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"I know how many are your transgressions,
and how great are your sins — you who afflict the righteous,
who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate"
(Amos 5:12).
The angry accuser was the prophet Amos of
Tekoa. If we close our eyes and open our imagination, we can
hear him now: "The Lord took me from following the flock,
and . . . said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel'"
(7:15).
With the people gathered at Bethel we are
amazed that a man of the South should travel north to accuse
this nation of injustice. A priest shouts, "O seer, go,
flee away to the land of Judah . . . never again prophesy at
Bethel" (7:12-13).
Amos' home, Tekoa, perched high on a hill
southeast of Jerusalem, is a place where grassland ends and
desert begins, a place of such great height it often became
a watchtower in war (Jeremiah 6:1). From this perspective the
prophet Amos could have imagined how God led the people through
the wilderness and into the land of freedom. Emboldened by his
vision he reminds the people at Bethel:
"Thus says the Lord . . . I brought you
up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the
wilderness . . . but you . . . commanded the prophets, saying,
'You shall not prophesy'"(2:6, 10, 12) . . . The Lord God
has spoken; who can but prophesy?" (3:8).
Standing nearby in the shade of a sycamore
tree we notice a man writing. We know that Amos will be the
first prophet whose words are written down. Can this be his
scribe?
Amos continues: "Thus says the Lord .
. . I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. . . . But let
justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing
stream" (5:16, 21, 24).
Suddenly the man steps out from the shade
of the sycamore. Because this is our imagination, it can go
where it wants; the sycamore turns out to be the Washington
Monument, the year 1963, and the scribe the great civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr. Now we hear King speak the prophecy
he has been writing down:
"When the architects of our republic
wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which
every American was to fall heir. . . . It is obvious today that
America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her
citizens of color are concerned. . . . We will not be satisfied
until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like
a mighty stream."
People are amazed that a man of the South
would come to the North to accuse a nation of injustice, but
King adds: "I have a dream today. . . . This is the faith
with which I return to the South . . . knowing that we will
be free."
As from the high place at Tekoa the prophet
Amos remembered the end of slavery in Egypt and the promise
of a nation of free people, so from the Washington Monument
King, too, remembered. As the story ends we open our eyes and
celebrate King's birth by remembering to be open-minded toward
one another.
Amos asked, "The Lord God has spoken;
who can but prophesy?" In King's words we have heard
the prophet return.
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