Second Tuesday in Advent

Amos 7:10-17; Rev. 1:9-16; Matthew 22:34-46

As we enter into reading Revelation, you may find yourself with Amaziah saying to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy here, where I can hear you!  Especially don’t tell me that your words of judgment apply to me or my people.”  Amos responds that he is not the one bringing disaster on the people or the kingdom; the people themselves are doing that by practicing oppression and injustice.  They may want to hear Christmas carols, but he brings the word of God, the choice between life and death.

John refers to the persecution he shares with his correspondents, and this persecution continues to this day.  Now the persecution is not expressed through formal bans against “the Church,” but it is executed against communities who read the Gospel in ways that interfere with the business of the privileged.  Across Latin America Christians have been slaughtered, the reading of the Magnificat has been banned, by rulers who found it “too political.”  

William Stringfellow wrote that the early Christians, like many today, “knew that the message of both Advents [the first, and the one that is to come] is political.  That message is that in the coming of Jesus Christ, the nations and the principalities and the rulers of the world are judged in the Word of God. . . This is the truth, which the world hates, which biblical people (repentant people) bear and by which they live as the church in the world in the time between the two Advents.”

Jesus’ answer to the lawyer is consistent with Amos’ message.  It challenges us today.  The first commandment, the greatest; the second, like it.  No qualifications.  No “unless it costs us profits or makes us unpopular or is inconvenient.”  Standing in the light, we know when we’re living those commandments and when we aren’t.  We may not measure up - we won’t - but at least we can stop pretending or denying or killing the messenger.

Give thanks today for all those prophets, great and small, who call you to God’s dream today.  Heed their warnings, and pass it on!