"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion
and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.
Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
and lounge on their couches
and eat lambs from the flock
and calves from the stall,
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
and like David improvise on instruments of music,
who drink wine from bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away." (Amos 6:1a, 4-7)
The story goes that Bob Pierce gave the last five dollars in his pocket to help care for a young girl from China who had been abandoned, back in 1947, and that began the worldwide ministry that would come to be known as World Vision. The same Bob Pierce is credited for a prayer as well, one that still provokes me to this day: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break that heart of God." All too often, that's our problem: our hearts remain untouched and unchanged in the face of things that break God's own heart.
That's really what the prophet Amos is getting at in this passage, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday. I know that the opening phrase, "Woe to those..." sounds ominous, and the talk about going into exile sounds pretty grim, but this whole passage is really an impassioned plea for people who have gone numb to the suffering of others to start feeling things again. This is Amos' way of speaking to people whose hearts no longer break over the things that break the heart of the living God. That's literally what the core of this passage is saying: there were people (a good many of them) in Amos' day who lived in the lap of luxury, eating and drinking the best food, lounging on expensive furniture, and insulated safely and comfortably in the well-to-do swanky neighborhoods of the capitals of ancient Israel (Samaria) and Judah (Zion/Jerusalem), which were the centers of governmental and religious power, and they didn't care about all the ways others were suffering. Elsewhere in the book of his words, Amos calls out the ways that business owners were cheating their customers and overworking their employees, along with how the courts were privileging the interests of the wealthy and ignoring the claims of the poor. And here in this passage, Amos says basically, "You all know about all these rotten things going on--and yet you don't even care enough to notice they are happening! You are so comfortable drinking your expensive wine and eating your four-star, five-course meals that you don't even realize how other people outside your immediate field of view are suffering." That's what angers the prophet most of all--the active, willful choice of the people who could help to ignore the needs of others, even ones within their own society. It is possible, Amos warns, to so insulate our hearts and wrap them up with so many creature comforts that they can no longer feel anything--so they will no longer break, even if God's heart is already broken by the sorrows of others.
That's just it: Amos is sure that God cares. Amos, like all the true prophets of Israel, doesn't picture God as a stoic, unfeeling cosmic referee, who is indifferent to the suffering of human beings (and I say that with all due respect in contrast to the theology professors I had in college who insisted that because God must be unchanging and eternal, God must also be "impassible"--that is, incapable of suffering or emotion). The reason Amos believes he can be so bold in calling out the apathy and numbness of his own people is that he is certain God cares about the people who are being taken advantage of, cheated, pushed aside, and told they don't matter in Israelite society. It is because God cares that Amos insists that his people be stirred up and provoked, if necessary, so that they will care. It is because God's heart is already broken over "the ruin of Joseph"--the ways Israelite society was so screwed up--that Amos calls for his own people to let their hearts be broken. And if they refuse, insisting instead on hardening their hearts rather than learn empathy for their neighbors, then God will reserve the right to pull those people out of their comfort zones and away from the things that have made them numb.
That's really, I believe, what the threat of exile is all about here. It is less about needing to punish for sake of meting out punishment, and more about how you get people whose hearts have grown numb to start to feel something again. And if part of what has made these well-heeled Israelites so apathetic is their opulent lifestyles, fancy decor, and gourmet food and drink, then God will remove those things so that they can again begin to hear the cries of their neighbors, see the crookedness they have been ignoring, and feel the sufferings of others. God will take away the things that are numbing them, not for the sake of being mean or cruel, but the same way that you might pour out the bottles of booze that your alcoholic friend has been using to self-medicate and avoid dealing with the problems of real life. God will take away the things that mask the pain, because numbness is dangerous. The person whose hands cannot feel heat will get burned and not realize it; the person whose feet cannot feel the pain of stepping on something sharp could end up slicing their feet on stones or glass and not realize how much blood they are losing. And when the part inside us that it is meant to care for other people can no longer feel anything, God will do whatever is necessary to make us feel again--otherwise, we are just the walking dead. That's what Amos is trying to say to his listeners in Israel: to those who are so insulated from the rottenness around them that they no longer even care or notice it, Amos brings a wake-up call. What he wants for them is the same thing Bob Pierce sought in prayer for himself, too: that their hearts would be broken over the same things that break the heart of God.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Doctor Amos would give us the same diagnosis as well: that we have found so many ways to numb ourselves, distract ourselves, and distance ourselves from the pain of others that perhaps we can no longer feel what we are meant to feel. Perhaps our hearts have become hardened and need healing. And perhaps at the very least, we need to seriously re-evaluate the various things we have put in our lives which keep us from that kind of empathy, especially those we often think of as "blessings." That's the hitch, isn't it? It's good to have enough food to feed your family, but when I am so overstuffed and oversaturated that I no longer give a thought to my neighbors who are going hungry, something has gone wrong. It's wonderful to be able to provide housing for my loved ones, and have a safe place to be when it's cold or raining--but if I let that cocoon me inward so that I can no longer care about the people without homes, or those in my community who are sleeping in their cars at night, then the "blessing" of a nice house is also a curse. It's convenient to have enough money in my bank account that I can trust I could be OK for a couple of months if something drastic happened and I could not work any longer, but if that leads me to stop caring about the people around me who don't have that kind of safety net, then maybe that money is more like anesthesia than real help. We could add in the constant distraction of television, social media, and the playlist of songs you go to when you don't have to have to deal with the world or the news, too. We have invented countless more ways to avoid being aware of the suffering of others, or to drown out the voices of our neighbors amid the sounds of all the other noise. Amos would simply remind us that these things are not all good, at least not if they are means of numbing ourselves to the pain of the world.
The fine-dining, wine-sipping Big Deals of Amos' day did their best to keep the troubles of others at arms' length, in the hopes that they wouldn't have to care about people they couldn't see. God's words through the prophet call us out when we try to do the same and ignore the folks on the margins, and they invite us to risk compassion again, rather than numbness. That is a risk worth taking, the prophet says, even if it means the possibility of heartbreak. After all, the whole point of being the people of God is to learn to let our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God.
Lord God, let our hearts be broken by the things that break your own heart.
Amen! Lord, in your mercy and grace may it be so.
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