The Prophets
Day 17
“Listen to this, you who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land…tilting a dishonest scale… acquiring the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.”(Amos 8:4-6).
God is calling out to Israel, through God’s prophet Amos. What the people witnessed everyday and seemed okay and normal were horrible actions to God and Amos. So horrible, that the Prophet could not stay silent, God could not stay silent. Amos is telling the powerful and the wealthy that their actions are abhorrent and God is calling them to account. Implicit in here is the painful rebuke of God through Amos. This rebuke is seen as angry and, again, I hear and experience the rebuke as painful and loving. Amos and God are dissenting against the horrible treatment of the poor and the needy. They are calling out to the humanity of the people of Israel and showing their love and hope in them by this calling. They are pointing out to us the reason for Israel’s demise, how a nation so strong, so connected to God, so protected by God, could fail.
In the very beginning of his book The Prophets, Rabbi Heschel speaks about the Prophets’ sensitivity to evil and uses this passage from Amos as one of the examples. “The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world. There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply.” How sad it is that this is still true in our very advanced society. While we have advanced the ways we can kill, maim and mistreat others, we haven’t advanced to far from the time of the prophets in how we treat each other is how I understand what Rabbi Heschel is saying. Rabbi Heschel goes on to say: “To us a single act of injustice-cheating in business, exploitation of the poor-is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare fo the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence:”
How important are these words for our Congressional leaders right now. After years and decades of our leaders being the people who needed to listen, the day of reckoning is here. We have so many signs and need to heed the call of the Prophet and I pray that our leaders answer the call, not of President Biden (although that would be nice to stop the warfare in the Senate) rather the call of the needy and the poor, the call of the Prophet and God. We can help them by sending them these words, letting them know that their pettiness is endangering our democracy and to truly be “one nation under God” means we have to respond to God’s call.
Hearing these words make me tremble with awe and fear and reading Rabbi Heschel on top of them makes me want to hide under the covers! The fear I experience is not the fear of “punishment”, the fear of being found out. I have been punished and I have been found out, by me, by you, by God. Punished meaning forced to be real and seen and forced to see the real you. Forced to see how I have devoured the needy through both actions and inactions. I see where and when I let nothing stand in my way to get what I thought was due me and what was right forgetting to hear what God was calling to me. This Holy Rebuke fills me with trembling fear and not punishing fear. The fear is the precursor to the Awe of getting to stand in the Shadow of God, to witness the Love of God and to experience the unwavering Hope that God has in me. I am wondering if you can have the same experience? I pray that you can.
I am having this experience because the experience of Amos’ words is how much God cares and Amos cares. Amos takes such risk in delivering his message and he is compelled to do it anyway because of his love of and for God and Israel. He is calling us to listen and yet so many of us don’t. In fact, all of us go deaf at least once in our lives. I am in awe of the power of listening and hearing the truth from another and from God. I am in trembling awe of the experiences of being able to speak God’s truth to another(s), of witnessing the transformation from being one of the people to whom Amos is speaking to being like Amos and being a prophet in their own home, own right. The purpose of the Rabbi, to me, is to be this megaphone for God. These words were/are the reason that no one was turned away from Beit T’Shuvah because of lack of money. They are the reason that Harriet and I have always been available to anyone who seeks us out. The ways that I have been the person/people Amos is calling to are many, the ways I have not been the person/people Amos is talking about are more, I am grateful to acknowledge. This is why it is so important to be “found out” by yourself and others through inventory, T’Shuvah and connection. This is why it is so important to listen to the call of our souls and the words of others who are rebuking for your/my sake not for theirs. Nothing in Amos’ words help him be better than someone else, they help him speak truth, reach out to save another(s) and serve God. I pray we all follow Amos’ example. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark