God of Justice

Scripture: Amos 8:1-12

It is not just you and it is not your imagination.  Everyone really is angrier today than they used to be.  A 2019 survey found that 84% of people believe that everyone is angrier than they used to be.  This same survey also showed that 42% reported feeling angrier than they used to.   A Gallup poll has been tracking this for years and starting in 2016 they noticed that the anger level of the average American has been rising.  In 2024 their findings show that 23% of people report being angry pretty much every day.  There are a ton of theories as to why anger is increasing.   One of the leading and sensible theories is that fear and feelings of uncertainty tend to lead to anger, and we seem trapped in a cycle of unprecedented times.   That tends to lead to a lot of fear and uncertainty.  

 On one level anger is an emotion, and like a lot of emotions we do not have a lot of conscious control over feeling the emotion.  However, an emotional feeling, the part we do not have control over, tends to last only about ninety seconds.   How we choose to react to that emotion is something we do have more control over, but anger is a hard emotion for us to react to rationally.  Anger is a very base emotion.  Anger tends to activate the fight or flight response in us.   This leads to all kinds of angry outbursts.  It leads to simple driving mistakes becoming full blown road rage incidents.  It leads to poor customer service workers getting yelled for things beyond their control.  It leads to people posting the most hateful and cruel comments possible online.  It’s not your imagination; people today are angrier than they used to be and the way that a lot of people are acting on their anger is down right ugly. 

It does not have to be that way though.  Sometimes we get angry over the silliest of things, and the best response is to just let that feeling go.  Sometimes though, our anger is warranted.  Sometimes anger is the right response because something is wrong.   In those instances, how we respond to our anger can actually be a positive.  In their book The Upside to your Dark Side, psychologists Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener that our anger when acted on appropriately can actually lead to higher creativity and more effective performance as we can throw ourselves into fixing what we are angry about.   They point out that research shows, when acted on appropriately anger can actually increase optimism because we begin to believe that something can be done about what we are angry about. 

 In this morning’s scripture God is angry, like really angry.  This scripture makes it really evident that we do not want to be on God’s bad side, but this scripture also points out what makes God angry in the first place. If something makes God angry, perhaps it should upset us as well.   Then we can use those feelings to fuel us in making this world a better place. 

There are sixteen books in the Old Testament named after prophets.  Chronologically, Amos is the first of those prophets.   Biblical scholars can place the time of Amos’ activity as a prophet between 760-750 BCE.  While Jonah and Hosea were contemporaries of Amos, Amos likely started his prophetic career earlier.  Amos was not the first prophet.   The biblical history books like 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, and the Kings have prophets.   However, Amos started a trend that many of the other named prophets that came after him also followed.  The earlier prophets like Samuel or Elijah the almost exclusively focused on calling out idolatry and not being faithful to following God.  Amos and the others that came after him also did that.  However, Amos and those that came after him also spent a lot of time calling out injustice, calling out oppression, and calling out taking advantage of the poor.  It is this injustice that has God so hot under the collar in this morning’s scripture. 

In this morning’s scripture God’s anger is burning at the unfair and unjust commerce practices that were happening in the Northern kingdom of Israel.  The wealthy were cheating the poor to get more money for themselves, specifically in how grain was being sold.  They were using containers that contained less grain than they were supposed to and they were using scales that were weighted so that they could overcharge for less.  They also were mixing in chaff with the grain so that they could sell a greater quantity of inferior quality. 

Perhaps the most sinister injustice being practiced is described in verse 6: “buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.”  Over the years there has been some debate as to what exactly this verse means.  One of the leading thoughts is that wealthy people were lending money to the poor and needy to buy food.  As a symbolic collateral, the person borrowing the money surrendered their sandals to the lender.  When these loans could not be repaid, the borrower then entered a form of debt slavery to pay back what was owed.  The wealthy were lending money for food that they knew could not be paid, in order to get free labor-instead of paying a fair wage in the first place.  If that is the practice this morning’s scripture is describing, then it is absolutely evil.  It is a practice that had God furious. 

 One of the attributes of God that we see named and repeated throughout the scripture is that God is a God of justice.  We find this stated all over the bible. For instance, we find this idea in Deuteronomy 32:4: “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just.  A faithful God, who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”  We find it in the Psalms, such as Psalm 97:  The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad . . .righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne.”   We also find this idea expressed in the New Testament.  In 2 Thessalonians 1:6 Paul simply stated, “God is just.”  The prophets, like Amos, tell us time and time again that the type of injustice that seems to anger God the most is when the rich and powerful take advantage or exploit the poor and vulnerable. 

This scripture can cause us to ask the question, if God hates injustice so much then why does God allow so much injustice?   There is an old story that speaks to this.  The story goes that there was once a man who deeply troubled by the evil and the suffering in the world, so he decided to ask God.  He prayed and asked God to answer him one question.  He prayed this prayer, constantly, non-stop day after day.   Finally, a voice from the sky spoke to this man, and said “I will answer your one question, if you then answer one question for me.”   The man agreed and he asked his question, he asked, “Why do you allow things like hate, famine, war, suffering, homelessness, crime, and despair to exist in the world.?”   God responded, “That’s funny, I was going to ask you the exact same question!”

  Injustice and oppression is not some sort of natural disaster.  It is the result of human choice.  It all persists because collectively we do not work hard enough to stop it.  While human nature may be fallen and disposed to sin, through the saving grace of Jesus Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit we can rise above that nature and we can resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.  God is a God of justice, who is angered by the mistreatment of the poor and vulnerable.  God is a God of justice, which means that the fully realized kingdom of God is a place absent of all injustice.  When take a stand against injustice, when we seek to address the wrongs of exploitation, and when we care for those that, others are taking advantage of then we are joining in with God’s redemptive work to bring about God’s kingdom. 

 I think there is one final detail from this morning’s scripture that is worth paying attention to.  Verses 11 and 12 state, “I will send a famine through the land- not a famine of food or a thirst of water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”   When injustice reigns on the national or societal level then God feels distant on the national or societal level.  For most of my life, I have seen this push to “bring America back to God” or to make God more present in American life.   Perhaps we have been doing it wrong.  Perhaps we do not make God feel less distant by banning certain books or putting the ten commandments in court houses.  The way that we make God less distant, the way that we make God celebrated all across our society is by working to end injustice, taking a stand against oppression, and siding with the must vulnerable. 

There was a time when this is exactly what the followers of Jesus did.  In the first couple of centuries of its existence, Christianity had explosive growth.   Before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost there were around 150 Christians, a number so small that it was a statistical zero in terms of percentage of the Roman Empire that was Christian.   About three hundred years later there were over 33 million Christians and the Christians accounted for 56% of the empire’s population.   One of the pagan emperors of this time period, Julian, wrote about Christians and gave a hint as to what might have driven this growth.  Julian wrote “[Christians] support not only their poor but our as well.”   The Roman world of these early Christians was one that was broken, fallen, and unjust.  It was one characterized by economic disparity, corruption, and violence.  Amid this culture those followers of Jesus chose to stand against the injustice and oppression.  They did this by sharing their resources to care for the poor, they risked their own lives to minister to the sick, and when persecution struck they gambled their own freedom to provide for those who were imprisoned.  Christianity exploded in popularity, God did not feel distant, because the people of God pushed back against the injustice of their culture.   

In the time of Amos God was angered because the rich too advantage of the poor, they profited from the suffering of the needy.  In the time of the early church, this was still true in the Roman world.  Unfortunately, it is still true today.   Today, food assistance for the most in need and vulnerable members of our society is cut in the name of efficiency, while at the same time the wealthiest people seem to never be held accountable and only get more and more given to them.  We do not have to look far to find injustice all around us.   Many of these broken systems that support and create these injustices seem too big for us to do anything about.  It can be overwhelming, but we do not have to single handily do it alone.   We can pull on the thread in front of us.  We can seek to meet the needs in our community, the more we pull on the thread.  If enough followers of God pull on enough threads, then God-willing there will be a day when the whole system of injustice and oppression comes unraveled. 

 This morning’s scripture from Amos makes it clear that injustice angers God.   May we also get a little riled up by injustice.  May we use that righteous anger for good.  May it enable us to find creative solutions to meet the needs around us, may it drive us and focus to help those who are vulnerable and needy.   May it empower us to be used by God to transform this world into a more just place.   May God use us and may justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream.   By the grace of God, may it be so.