Perhaps I don't bus enough.

It was Seattle-raining: a drizzle/mist combination. When I came to the bus shelter, though, one of the two men there was smoking. And I admit: my first reaction was frustration with a choice between smoke-smell and dampness. The men were fishermen-looking types, rough around the edges, and I felt distinctly different from them in my youth and graduate-student-attempt at clean-cut style.

Perhaps I felt superior in that difference.

But as soon as he saw me, the man who was smoking said, "Oh! Young lady, you sit down here and I'll step away. Here I am smoking in the bus shelter..." He stepped out into the drizzle where his cigarette dampened.

Without much else to do, I eavesdropped on the conversation between the two men.

Man number one (the man who stepped out into the rain with his cigarette) was telling man number two about places he was looking for work. They spoke a bit about the temporary jobs which can be found on fishing boats. "But you know, I just want to get inside. I'm old, I can't be outside like that all the time. I'm outside enough."

"It's hard, it's real hard," man number two commiserated. "How can I help you?"

"It's just so hard, you know? It's -" he broke off somewhat tearfully. The second man stood up and gave the first man a hug. They were quiet for a minute. The first man continued, "You know, I don't want some government handout. I don't want somebody else's money. I just want a job. I want a job and my own money. And I'm not giving up, you know? You can't give up. It's the folks who give up who are really lost. I haven't given up, even at my age. It's perseverance, you know? I was taught that, and I'm not going to loose that. But it's still hard. Even with perseverance it's hard."

"Well, you keep that up. You keep that perseverance. Let me know how I can help. It's not easy."

The bus came. The first man put out his cigarette and placed it in the trash bin.

We all got on the bus, and took the empty seats near the front. The two men continued to talk about possibilities for work - it seemed that man number two was in a position to offer some material resources: he asked the other man's coat size and assured him that he'd get a winter coat. They discussed a younger man they both knew who was out of a job and a place to live. They were very concerned about this young man. Man number one lamented, "He's just too young. And he's young enough to turn it around, but man he needs to act quick. If he doesn't act quick, you know, ten years go by and twenty years go by and all of a sudden you're our age and it's so much harder." Man number two was optimistic about the young man's work ethic and street smarts. "He's doing all he can and more."

The two men got off a couple stops before me. They thanked the bus driver and heartily wished him a merry Christmas and walked into the mist.

And I traveled on toward my "moderately"-priced haircut appointment - at a price that might have purchased a simple winter coat or sleeping bag.

And my differences with the two men seemed simultaneously starker and less important: I have a roof over my head, an indoor job, a winter coat. I'm young and have enough money to spend on a haircut. And with all these blessings, I'm still too-often rude and pushy and ignorant of the stories around me.

I keep up my guard - watching my purse, watching for awkward stares. And being a young woman with a purse, it's necessary and practical to be guarded. Being guarded means that I might avoid a pickpocket or purse-snatcher. It means that I'll take the statistically safer route when walking. But it also means that I'm very good at creating differences between me and others - and that I'm creating false hierarchies of fear and of superiority in those differences.

Here I am - materially blessed but easily frustrated and clearly judgmental. And here are these men - absolutely at the end of their rope and still chivalrous and heartily wishing people merry Christmas. It struck me that if they saw someone reaching for my purse they wouldn't think twice about intervening. Yet many of the people who look less-different from me would probably try to ignore such a situation, to guard themselves from a thief.

We are only guarded when we have something to guard. We are only truly generous and selfless when we are not afraid.

I don't know how to balance the theological fact that there are no differences, that the hierarchy of superiority I create with my rightful-young-woman-with-a-purse-in-a-city-guardedness is wrong and is preventing me from really loving the people I meet, with the fact that I am a young woman in a city and it would be irresponsible for me to pretend that that's not true.

Is it possible for me to be rightly guarded and not surprised when I realize that someone different-from-me deserves my respect and admiration?

I suppose that's the reason for sharing this story: I was surprised to find out that the fisherman-type man smoking a cigarette in the bus shelter is an admirable and beautiful person, and I am ashamed at my own surprise.

Hosea and Advent

I’m teaching-by-talking again at Paradigm in a little over a week (you should still come this week!), and right now we’re going through Hosea. I haven’t thought in too specific terms about what I’ll be saying, but today I was considering how appropriate it is that we’re walking through Hosea during Advent.

Why? Hosea isn’t particularly dense with messianic prophesies explicitly fulfilled in the Christmas story; it’s a strange Old Testament text with bipolar emotions; it’s not typically read when lighting the Advent candles.

The whole book – the written compilation of Hosea’s prophesies – must be read as framed by Hosea’s personal life: God told Hosea to marry a prostitute (or at least a woman he knew would be unfaithful), to allow her to break the marriage covenant and return to prostitution, and then to go buy her out of prostitution and woo her back into faithful marriage.

God did not say, “This is what my relationship with my people is like, this abstract analogy of marrying an unfaithful woman.” God said, “This is why my relationship with my people is like, this real and concrete experience.” This is not a simile. This is reality. This is Hosea’s reality. This is real heartbreaking abandonment, and real reconciliation-through-hard-work.

All the emotions in the book, strange and bipolar as they seem when taken alone, all these emotions make perfect sense in this very real context of Hosea’s (and of God’s). A spouse shunned is rightly angry, rightly achingly sad, rightly nostalgic.

But God-the-lover remains loving in these angry, sad, nostalgic emotions. And God-the-lover does not break His marriage vows; He looks for ways to woo His people back.

Other images stand out as Hosea tries to explain this love of God. Mixed in with the reality-metaphor of God-the-lover is the metaphor of God-as-mother: Hosea says that God declares,

11When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.

3Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
4I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.

God as a mother who leads her children with apron strings, with “cords of human kindness”. (There’s a preschool nearby here where the children take daily walks and the teachers lead them around all holding a rope, connected to one another and safely along the path the teacher wants to take them. I think of this.)

And my eyes get teary in verse four: “I was to them like those/who lift infants to their cheeks”. This is more than utilitarian, more than providing simply what children need. This is delight. This is relishing the softness of baby skin, the milky breath, supporting the delicate neck and marveling.

Marveling.

God is a mother marveling, a father trembling.

What does this have to do with Advent?

Hosea is a fleshy book. It is a book about sex and birth and babies. It is about human emotion, about the sort of aching that only those with real, visceral guts can feel. It is about anger that literally burns in the nose (there is no word for abstract “anger” in Hebrew – the words used for anger are all about nose-burning!). It is about soft baby skin and milky breath. It is about Hosea experiencing these fleshy things. It is about God experiencing these fleshy things.

Hosea and God experience flesh together. And it hurts. And it’s beautiful.

What doesn’t this have to do with Advent?

What does it mean to be saved?

What if salvation isn't a one-time event at some moment of conversion, but something that happened two thousand years ago, is happening now, and will happen in the future?



(I'd recommend any of Kallistos Ware's books on Eastern Orthodoxy as a follow-up to this.)

Click this link

As I'm in the thick of end-of-quarter papers and exams, allow me to direct you to Paul's blog, where he's been writing again recently. Good thoughts on missionality and goal-setting.

Non-Human Creation

Paul once went to a worship leaders' conference in which one speaker declared that the next wave of church worship music would be music written for non-human animals. Paul said he about fell off his chair, and I find the prediction amusing even now. The Bible certainly envisions all creation praising God, mountains raising their voices and trees waving their hands, even - but I do think that human music should probably be written for humans. (That's as much out of respect for non-human animals as it is out of respect for humans: humans aren't going to understand music written for dogs - whatever that looks like - but I have the feeling that dogs aren't going to understand it either. It's one thing to hold a worship service which, as the psalmists do, recognizes the worship which nature naturally offers. It's another thing to coerce nature into offering human worship.)

All that to say, I've been giving some thought to non-human creation lately (I'm taking an environmental ethics class this quarter, so much of that thought begins in our discussions and readings for class). We read an article this week about the difference between Darwinian evolution and "Wallaceian/Spencerian" evolution - it was Alfred Wallace and Herbert Spencer, contemporaries of Darwin's, who actually laid the foundation for what we now call "Social Darwinism" and some pretty hideous "evolutionary" thoughts about the differences between human races. I'm no evolutionary scientist or Darwinian historian, but it seems that (according to this article) if you follow the thoughts of Darwin (who was admittedly a bit racist himself), evolution is understood as differentiation, as changes in species so that they can adapt to their different environments best and leading to the wide variety of species we have today. All species, and physical variations within species, are a big family tree - but no one "branch" of that tree is inherently better than another. Wallace and Spencer focused a bit more on the "survival of the fittest" - it was not just which genetic variation was "fitter" for the environment, but which genetic variation is inherently better. So evolution is less a family tree and more a trajectory toward the perfect being (the healthy Aryan male, according to Spencer's disciples).

This Spencerian anthropology led to the weird "science" of eugenics, measuring people's heads to figure out which race had the ideal head, and how all other races were related to that ideal. In this environment, it's absolutely no surprise that Nazism became so accepted in Germany.

When we think of the word “evolution” today, I think most of us think in a Spencerian way – “evolution” is currently synonymous with “progress” more than it is with “differentiation”.

And it is the view that evolution necessarily means “progress” instead of “differentiation” which is actually opposed to the Christian story. The idea that creation may have happened over a long period of time, with a lot of differentiating processes, is not really the problem (though the question of death in this pre-“Edenic” context can pose a theological dilemma). The problem comes when it is suggested that the ultimate aim is the destruction of all that is “weak”, all that is “other”, all that is not the “highest form”. Theologically and biblically, it seems that Christians ought to be far more interested in the fact that God is a God of the weak, the oppressed, and the broken than being interested in arguing for a particular timeline of creation. What if this was the “Christian response to evolution” – not to argue a timeline but to argue for justice and sacrifice (even if it flies in the face of Spencerian evolution)? What if we spoke out against the astronomically high abortion rate of Down Syndrome babies? What if we stood on the side of the economically disadvantaged, believing that the poor really are blessed and that Jesus really does call us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, and visit the prisoner? That Jesus calls us to do these things even if we end up saying, "God loves us lepers..."

What if all the resources spent fighting Darwinian evolution were instead spent fighting Spencerian evolution? How many lives would be saved?

This all relates to our relationship with the oppressed of our own species, but in light of our current ecological crisis, it relates to our relationship with "non-human creation", too.

Scientists now recognize (contra most of the evolutionary scientists of the nineteenth century) that humans are all the same species, that interracial procreation doesn’t produce infertile offspring, and that our physical differences are truly ones of very superficial differentiation. Culture and race are viewed according to much different types of inquiry than they were during the nineteenth century. While this scientific knowledge may not play out as it ought to in the real work of racial reconciliation, it does seem that science has come a long way from eugenics.

But how might science and theology be eugenic in how they approach differences between species? What I mean is this: we assume that humanity is intellectually, morally, socially, spiritually, etc, superior to non-human creation. What if we thought about the differences between humanity and “the rest of creation” differently – in a differential rather than inherently hierarchical way? We are learning more and more about the intelligence and even morality of dolphins, chimps, ravens, and pigs – and as much as we would like to suggest that our intelligence and moral understanding are superior to that of dolphins, it may be that our intelligence and moral understanding are simply different than those of dolphins.

I think this suggestion might be disturbing to many Christians because we feel a need to somehow differentiate humans and other creatures, to note that we are the ones given dominion, we are the ones to whom God speaks most explicitly in the Bible, it is the human form God chooses in the Incarnation.

And I absolutely agree – humanity is different than other creatures in a theological sense. But perhaps that difference is not because we are superior, but because God chose us to be representatives, prophets and priests and shepherd-rulers. Because God chose humanity, giving humanity a particular dose of His Spirit – His breath – in creation, He perhaps endowed humanity with the qualities they would need to be good prophets and priests and shepherd-rulers. But these qualities – particular types of intelligence or spiritual awareness, maybe – need not be the prerequisite for His choice.

The choosing of Abraham frames the biblical understanding of God’s choice, God’s “election”. Paul Borgman, in his book on Genesis, notes that the choice of Abraham is different than the choice of Noah in that Noah is chosen because he has certain qualities while Abraham, not particularly spectacular in any of his original qualities, is chosen because God sees him as someone open to being changed and formed by God. The choice of Abraham and his family has nothing to do with their inherent goodness. It seems unsettlingly arbitrary.

But it’s not so unsettling when we realize that the choice of the Hebrews does not mean that God cares less for other people – but that God wants to have a particular representative in the world in order to bless all nations. The choice of Israel by God is a choice to give them particular responsibility. (This is why, as Karl Barth noted against his German contemporaries, that it is so vital for Jesus to be Jewish: as the representative of Israel, Jesus carries out this particular responsibility to be Israel blessing the nations.)

Is it not possible that God’s choice for humanity to be imago Dei, to be the representative of God-on-earth, is similarly not a choice of hierarchy but a choice of priesthood, of responsibility to be God’s representative to all creation? It is important that Jesus is human so that he is second Adam – the representative of humanity carrying out the particular responsibility of blessing the cosmos (Colossians).

What if we view non-human creation not as inferior but as that which we have been chosen to bless?

Perhaps we wouldn't write worship songs for our dogs and cats. But perhaps we would start understanding the world differently, understanding eschatology differently, understanding our own responsibility differently, understanding chosenness differently.

Stories you thought you knew

Let me just say, I'm excited for this coming Sunday at Paradigm. We're going through some minor prophets, and it's time for Jonah.

Yup, the story with the big fish.

But the story isn't really about the big fish at all. The story isn't even centrally about the moral drawn in Sunday School, "You can't run away from God", though "God is everywhere" comes a little closer to its central thesis.

The story is about anger and being mopey. It's about forgiveness and inclusiveness and dialogue with the Divine.

I think what excites me about looking at Jonah is that it is apparently such a familiar story. But the problem is that, in the familiar telling of it, we think that the story is about a fish. And little kids get excited or scared, and scholarly types debate whether the book's genre is historical or fanciful or parable, and self-righteous types who are overly concerned about the wrong words get annoyed when someone talks about "Jonah and the whale" ("There's no whale - it's a fish!").

Enough with the fish.

Once we start reading Jonah realizing that the fish is just a means to an end within the story's narrative, we can focus on the narrative. And be surprised and challenged. And find that what we thought was a children's Sunday School story forces us to re-think our own assumptions about anger and forgiveness and "otherness" and God.

Come join us.

In defense of a book I haven't read

Relevant Magazine recently posted a review of The Justice Project, a book with a collection of essays from a variety of writers on the topic of social justice. I generally don't mind Relevant's publication (Paul has had some articles published on their website, in fact), but I was a little shocked by the review. I posted a comment there which has not shown up yet (I'm assuming they have a reveiw-the-comment-for-profanity process before comments appear), but which I'll re-post here. (You'll need to read Relevant's review in order for this to make sense.)

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Yikes. It's one thing to write a scathing book review - I've read enough books to know that it's sometimes necessary! - but it's another thing to turn that book review into a broad sweeping statement about an entire "movement" (even less a movement which isn't exactly known for being unified).

I appreciate the suggestion that the book ought to have considered a more histoircal vision of social justice, particularly Catholic social thought. Yet it sounds like some of the questions being raised are profoundly ecumenical: ought we so quickly dismiss liberation theology, considering we worship a God of the Passover, a Christ of the empty tomb, and a Spirit of healing and empowerment (sounds like liberation to me)? Ought we be so quick to denounce Rev. Wright without considering his context or why his church is so successful (even if in the end we do not agree with him)?

And even if in the end you do not agree with Selmanovic's vision of universal salvation (though it is not clear from this review that that is even what he is espousing...), certainly the view that the Spirit is at work in the "other", that grace is offered to all (not a chosen set of elected individuals) is what the Apostle Paul emphasized when writing against the "Judaizers" and their false understanding of what it means to be a Christ-follower in light of the dividing line between Jews and Gentiles being changed in astounding ways. (In light of a Jewish Messiah who, at times, seemed heretical.)

If we are so quick to dismiss those who are simply "restating a classic theme", we are potentially blocking out prophetic voices. God's concern for justice is not just "a classic theme" - it is THE theme of the Bible. Perhaps Amos's cries against "the cows of Bashan" (referring to the women of Israel) was a bit extreme, was a bit resentful of upper-class affluence, but Israel was taken into exile because the people did not heed the warning of this poor shepherd and his "liberation theology".

I appreciate the suggestions made here - that a historical view of social justice should be kept in mind, that we ought to lament with MLK Jr. the segregation of our Christian communities, and even that "emergent" communities need to be ever mindful of the captivating individualism rampant in every Western church ("emergent" or not). I am, however, shocked at the anger behind the words of this review. Certainly, in a book with such diversity of writers - from Tony Jones to Richard Twiss to Lynne Hybels - it would be difficult for a reader to agree with every contribution. But we need to be listening, we need to be open to being challenged even as we also need to be discerning and correcting.

I'm almost most surprised by the last sentence. It's true: I doubt that most "emergent" Christians have rejected the freedom of globalization, but Shane Claiborne (mentioned in the first sentence as praising the book) certainly has! Sewing his own clothes, he stands out as a radical witness - a prophetic voice himself - to the Church that it is possible to break free from consumerism even if it is difficult.

Thank you for your review, for your suggestions and criticisms. I'm looking forward to reading the book!

Amos and a God Who Relents

Really, I'll try to actually blog and not just re-post Paradigm reflections here at some point in the near future. But we're going through some good stuff with the minor prophets, and I think it's worth sharing!

From October 25:

Amos 7:1 – 9

This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings). 2 When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,
‘O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!’
3 The Lord relented concerning this;
‘It shall not be,’ said the Lord.

4 This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. 5 Then I said,
‘O Lord God, cease, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!’
6 The Lord relented concerning this;
‘This also shall not be,’ said the Lord God.

7 This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. 8 And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’

Last week we talked about the prophet as a person who is so in tune with God’s heart that the prophet aches for the things that God aches for, loves the righteousness that God loves, and hates the injustice and brokenness that God hates.

We talked about God’s heart: God’s heart is radical love for and anger on behalf of the oppressed. When we draw near to God and align our hearts with His, our hearts are broken for the same reasons that his heart is broken and we are compelled, like Amos, to speak out.

Our key passage today is the one I just read, but I want to start by noting verses 7.14 – 17. Amos is talking to a priest named Amaziah, who has complained to the king that Amos is upsetting the status quo way too much. Amaziah tells Amos to go back home, and Amos says,

“‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, 15 and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”
16 ‘Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.
You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac.”
17 Therefore, thus says the Lord:
“Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.” ’

Amos is perfectly ordinary. He is a simple shepherd and tree-tender, a poor man. Yet he listens to God; God has given him a heart for the oppressed and the needy and he can hardly do anything but speak. When Amaziah tells him not to prophesy against the status quo, Amos points out that those who refuse to hear the message from God – including Amaziah – will surely end up in exile.

Amos is a perfectly ordinary rural farmer. Yet his heart is connected to God’s, and he is compelled to speak out for justice for the poor, against the status quo of kings and priests.

Now we come back to the passage we read earlier. I’ll read it again as we walk through it.

This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings). 2 When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,
‘O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!’
3 The Lord relented concerning this;
‘It shall not be,’ said the Lord.

Amos begins to see specific prophetic visions, including this vision of God preparing locusts. Locusts, of course, are no good. In this case, the locusts are particularly bad because they are about to eat the latter growth. The first harvest went to the king – it was the “king’s mowings” – and now people are seeing the second growth, the harvest that will belong to them, begin to sprout. If locusts come now, all the people of Israel will be devastated.

So Amos says, “O Lord God, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”

And God relented. God was planning to do something, Amos interceded, and God declared that “It shall not be.”

Then Amos sees a second vision:

4 This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. 5 Then I said,
‘O Lord God, cease, I beg you!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!’
6 The Lord relented concerning this;
‘This also shall not be,’ said the Lord God.

Amos sees a fire severe enough to devour the great deep and eat up the land. Again he says, “O Lord God, cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”

Again, God responds by changing his plans. He relents, he says, “This also shall not be.”

What does it mean that we have a God who relents, who changes His mind, who responds to the intercession of an ordinary farmer?

And how does an ordinary farmer have the audacity to question a God-given vision?

Amos, the ordinary shepherd whose heart is deeply connected with God’s, knows that God is a God of dialogue. We talked last week about Amos 3.7, which says, “Surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” God is not about just acting without a discussion, without allowing His people to have a say in their future. If the people would respond to the prophesy with repentance and justice, God is more than eager to change His planned course of action.

The reason for prophesy is dialogue.

Just as God is open to this sort of dialogue with His people, so we find today that He is open to dialogue with ordinary individuals. All through the Hebrew Bible, in fact, we see God in dialogue with individuals, we see God allowing people to be partners in the future. So Moses has this conversation with God about how he’d prefer not to be the one talking to Pharaoh, and God changes things up and lets Moses take Aaron along. And there’s Gideon, who is so unsure about what God’s asking him to do that he sets up a series of funny tests to make sure it’s really God who is talking. And others.

And then the prophets, individuals who are simultaneously God’s spokespersons and His dialogue partners. We find them both saying what God asks them to say and asking Him difficult questions. The prophets have a heart for God’s justice, even for the judgment called upon those who flaunt their power to oppress others. The prophets are also deeply aware of God’s forgiving nature, of God’s preference for mercy over judgment – and the prophets are not afraid to call for God’s mercy, to offer genuine petitions.

And God listens. And responds. And relents.

There’s a Christian theological term called kenosis, which means “emptying”. It means several different things in theology, but it’s sometimes used to describe how God made the world. For God to truly be a Creator, as any good artist or writer or parent knows, the Creator had to remove Himself from creation enough to give it a certain level of independence. And, again as artists and parents know, the creation and development process has to happen in dialogue with the creation, or else the end product is forced or warped.

So kenosis: God the Creator empties Himself enough to allow creation to have space to dialogue and respond – and mess up and petition God for forgiveness.

Sometimes being a good artist means listening to the paint and the canvas and not the previous ideas of how the painting would turn out. Sometimes being a good author means allowing the characters to develop and take the story in new directions. Sometimes being a good parent means, in the midst of guiding and teaching, allowing children to ask questions and responding in grace.

Charles Wesley described the kenosis of Christ, who is literally the embodiment of God’s emptying: “He emptied himself of all but love.”

This is the strange God of Amos: raging against injustice, hurting on behalf of the oppressed, compelling a poor shepherd to speak, powerful to proclaim exile for the oppressors, and relenting at the request of His prophet.

This is a God who is neither detached or deterministic.

This is, as Rabbi Abraham Heschel once described Him, a “God in search of man”, a God who is reaching out to and involved with His developing creation.

The dialogue with Amos regarding judgment by locust or fire results in God’s changed plan and a vision of plumb line: rather than total destruction by fire, which the so-small Jacob could not stand, God will hold up a measuring level to see where Israel has fallen short of their mission to care for and protect the oppressed. There will be no locusts, but the mighty oppressors will be brought low. Amos is apparently more understanding of this vision, and he raises no objections.

As we move into open space, where we reflect communally and individually, I invite you to meditate on what it means that God is neither detached nor deterministic, but is rather a dialogue partner with those who, like Amos, seek His heart.