Out of all of today's lectionary passages (there are several), I can't help but focus on the passage from Amos (3:1-11) because it seems like such an unlikely scripture reading for the beginning of Advent. Here's what it says:
1Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
2You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. 3Do two walk together unless they have made an appointment? 4Does a lion roar in the forest, when it has no prey? Does a young lion cry out from its den, if it has caught nothing? 5Does a bird fall into a snare on the earth, when there is no trap for it? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing? 6Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster befall a city, unless the LORD has done it? 7Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. 8The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?
9Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod, and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt, and say, "Assemble yourselves on Mount Samaria, and see what great tumults are within it, and what oppressions are in its midst." 10They do not know how to do right, says the LORD, those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds. 11Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: An adversary shall surround the land, and strip you of your defense; and your strongholds shall be plundered.
When I think of Advent and waiting for the coming of the Christ child, none of this comes to mind actually. When I think of Christmas shopping to happy tunes, holiday cards from family wishing me peace and glad-tidings, or the smells of hot apple cider while laughing with friends, I don't think much about having my defenses stripped or my strongholds plundered.
But when one reads the birth narrative of Jesus in Matthew or Luke, one realizes that there was certainly conflict, violence, tragedy, and death around the birth of the Christ. Mary, the young kinda-unmarried woman, is pregnant by the power of God (I bet her parents took the news well). Herod decides that infanticide is morally acceptable. This leads the newly-born Jesus and his family to become refugees. The shepherds themselves are not the sort of visitors who could afford to stop by Target along the way and pick up some nice gifts wrapped in shiny Santa Claus paper. There is a lot of poverty, oppression, and violence in this story, and yet the conflict doesn't just come from the people who loath to see God as Immanuel come into the world. Mary's famous magnificat talks about how God, in the coming of Jesus, "scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts," "brought down the powerful from their thrones," and "sent the rich away empty." It's a song more fitting for an OWS protest than a Goldman Sachs Christmas party gift exchange. The season of Advent might share more with the worldview of Amos than we think.
Amos, starting in the third chapter, gives this memorable line: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." "To know," here, means more than mere acquaintance. The NIV says, "You only have I chosen..." This line conveys a sense that we are called to a higher standard of care for our neighbors, a knowledge we have come to possess through knowing a person rather than a book of doctrine, and yet we still pretend we can veil ourselves and keep our self-centered ways. We can see God face-to-face, yet we hope our faces aren't shining too much when we're back to the daily grind. Amos then spends the next 6 verses establishing his legitimacy as a prophet, which later in the book seems to be a big problem. But then he turns back toward the accusation of widespread oppression, violence, and robbery among the people. These, we can presume, are some of the "iniquities" of which Amos speaks.
We know our 21st-century world is not so different. It takes maybe 10 minutes of national and international news to know that oppression, violence, and robbery are normative to this world. We are prone to think that once the Christmas carols play on the radio 24/7 and the twinkling lights are hung neatly on the front porch and church-going becomes compulsive for our more reluctant relatives that somehow the peace of Christ temporarily wins over the deep chasm of violence. Yet we also see it doesn't. It's like we do not know how to do what is right.
Maybe we've got this whole Advent thing twisted around a bit. The peace of Christ is indeed present, but it's not because the world has got its affairs in order by getting into the "Christmas spirit," but in spite of the violence of the systems of this world.
My hardest question: What if Jesus comes not during our quiet, reverent hymns of praise in order to be our God-of-convenience, but instead comes amidst the oppression, violence, and greed of a corrupt world in order to show us a radical new way of being in relation with God and each other? Is Amos a more fitting text to bring us into the "Advent spirit?"
