Will We Hear the New Promises?

The prophet Amos (c. 750 BC) reminded his people, the people of Israel, that God speaks in the present through the remembrance of sacred past events.  (I’ve been on this “kick” for several days now—we cannot move forward without reviewing, remembering, and knowing the past.  The “new” cannot be understood or experienced without knowing the “old”).  God had given Israel a special task and destiny as a people years before Amos showed up on the scene.  But Israel, Amos proclaimed, had forgotten that calling and their yesterdays.  Only if Israel recalled her past history and her special calling could anything “new” occur.

You see, Israel had the absurd notion that God was their national god, to be mobilized in the service of their self-interests.  They believed this divine favoritism provided immunity from catastrophe, regardless of their own conduct as a people.  Their relationship with God, so they believed, was the only relationship God had, therefore, it was their divine right to prosper and to be more blessed than other nations.  

Amos tried his best to tell the people of Israel that their special calling did not entitle them to special privilege, but rather to greater responsibility.  But Amos’ words fell upon deaf ears.  No one listened.  “God was the God of all nations,” of all peoples, Amos shouted, but no one listened. 

Amos prophesied in a time of great prosperity.  The stock market soared.  But it was a false prosperity because it benefited only a few.  The poor and defenseless, the refugees and migrants   were exploited while the rich were “lying in beds of ease.”  The religious community of the time did not protest against these social injustices.  In fact, the religious community became complicit with the powerful (so that they could, in turn, be themselves powerful, and force their ways on everyone else).  The “have’s” had become calloused, hard-hearted, and no one seemed to care about the “have nots.”  Amos said, “God cares, because God has a heart!”

Israel could not hear any new divine promises (annunciations) because they were already convinced, “God is with us” and with us alone (Amos 5:14). God has already done God’s thing—we are the  only  recipients—nothing else is expected from our god. This moral impoverishment, what the Bible often cites as “hardness of the heart” or as the impairment or loss of moral discernment; the failure to take into account what happened yesterday, the incapacity to hear, though one has ears; or to see, though one has eyes (Mark 8:14-21) incubates a profound apathy toward  human life.  Can God break through our obstinacy?  Can we hear the divine promises of Advent if we think we’ve already arrived?