Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Reflecting on Amos 7: 12-15

Sometimes, when I read a beautiful scripture text, I wander off into the world the text describes. It’s fun to imagine little Amos talking back to the big-shot priest in the king’s sanctuary. Amaziah isn’t happy with the challenges Amos presents to him and to the affluent Jews living in the North. Amos keeps harping on the scandal of the financial inequities that exist in the North. The rich have found a way to make many times more than those who are poor, and they don’t care about the suffering of those who missed out on the big economic windfalls. Sound familiar?

Amaziah is cozy with the king. And then this Amos shows up, as annoying as sand in your swimsuit. Go back and make a living as a prophet in your own hometown! They don’t have any money there. They’ll like your rampages against unethical business practices!

This is funny. Amaziah assumes Amos is in the prophecy business because he can make a living from it. Why else would someone set up shop in a new town and start criticizing the (deeply heretical) status quo? Amos rails back that he was just a shepherd and dresser of trees, minding his own business, when God called him to leave it all and move up north to speak of God’s great displeasure with how religion and royal power have converged there.

But then my mind wandered to this from the responsorial psalm, another convergence, but the kind with God in the middle of it: kindness and truth shall meet, justice and peace shall kiss. Imagine kindness and truth meeting. Imagine justice and peace kissing. Imagine that world. Amos imagined it, too.

How have you tried, in your own way, to build a more just society?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Ordinary Time - Cycle B