Proper 27 (A)

November 7, 1999

Feel-Good Religion

Amos 5:18-24

There is a lot of talk today about the value of faith and "spirituality." Curiously, however, many of those who approve of spirituality in general are quick to reject the notion that there are specific behaviors and beliefs God does not approve. They have reshaped God into something safe and soft and pliable, a feel-good God who can be ignored until they want something from Him.

Modern America has much in common that way with the Israel of Amos' day (8th century B.C.). In this passage the prophet forthrightly rejects such sentimentalizing of religion. He warns about two things: false hope and false worship.

False Hope (vv. 18-20)

There is such a thing as false hope which, though it may calm one's fears in the near-term, will disappoint ultimately and eternally. Amos' contemporaries were clinging to such a vain hope. They were longing for the day of the Lord. That is the Bible's term for history's end-point, when God will step in to bring an end to the human story. The people expected that the day of the Lord would be for them a time of deliverance and vindication and peace.

Amos reminds them that there is another side to the truth. Not only will the day of the Lord be a time of salvation, but for some it will be a day of judgment and woe (v. 18) which will come with the kind of horrifying and deadly shock a man experiences when he runs into a bear while trying to escape a lion, then, barely outrunning both predators, enters his home, slams the door, leans against the wall to catch his breath ... and is bitten by a poisonous snake that had been hiding in the rafters (v. 19). A day of "darkness, not light -- pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness" (v. 20) -- that's what the day of the Lord will be to those who do not possess genuine faith. Anything else is merely an escapist fantasy.

False Religion (vv. 21-23)

The Israelites must have been offended by the suggestion that the day of the Lord would be for them anything other than a time of great blessing. They were confident that their religion would stand them in good stead on that day. Amos blasts their false confidence again, expressing God's disdain for their worship: "I hate, I despise your religious feasts... [and] assemblies ... I will not accept [your offerings and sacrifices]... I will not listen to the music [with which you pretend to praise Me]."

Their problem was they were focusing on the external forms of religion, the aesthetics of worship, the things that made them feel good but had missed the true nature of genuine piety.

True religion, Amos indicates, is transformative. God is not pleased with those who merely follow the forms of religion; He expects His people to be changed by its power, so that they reflect in their lives and relationships something of His character. He is a God of justice and of righteousness; thus, His followers must "let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream" (v. 24). Where there is no such reflection, profession of faith is empty. While salvation always has been through faith alone, the faith that saves is never alone. To Amos, "bare" faith likely was no faith at all. And so it was to the New Testament writers, too, like James who wrote, "I will show you my faith by what I do" (James 2:18). (William L. Hogan)