, Israel was, of course, later uprooted. The promise outran Israel’s history, and it waited for the One who could keep it.

Although the context was quite different, in this morning’s Wednesday Bible Study that I share with some of you, we were reminded by St. Paul that our hope is always in the One who died for us on the cross. In Whistling in the Dark, Frederick Buechner wrote that the cross reveals both “the justice of things” and “the mercy of things.”

In the death of Jesus Christ, we see something of what human beings do to one another. The death of that innocent One convicts us as a race, and we deserve the grim world that over the centuries we have made for ourselves. That is the justice of things. But we also see that the LORD is present even in the midst of the darkness that we have made. The cross is a sign of mercy as well as judgment. It is, therefore, a sign of hope.

It is hope because the One who comes close enough to judge us also comes close enough to bear our sin and give us new life. The LORD does not ask for an hour or two from us; He asks for all of us! And in Christ, the LORD gives all of Himself to us.