Preaching Like Amos
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Upsetting the Status Quo: Preaching Like Amos Reed Lessing1 Introduction Noted homiletician Eugene Lowry writes, "The first step in the pre sented sermon, then, is to upset the equilibrium of the listeners, and is analogous to the opening scene of a play or movie in which some kind of conflict or tension is introduced."2 Saying what is unexpected causes lis teners to stop in their tracks. They might think, "What's going on here? That's not the way I've always heard it!" Once the equilibrium is upset the pastor has gained a hearing, and he may then proceed to the task of prob ing the problem and offering the solution in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One way to "upset the equilibrium of the listeners" is by employing the homiletical strategy of inversion.3 By putting the cart before the horse, the pastor alters the normal and expected sequence and thereby elicits people's attention. For example, a sermon on vocation might begin with the phrase, "Take this job and love it!" Preaching on the incarnation, a pastor may state, "This is a riches to rags story." A homily on the church may announce, "Where two or three are gathered together, there is Satan in their midst."4 Literary critics call this use of language irony.5 Irony in volves the perception of a discrepancy or incongruity between words and their meaning or between appearance and reality.6 1 Excerpts in this article are from Amos by Reed Lessing, to be published in Decem ber of 2008 in the Concordia Commentary Series, order #15-6060 © Concordia Publishing House. Used with permission. All rights reserved. 2 Eugene C. Lowry, The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form, Ex panded Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 31. 3 Francis C. Rossow discusses this homiletical strategy in Preaching the Creative Gospel Creatively (St. Louis: Concordia, 1983), 137-140. 4 For examle, in the field of Old Testament studies Rossow, Preaching the Creative Gospel Creatively, 137. 5 Alonso Schökel writes, "Classical irony is of two basic types: rhetorical irony, which consists in saying the opposite of what one intends, but allowing this to be understood; and dramatic irony which consists in making a character say something which he does not understand or the implications of which he has not grasped" (A Manual of Hebrew Poetics [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988], 157). The inversions in Amos come under Schokel's category of rhetorical irony. The classic study on irony in the Old Testa ment is Edwin Good, Irony in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965). 6 Cf. J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Reference, 1991), 460. Dr. Reed Lessing is Associate Professor of Old Testament Exegetical Theol ogy at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO. CONCORDIA JOURNAL/JULY 2007 285 By the first half of the eighth century B.C. leaders in the Northern Kingdom of Israel had grown accustomed to the nation's theological lan guage to the point that they no longer were able to hear its startling claims.7 Faced with this situation, the prophet Amos employed homiletical inver sions so as to "upset the equilibrium of his listeners" to move beyond the familiar, the expected, and what had become clichés for his audience. Israel's leadership had become deaf'to its theological language.8 They allowed their texts to erode into old news, texts that had been at one point so surprising and remarkable and full of good news. Unbelief dulled Pentateuchal promises into slogans that no longer had the vitality to do the best things that Yahweh's words do: forgive and recreate lives, form and regulate human relationships, serve as the glue that holds people together in community, and provide the sanctions that limit people's abuse of each other. In this vacuum, individual autonomy and selfishness emerged unchallenged, and Israel began to disintegrate. Oblivious to how their lan guage had dulled their spiritual vitality, Israel's elite became intoxicated with violence, bloodshed, and economic exploitation. As long as the nation was up and running, sick as it was, its flow of meaningless words kept it going. In this situation Amos could not simply repeat words from the Pentateuch, but neither could he embark on a mission that completely jettisoned Israel's theological language. Andersen and Freedman describe the prophet's dilemma this way: "A judicious balance needs to be struck, one in which the prophet's role as conservator of ancient tradition is blended with that of radical critic of current behavior and intention."9 Amos's chal lenge, therefore, was to use theological language itself to show the inad equacy of what the language had become, and to reconnect its parts in a 7 Broadly speaking there are two groups of people in the book of Amos: the "sinned against" and the "sinners"—the righteous and the unrighteous. The targets of Yahweh's destruction are "those who trample the poor" (2:7; 4:1; 8:4), "those who stifle prophecy" (2:12; cf. 7:10-17), "those who store up violence and destruction" (3:10), "those who long for the Day of Yahweh" (5:18), "those who are at ease" (6:1), "those who rejoice in Lo Debar" (6:13) and "those who are saying when will the Sabbath be over" (8:5) as well as those who say, "evil will not overtake us" (9:10). Francis Andersen and D. N. Freedman define this group as follows: "These are the people who are not sick over the crash of Joseph; who are callous, cold, self-indulgent, and avaricious; who oppress the needy; and who welcome the Day of Yahweh, convinced that for them it will be a day of light and not darkness (contrary to what the prophet has said) and in any case that finally no disaster will touch them at all" (Amos [New York: Doubleday, 1989], 872). The second group are the "small people" (7:2, 5) who also are called, (1) n« ("the needy") 2:6; 4:1; 5:12; 8:4, 6; (2) ("the poor") rtn 2:7; 4:1; 5:11; 8:6; (3) era» ("the oppressed") 2:7; 8:4; and (4) (p) p-ia ("the righteous") 2:6; 5:12. People in this group were being abused sexually (2:7b), fiscally (2:8; 5:11), judicially (5:10), spiritually (2:12), and vocationally (2:7; 4:1; 5:11). 8 Isaiah indicates that in his day Israel also had ears but could not hear and eyes but they could not see (cf. Is. 6:9-10). In Isaiah 42:9 the prophet quotes Yahweh as saying, "Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of Yahweh?" (cf. 43:8; e.g., Matt. 13:13; Mark 4:12). Yahweh describes the same problem in Ezekiel (e.g., Ezek. 3:4-7; 33:30-33). 9 Andersen and Freedman, Amos, 539. 286 way that would make it fresh and real and alive. Amos's rhetorical task was to recreate the language's surprise. Needing to accomplish this using the resources of the language itself, he employed the rhetorical strategy of inversion. Amos scholars often note the prophet's sophisticated appropriation of forms and traditions as well as his carefully crafted language.10 For ex ample, James Crenshaw argues that Amos uses liturgical texts and ideas throughout his book to make contact with his audience, only to turn the themes against it.11 It is almost universally agreed that Amos is a master at inverting texts.12 Gerhard von Rad (1901-1971) brought to the forefront this concept of prophetic Vergegenwärtigung, translated as "a fresh presentation," "updat ing," or "reactualization." He argued that prophets reactualized Pentateuchal traditions in light of their new contexts. The opening sen tence in his second volume of Old Testament Theology is telling: "Remem ber not the former things nor consider the things of old. For behold, I purpose to do a new thing (Is. xliii.l8f.)."13 For von Rad the "former things" refers to what is commonly called the Pentateuch. The "new things of old" refers to the prophetic recasting and reshaping of these earlier texts. Von Rad maintained that as creative communicators prophets reshaped older texts for new situations. Standing in this tradition, Amos takes Israel's theological premises and reshapes them to awaken his listeners from their spiritual slumber. He employs Pentateuchal language and theology that simply cannot be contradicted and contradicts it! Amos peppers the nation's leaders with 10 Among Amos commentators there appears to be unanimous agreement on the prophet's literary skill. H. W. Wolff marvels that in the two dozen short oracles one finds such a "wealth of rhetorical forms" (Joel and Amos [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977], 91). James L. Mays hails Amos as one who displays "remarkable skill at using all the devices of oral literature available in Israel's culture" (Amos: A Commentary [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969], 6). Andersen and Freedman note that Amos is one of the most "versatile verbal craftsmen" among the prophets (Amos, 144). Shalom Paul speaks of Amos's "distinctive literary style" as well as the way he uses literary traditions and con ventions with "creative sophistication" (A Commentary on the Book of Amos [Minneapo lis: Fortress, 1991], 7, 4). The lone dissent seems to come from John Hayes who claims "there is nothing especially creative in Amos's preaching" (Amos—The Eighth Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching [Nashville: Abingdon, 1988], 38).