Here is more of Boadt’s commentary on Amos….
Although Amos never mentions the ten commandments
by name, his charges reflect them in every chapter. The people violage all the
demands that God has made upon them in the great covenant on Mount Sinai. His
words touch moreal failure in every level of society: the law, the leadership,
the economic life, and even worship. Northern Israel is a people confident that
God will protect them no matter what they do because of the covenant bonds
between them and God. But Amos understands it differently. He speaks again and
again of the times that they have suffered attacks from their enemies and
natural disasters in punishment for their evil ways and yet remain unmoved (Am
3:3-8; 4:6-13), he sings a mock funeral song over the people to warn them of
their coming death (Am 5:1-5), and he attacks their most cherished liturgical
celebrations. In a moving passage (Am 5:18-20) he flatly contradicts the hope
proclaimed on their feast days that Yahweh will be a warrior God who will fight
for Israel against all of its enemies on a great day of victory and light.
Instead, the “Day of the Lord” they celebrate and hope for will be a day when God will turn on them and destroy them
for their sins. And he has no use for worship and sacrifices that are empty and
meaningless: “Take away from me the noise of your festal songs, I will not
listen to the melody of your harps; rather let justice flow down like a stream
of water, and uprightness like an ever-flowing river” (Am 5:23-24)
When I hear or read Amos 5:23-24 I cannot help
but think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his “I Have a Dream” speech. Is it any
surprise that the preacher who led the civil rights movement of the 1950s and
60s in this country should quote from Amos, the Israelite prophet who proclaims
the need for social justice so compellingly?
Some segments of the Church of Jesus Christ
through the centuries have emphasized the need for a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ to the exclusion of any emphasis on social justice. Evangelicals
have tended to fit into this category, and that is the tradition from which I,
to some extent, come. Perhaps that is the reason why when I read the minor
prophets these books do not “speak to me” in the same way that other portions
of Scripture do.
On the other hand, there have been segments of
the Church that have emphasized social justice to the exclusion of any emphasis
on the importance of establishing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The mainline Protestant denominations have tended to fall into this category. I
have spent time in those circles as well, and so I think I can understand where
they are coming from.
However, the truth is that we need both. We need
in the Church an emphasis on our personal, individual relationship with God and an emphasis on the corporate
identity of the Church as a family that moves in and changes society by the
power of the Holy Spirit. This is the balance that the whole Bible gives to us
when we read it in its entirety and do not simply confine ourselves to our
favorite passages. This is one reason why the reading of the whole Bible, both
as individual Christians, and corporately in the worship services of the whole
Church is essential to the vitality of individual believers and the entire Body
of Christ.
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