Daily Prophets
Day 11
Amos is a prophet who is deeply connected to God, as are all prophets. Yet, to me, Amos is so upset and worried about the people and God that he sounds angry when he is being compassionate. He sounds vengeful when he is scared that the People Israel are destroying themselves. Amos is asking the people to hear these words of God, he is calling to them to hear and listen and change and this is the compassion Amos and God have for the people. It is also the words and tone of a man who has, as Rabbi Heschel teaches in his book, The Prophets, “the inner compulsion to convey what the voice proclaims; not escape for shelter, but identification with the voice.” Amos is identifying with the voice of compassion from and for God and the people Israel.
The opening of Chapter 3 of Amos is so interesting and beautiful and sad: “Hear this word, that Adonai speaks upon you Children of Israel…You Alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth-that is why I will call you to account for all your iniquities.” This is Amos’ and God’s statement about chosenness, you are chosen to carry out God’s mission, don’t mistake chosen ness as divine favoritism or immunity, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us in The Prophets.
OY! I am sitting here at my computer at 2:30am on the Friday before MLK Day and I am embarrassed about myself, my people and people in general. I am embarrassed about all the times I felt like I “had something coming” because I was part of the chosen people. I look back at the days prior to my recovery and I am experiencing the words of Amos viscerally. In my years of recovery, I look at the ways I have been living in the world of “white male privilege” and the world of being hated for being a Jew. It truly has been a both/and. I have been chosen to carry God’s Word and Ways to my corner of the world and I have taken for granted that people will understand me and indulge me in my ways, not always considering the best way to connect to them. I am embarrassed about the missed opportunities because of my own entitlement thinking. My current state of being is to appreciate the chastisements as well as the accolades, the hurts as well as the joys and use the hurts and chastisements as ways to ‘fail forward’ grow from and not be resentful towards the humans who deliver these (valid or not) and hear the voices of Amos and God in the truthful chastisements and hurts.
I think about our current state of affairs and I say OY again. We are living in a world of entitlement with little to no embarrassment. What has/is happening with our government is a snapshot of this. Listening to Rep. McCarthy call for unity when all he has done is sow seeds of discord and lies is almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious. He believes “his people” have been chosen to do as they wish and they are immune from any responsibility and consequences. He must not be reading the same Bible/Old Testament that I am! Trump and his minions will “get away” with their crimes because of Trump’s pardon power-yet, to accept a pardon one has to admit that they are guilty of crimes, so their own admissions will stay with them. Kushner, Ivanka, MBS, et.al. all believe in their entitlement and privilege and forget the responsibility that comes with it. We can see this play out with many people of privilege, white and people of color, and I believe this latest attack by the white supremacists, haters, Q-Anoners, all people who believed they had the right to upend our democracy because they were sold lies by Fox News, Breitbart, Parlor, OAN, etc. has woken most people up. I don’t know if the changes we are seeing right now will stick, yet Jan. 6 did more to get people to hear the word of God than any other event in recent history. We all see privilege come into focus with the Vaccines for Covid-19, people trying to jump the line, rich donors trying to buy their way in, calling hospitals and other healthcare sites to get theirs because they donated money. These are the people Amos is talking to.
And, Amos is talking to all people. All of us have to look inside of ourselves and see how we have come to believe that there should be no consequences for our behaviors. The men and women who opposed the Electoral Count on Jan.6, 2021 believe they should not be held accountable-the people who are against healthcare reform, social security, etc because of personal responsibility don’t take any! Yet it is not just pointing the finger at ‘them’. We have to remember that when we point our finger at another human being, three more are pointed toward ourselves. It is time for us to once again return to looking inside and seeing how we have bastardized our privilege, our chosenness, using it for gain instead of service.
“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan… who defraud the poor, who rob the needy”(Amos 4:1) As I read these words on this day, I am trembling with fear and awe. These words, written 2000+ years ago, are wringing in my ears. Rabbi Heschel says this is referring to the women who were addicted to wine and I think of how I defrauded the poor and robbed the needy in my own addiction. I am thinking about how all of us have done this in overt and subtle ways. I am in awe of our ability to do T’Shuvah and to change also. This is the compassionate message of Amos, as we will see later, you can change, I can change, we can change.
On this MLK weekend, I am asking all of us to look inside ourselves and see how we can hear the words of Amos, see that we are all God’s children, all equal in dignity and value and all unique. Look inside of ourselves and make a commitment to live our uniqueness, carry out God’s mission for us and be one grain of sand better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark