Amos 8:1-3, 9-12

Don’t lose God

The theme song to one of the most famous comedy shows in Lebanon in the 1990s goes like this:

You wake up on the wrong side of the bed; you can’t stand to see anyone. You head to shower, there is no water! Forget about shower, give your body a break, no need to shave, let your beard relax for a day or two, no need to brush your teeth, just chew a gum and forget all about this water situation. Take a deep breath, count to ten, find your keys, open your door, where is your car? Is it gone? Must have been towed. There is no time to complain, start walking to work, and make it quick, you better be on time or else they’ll send you back home. You go to work despite yourself anyway; you don’t even get paid all that well…

That is a caricature of a typical day for a Lebanese citizen, of course it is exaggerated to highlight some of the problems of our society, but seriously, have you ever had one of these days when everything seems to be going wrong? And right when you try to console yourself with the thought that things could only improve from there, they do not. For some reason, bad things tend to happen in sets; science says it’s because humans look for patterns, and, frankly, whatever you focus on increases.

Unfortunately it is one of those times for us at Parkview. It surely isn’t one of our best seasons: losing a beloved member, while occupied with preparing a memorial service for another, all together while grieving the loss of our leader for two decades, and while trying to figure out who we are and where we’re heading. We might be feeling like the Hebrews in Amos, that our time is ripe, that we are all shaken, that we are wandering from sea to sea and from North to East, and it feels almost like God is not aware of all of this. Or, is God aware of all of this?

Amos prophesied “the Lord said to me, ‘the end has come upon my people; I will never again pass them by. And then numerous images of overwhelming calamity follow: “The songs of the temple shall become wailings, the dead bodies shall be many, the sun will go down at noon, the earth will darken in broad daylight, feasts will turn into mourning, and songs into lamentation.”

“Be silent!”

I think sometimes, that’s the only thing we can do to make sense of pain, being silent.

But our Scripture passage today is giving us permission to do something else to counter pain and grief, and that is to embrace those feelings, and, yes, to lament where we are.

In that day, declares the Sovereign Lord, “. . . I will turn your religious festivals into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.”

Wearing sackcloth and shaving heads were signs of repentance, lamentation and fasting. Mourning is the proper channel to go through, Amos is saying. Our prophetic passage is giving us permission to lament.

Pastor Aart once said we only live our full humanity when we allow ourselves to experience the pain and not run away from it. I would add to that, whether it is our own or whether it is sharing others’, this pain eventually transforms us and heals us.

Throughout his book, Amos consistently pronounces harsh judgment over the Hebrews and other nations, but especially the Hebrews. In a total of 9 chapters, there are 9 chapters of anger and lament. After the passage we read, Amos’s judgment develops into full destruction, even destruction of the temple, which symbolizes the ultimate separation from God.

God was the source of everything that happens in the people’s life, whether it is good or bad, God was always in the picture. And though I do not agree with the theology that hardships are a result of God’s anger, but what we can learn from the Hebrew’s experience is that they at least tried to find God in the midst of the whirlwind, they kept seeing that God is there. Despite the nearing end, God is there. Despite the storm, God is there. Their biggest fear was not that God is angry but that God would leave the picture. That, they couldn’t deal with. Instead they searched for what wrong they have done and embarked on a journey of repentance and lament.

But then, through this process of lament, repentance and mourning, something changes.

In the last five verses of Amos, it all turns into an account of redemption and restoration, and the prophetic book ends with a note of hope and reconciliation with God.

Despite and I argue also because of the pain, at the end of the book, Israel is restored, as the result of their experience of losing everything and almost losing God’s word and God’s presence among them. This realization was frightening; being away from God is not an option, even when they thought that God was bringing forth all these calamities to punish them. The fear of losing God was the turning point in their experience.

Friends our lives are restored as a result of those long journeys of lament we embark on, because lament is not only a journey of mourning, it is a journey to learn resistance and resilience, to learn that there can be healing. It is a journey of awe and wonder at God’s presence that could be felt even in the midst of the darkest moments of our grief.

I have had the honor to work alongside Dr. William P. Brown, OT professor at Columbia Seminary, in two Vital Congregations gatherings. In his lament-themed sermon titled “The Church on the Ash Heap,” he says:

There is something redemptive in refusing to gloss over grief, bypass our pain, and deny our dysfunction . . . In lament, we are called to be brutally honest with each other and God. It is then that we are opened to consider new, radical and hopeful possibilities.

The book of Amos shows us that, if God could work through years of brokenness of the Hebrews, God can also work through our brokenness. It shows us that, if we look at the big picture, we can see God working in places that we thought were utterly hopeless.

So, let’s not forget the big picture. We are in the middle of the storm now, but we know there is hope at the end of the road, because God is there, even if we fail to see it now.

Let’s not lose hope, believing in God’s mercy which clarifies, then purifies, then heals.

Friends, let’s not lose God. Amen.