Sermons
November 9, 2025 (Proper 27)
It’s not what you think.
Amos 5:14-15, 21-24
One of the most interesting parts of the story of the Bible is how and why the church decided what books would be included in the New Testament.
The word for the list of books contained in the Bible is “canon,” a word that originally meant “a measuring stick.” In order for a book to be part of the New Testament canon, three questions had to be answered with a “yes.”
The first question had to do with whether or not the book was known and used by the majority of churches. This explains why the Gospel of Thomas, for example, didn’t make it, actually, rather than there having been some sinister conspiracy to suppress them.
Second, to make it into the New Testament, a book’s content had to be in keeping with what was becoming understood as orthodox Christian theology. If, for instance, a book taught that Jesus did not actually die on the cross or that he was not actually raised from the dead, that book was out.
And third, the books that were accepted were those believed to have been written by the original apostles or their immediate followers. Nobody knows (or has ever known, really, clear back to the first couple centuries of the church) who wrote Hebrews, so the church leaders were still arguing clear into the fourth century about whether it should be included.
The reason the church finally had to think this through and formalize the list was because someone generally considered to be a heretic had already made his own list. That man was named Marcion. He believed the God of the Old Testament was a completely different being than the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and anything that seemed to deal with that Old Testament God or his Law had no place in Christian Scripture. Naturally, he tossed out the entire Old Testament; but he also excluded most of the New Testament, too—all the Gospels except Luke, and everything else the church was generally using by that point, other than a few of Paul’s letters.
If Marcion had gotten his way, we would have had a very small Bible. But he didn’t. The church declared that Marcion’s belief in two different Gods was heresy, and they rejected his extremely short list of Biblical books.
But you know, what Marcion believed about the Old Testament God versus the New Testament God hasn’t completely gone away. An awful lot of people do tend to understand God in this way; even if we don’t say there were two distinct Gods, we certainly wonder how it was that God seemed to have changed so dramatically from the Old Testament to the New. If we go along with this, we would say that the Old Testament God is all about legalism and judgment and wrath, and the New Testament God is all about love and grace and forgiveness.
Someone who truly studies the whole Bible will quickly find that this isn’t the case. God’s love and grace and forgiveness are found throughout the Old Testament as well as the New; and God’s judgment and wrath, and the expectation that God’s people will behave in certain ways, can be found in the New Testament as well as the Old. Marcion was even wrong about the Gospel of Luke: even though Luke doesn’t directly quote the Old Testament like Matthew tends to do, Luke’s Gospel is absolutely thick with subtle details, allusions, and indirect references to the Old Testament.
If the only prophetic book we had in our Bible was Amos, we could actually make a good case that the Old Testament God is a God of judgment, wrath, and destruction. In Amos, that really is how God is portrayed.
I actually didn’t know until fairly recently that scholars believe Amos is the earliest of the prophetic books in the Old Testament. Before Amos, there were prophets, yes—Miriam, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, and Huldah, to name a few—but they don’t have their own books, and they don’t pronounce anything resembling the message Amos spoke on God’s behalf. Before Amos, no one had dared to suggest that Israel as a people was going to die; no one had ever spoken aloud the possibility that Israel’s status as God’s people living in the Promised Land could come to an end. But that’s what Amos did—and at a surprising time; he likely lived and spoke during a period of peace and prosperity for the nations of Israel and Judah, thirty years before the Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel and scattered its people.[1] Even then, Amos could see that the seeds of the people’s judgment by God were sown.
It seems, based on what Amos says, that Israel’s prosperity was enjoyed only by a few.[2] Some people were very wealthy and their wealth and social position made them indifferent—if not downright hostile—to the suffering of the many people to whom prosperity had not trickled down.
Amos speaks, in fact, of wealthier Israelites taking advantage of poorer ones in business transactions, and of using their wealth and influence to buy legal judgments that favored rich over poor every time. While they do this during the week, the upper classes of Israel then go to worship on the Sabbath, saying all the right words and offering all the right sacrifices. But while they seem, on the outside, to be performing all the right rituals, inside they’re champing at the bit for sunset to come so they can get back to the real business of their life—making money, buying influence, exerting power to make more money and buy more influence.
Amos says, “God knows that your rituals, your festivals, your gatherings for prayer and sacrifice don’t have any basis in—and no effect on—your everyday lives. God has no use for such empty expressions of piety.”
Instead, show up for worship having spent your week doing something about the economic and social system you’ve set up that is built on the backs of and dependent on the oppression of many of your neighbors. Do something to bring that system back into line with what God expects it to be, a system where the poorest and most vulnerable aren’t trampled underfoot but cared for.
That is what Amos meant when he describes justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Throughout his book Amos is certain that there is no hope for Israel, beyond the slim possibility that if they turn to God and restore true justice in their society, God might—might—let a remnant survive. Because the people have not let justice roll down, God’s wrath was about to sweep them away like a mighty flood. And that, according to Amos, would be the end of the story.
It was a very new idea in his day, before the threat of Assyria, and later Babylon, were even shadows on the horizon. It fell to later prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah to suggest that God’s righteous judgment and wrath might not be the last word—that death could be followed by resurrection; an end could lead to a new beginning. It’s because of those later prophets that we can now read the book of Amos as a strong word of caution to God’s people throughout history.
God expects justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Throughout Scripture, we find God most typically on the side of those who are oppressed, vulnerable, poor, suffering—and throughout Scripture we can see that God’s people are meant to organize themselves in ways that ensure those oppressed, vulnerable, poor, and suffering neighbors are cared for. God rejects systems that are built on the backs of the poor, that keep some in a permanent underclass while wealthier citizens structure society and influence governments and courts to their own benefit, so the rich get richer and richer and richer.
Through Amos, we know that God expects better from us than violence, exploitation, and injustice—and that, come hell or high water, God’s will will be done. Through the rest of the Bible, we can begin to figure out what to do about it.
[1] Scholars date Amos’ origin to between 760 and 750 bce; Israel’s capital city, Samaria, was destroyed by Assyria in 722.
[2] Let anyone with ears listen.