What do you see?

We have Amos again Sunday, and it makes me wonder if the Lord is harrassing me with this eighth century BC prophet of doom. That's ridiculous I know: as long as they are paused momentarily on Amos, the lectionary framers couldn't bear to include one of this poetic prophet's two most famous metaphors, first about the Plumb Line, and not to include the other, about the Basket of Summer Fruit. "Amos, what do you see?" 

My chief regret is that they left out Amos' best line, at 5:24, 

But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Amos' railing against Israel is brilliant poetry with bright metaphors all the way through though, and it's well worth out of life, to take the few minutes one would invest, to read Amos from start to finish. In fact, here's a link https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Amos+1&version=RSV so you can read it online and not even have to go searching for a Bible, and then, having found one, the almighty struggle of where to look inside as you face the Book cover. Oh, and if still clueless, tap the little > arrow in the right margin to go to the next chapter when you are ready to move on. Jiminy.

Jiminy. Jiminy Christmas. As the Professor says when Peter and Susan come to discuss Lucy's apparent delusional state in telling about her adventure after returned, into and out of the Wardrobe, from Narnia the first Time, "What do they teach them in schools these days?"

But Amos, eh, Amos and me. This housing development, Breakfast Point, is on reclaimed lowlands, even swamp land. Beautifully incorporated drainage ponds are all over the place, and ours out behind the house has at least one alligator in it, a small one, but it's Albert alright. And frogs, the tree frogs, or swamp frogs. When one first looks out mornings, they are clinging to the outside of the house windows like the chocolate frog on the outside of the window of the Hogwarts Express in the first story. And walking round the property, they are, not everywhere, but sufficiently present to be named Ubiquitous. And generally half-dozen or so squashed on the driveway and flattened into the concrete. It's a wide driveway, so it's not as if they cover the place. But no car driver can avoid them: even if you manage to miss them driving in, there will be another or two in the way of a car tire when next you back out, so ... .

But Amos and me, I keep wandering, basic to my nature. Amos is doomsday prophecy. In the first chapter and into the next, Amos has God warning everybody, every nation, every city, with dire oracle. Then when Amos gets to Israel, he focuses, like a boy holding his magnifying glass over one ant until it curls up as the sun incinerates it. So, from a place that nine months on feels as fully exilic as Israel and especially Juidah ever knew, I feel called to Amos; but how so?

It gets to the rector's benediction and blessing, "My friends, life is short, and we haven't much Time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us." So, why am I beginning to take this Time of exile so badly, even deadly, when it's still and all, nevertheless and notwithstanding, part of precious and non-replaceable, non-recoverable, and not reusable Time, my Time of life. For me, I need to not be wasting it lamenting and, counter to my ongoing declaration of my own self, losing patience. I cast myself, to myself, as the most patient man I know or have known. Until I find myself with the prophets, now Ezekiel, In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, impatient and angry and despairing, wanting only the Day of the Lord when I can move back to 7H as the exiles rushed back to reclaim and rebuild Jerusalem. But here's God to Israel through Amos (5:18-20) as the prophet sprinkles and mixes simile and metaphor to extinguish my longing for a Future that may not be at all what I envision - -

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
    Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light;
     as if a man fled from a lion,
    and a bear met him;
or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall,
    and a serpent bit him.
 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
     and gloom with no brightness in it?

So, I better and best enjoy the day here in Babylon, and the oysters. Because tomorrow is not mine to have. At least, not now, not today. Not even likely this season.

Even so, here's the Amos reading for Sunday, and below it, last evening's sunset - - - 


Amos 8:1-12

This is what the Lord God showed me-- a basket of summer fruit. He said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the Lord said to me,

"The end has come upon my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by.
The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,"
says the Lord God;
"the dead bodies shall be many,
cast out in every place. Be silent!"
Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, "When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain;
and the sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals, 
and selling the sweepings of the wheat."

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
Shall not the land tremble on this account,
and everyone mourn who lives in it,
and all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?

On that day, says the Lord God,
I will make the sun go down at noon, 
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning,
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth on all loins,
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son,
and the end of it like a bitter day.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God,
when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.