The Great Prophetic Influence

September 30, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
4. The Great Prophetic Influence

When a man of religion specifically charges that a merchant is giving short weight at long prices, then religion is involved in the market-place. (Amos 8/5). Most church organizations would include those who would be antagonized and ask,"He's meddling in business; why doesn't he stick to religion?" Yet this man who felt compelled to point the finger of condemnation at merchants, and many others, as we shall see, was the first prophet known to us who represented the astounding, original, ethical, prophetic influence.

Throughout the long centuries of ebb and flow of strength and weakness, good and evil, of Judeo-Christian events and ideas, this great prophetic influence is the best justification of the heritage. Lacking this influence, religion is either trivial or harmful. Looking with alarm at the crisis and growing insurrection in Mississippi, people ask me, "is one man worth it?" Yes: if you would understand James Meredith, you must understand and reckon with the great prophetic influence. If you would understand the United Action Committee for Rufus Fairwell, you must recognize what happened in history when the 8th century ethical prophets made their voices heard. What was their assertion? It was that the religious life and the moral life were identical. This was the source and is the continuing strength of the "social gospel," which announces plainly that men are redeemed in society, by justice which is achieved by action of people. I would talk of this prophet and his successors today, because their proposition should ever sting our conscience: A nation is redeemed by justice, those in the nation by the righteousness of their living.

Because of the breadth and depth of the lives of the ethical prophets, a look at just one will have to serve as the illustration of the great prophetic influence. But our example, Amos, is prime. For when he walked into the city, his face gleaming with the inward conviction that he was speaking God's will, a new attitude was introduced in our history, which has been perhaps the most significant single element in the history of the western world.

The setting had features we would recognize. Israel was enjoying its most fortunate political and material period in history. Wealth had increased and national power strengthened because the great kingdoms of Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south were in a time of political weakness. The city was growing rapidly, people were leaving the land and heading into the metropolis. Outwardly, religion was successful, dignified, respectable. The sanctuaries were known not only for their beauty, but also for adulterated worship because Canaanite cultic practices had been adopted. The people complacently believed that they were particularly favored by the Lord; that if they carefully performed the ritualistic requirements of sanctuary attendance and brought the proper meat and grain sacrifice requirements, then their salvation was assured.

It was a long time ago when Amos gazed on this complacency and wealth, even though there are some startling contemporary aspects to the scene. It was about seven hundred and fifty years before the time of Jesus that the events unrolled. The Roman Empire was yet to be born, for the Latins were still an obscure and unimportant tribe living primitively on the banks of the Tiber. About that time the first invasions of Celts were crossing the channel and successfully landing in England, there to gaze on Stonehenge and other religious monuments of the Beaker people, a primitive culture then, [of] at least 2000 years. The Hebrew culture was old too. The kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon had long before reached their peak and then divided into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and Jeroboam II (784-744 B.C.) reigned in Israel.

At such a time as that, a shepherd felt convinced that God was to speak through him to the people of Samaria. He was a prophet, but not a prophet that had generally been known. Actually, Amos declined to be classified as a prophet in the older definition.

Prophets had been known for emotional frenzies and ecstatic states. Some had claimed to be clairvoyants; some may have been musicians; some professed to foretell the future. Amos represented a new emphasis, reforming prophecy – not foretellers, but forthtellers, who spoke out against evil.

There are many aspects to the reforming prophets we will not easily understand or comprehend. When they said, “thus saith the Lord,” they meant this literally. God was in them, speaking through them. As professor Pfeiffer brought out in his notable book, (RELIGIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, p. 83 ff.) Hebrew prophecy may be classified with those mental and psychological states which demonstrate that the “human mind can have experiences which depend upon certain beliefs, irrespective of their objective truth.”

Amos and the other prophets were great poets, too. When Amos arrived in Bethel, he boldly condemned the complacent people for the things they prized most, their wealth, leisure ... religious attachments. He felt compelled to deliver the message of Yahveh, for he felt Yahveh had chosen him to speak,

“Can two walk together,
except they be agreed?
Will a lion roar when he has no prey? ...
The lion hath roared,
who will not fear?
The Lord God hath spoken,
who can but prophesy?”

Amos denounced Israel’s neighboring nations for their sins; but he also denounced Israel. He made not hit whatsoever with the upper class women of Samaria, being unsparing in his criticisms of their self-indulgence and shallow values. He called them “cows.” (“kine of Bashan,” 4/1). Amos pointed his finger not only at swindling merchants, but at greedy landlords and corrupt public officials. He didn’t spare those who were technically innocent in the midst of wrong-doing, but who prudently kept silent:

(5 12/13)
“For I know your manifold transgressions
and your mighty sins.
They afflict the just, they take a bribe,
And they turn aside the poor from their right.
Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time,
for it is an evil time.”

But the prophets placed little value of prudence. In a passage which is among the greatest words ever spoken by man in any time or place, Amos condemned the forms of religion where the spirit is absent: (5 21/27)

“I hate, I despise your feast days,
and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your mean offerings,
I will not accept them,
Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.
Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs,
For I will not hear the melody of thy viols.
But let justice run down as waters,
and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

Now all this was theological, as well as a call for social change. The values of social justice, the righteousness of individuals and society were not just an appendix to theology, or an unimportant additional activity of the ecclesiastical institution. Amos and his successors in this mighty line, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and the others felt that justice was the operation of God in history. Isaiah pleaded,

"Cease to do evil,
learn to do well:
Seek justice, relieve the oppressed,
Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow:
For these are the things that I delight in,
Saith the Lord."

As has been brought out by Cecil Roth, (JEWISH CONTRIBUTION TO HISTORY, MacMillan, 1938, p.10 ff.) this conviction that God was known by qualities and acts of social righteousness established in time, not eternity, was one of the great contributions to our values of freedom and the right to choose one's political destiny. When the King's prerogatives are described in the Pentateuch, (Deut. xvii-20- "a phrase...sums up the ideal of the Hebrew monarchy: 'that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren.'" The Prophets did not sanction the "divine right" of kings, but rather, provided an undergirding for constitutional government in later times. The famous phrase of Lecky summed it up, "Hebrew mortar cemented the foundations of the Republic." Nor should it be thought strange that the first seal adopted by our revolutionary government showed the overthrow of Pharaoh at the Red Sea, together with the famous motto, “rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God.”

There is a parallel and distinctive emphasis we find in the ethical prophets. If you read Amos, you may note that all through the great poetry, which is both scathing in its labeling of the ills of society and magnificent in its diction and hyperbole, you do not find Amos pointing the finger at one individual and telling him to get right with Yahveh. Even when Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, came to Amos and instructed him to get out of town because the townspeople will no longer tolerate him, Amos does not retaliate personally against the priest. Amos replies, "The Lord said unto me, 'Go prophesy unto my people Israel.'" (8/15)

Now no matter how positive, various, or unconvinced your ideas of God may be, consider that if God is inextricably linked with the operation of justice in History, it would certainly follow that spiritual crises may be identified and known by social conditions. And by spiritual I mean moral. When the Divine spirit is thought as operative in justice among men, then spiritual can mean nothing else than moral. This is still a revolutionary concept.

In the recent spectacular highway robbery in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, part of the reason for the success was that the robbers were dressed like policemen. This disguise enabled them to get close enough to the armored car to prevent resistance or escape. Amos of old was saying that the false or trivial may masquerade as real religion and people are robbed thereby of the real meaning and real duties of religion. The average man thinks of the obligations of religious faith in terms of some individual contribution to the religious institution, individual acts of penance, individual affirmations of belief or creed, an individual relationship to God, which is maintained in specified hours, of worship or moments of prayer. This is his reasonable service and he may then spend the bulk of his time in the service of other rules and other obligations, even contradictory ones. But, says Amos, the acts and attitudes of society mark the degree to which people are right with God.

This is formidable. There is little evidence that Amos had much effect on his own time. His nation proceeded on its self-indulgent slide and one day the Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold. Up to now, at least, civilizations have been given second chances or new cultures have built on the ruins of the old. Such margin for mistakes would not seem to exist any longer. Nevertheless, I do not see how we can affirm that our religion, or any religion can meet the times unless it affirms that crisis, trouble, disorder, injustice anywhere in society indicate that organized religion should act more effectively in the affairs of men.

Amos confronted his time not only with social righteousness as basic to religion, but also he set forth the vigorous and revolutionary idea of universality. Amos coined one of the great figures of speech which has branded our language, when he said, “Behold, I (the Lord) will set a plumbline in the midst of my people, Israel.” There is no doubt today that we the people of the world are being measured by the plumbline of universality. Can we line up soon enough?

One of the startling ideas Amos advanced in those long-ago days is found in the second chapter, “Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Moab, and for four. I will turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the King of Edom into lime.” Doesn’t sound like world-shaking insight, does it? But remember, in those days, each people had its own God. The Hebrews worshiped Yahveh, the Assyrians, Ishtar, the Canaanites, Milcom, and so on. But Amos says, Yahveh will punish Moab for crimes committed against Edom. The nationalistic idea of god is transcended. Amos proclaimed that Yahveh is the god of all nations.

The later prophets supported this same belief, astounding for those days. Isaiah, speaking with Yahveh’s bidding says: “Oh Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury.” In the period of the exile, Zoroastrianism got along with Judaism. In the book of Isaiah, Cyrus, the king of Persia, and a Zoroastrian, is looked upon in a Messianic role for the Hebrews. As Malachi said centuries later, “Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us?” This insignia painted on the beam overhead is another of the immeasurable contributions of the great prophetic tradition. The ethics and social institutions implied from the idea of the universality of god, point to one world of man. This grand goal we will deter and oppose only to our own hurt.

It should not escape us that this proclamation of the social nature of religion in no way lessens or discredits the individual’s feeling for, and absorption in, high religion. Commitment to great causes not only fulfills the duties of one’s faith, but also strengthens the moral health of the individual. Some of the ancient rabbinic sayings bear directly on this truth of religion: “If a man occupies himself with the study of Torah without the intention of fulfilling it, it were better he had never been born.” (Rabbi Hiyya). Another rabbi commented on the man who says, “What have I to do with the concerns of the community or the world? What have I to do with their suits? Why must I listen to their talk? Peace to my soul.” The Rabbi said, “Such a man destroys the world.”

The prophetic influence is the power which prevents us from building inner tunnels of the mind and staying there, shut off – in unworldly mysticism, unproductive ritualism or shut off by concentrating on salvation in eternity, not salvation in time. For this wisdom we owe much to the ethical prophets, beginning with Amos in the 8th century B.C. We don’t know the fate of all of them; one could guess that Amos may have been executed. We know Jeremiah was about as unpopular as one could get. The prophets combined rare qualities: they were always in touch with the realities of the world in which they lived. Although one could say they disregarded public opinion and called spades, spades, there never was any doubt, amid the candor of their indictments, that they loved people; they loved the land, the hills and the arching, starry skies. Their brave involvements outside of self, saved individual self. There are so many of us that badly need this point of view today.

One thing more. We, in the liberal traditions in religion, Universalists, Unitarians and others, have a more definite obligation to permit that prophetic influence change our ways. For centuries we have been aligned with the point of view in religion which discards dogma and makes commitment to morality and the search for truth. That commitment we have modeled from Amos, Isaiah and the others. For apart from integrity and love in the human relationships of human society, symbols, sacrifices and rituals are abominations.

The next time you act on your convictions about society; when you say plainly that you don't measure neighborhood desirability by color or national origin, you are moved by the prophetic influence and be proud of it..

The next time you insist that there are no alternatives in international affairs but peace through one world of law, be not ashamed, for you are saying in today's words what the prophets proclaimed as the coming universal kingdom of Yahveh.

When you are honest enough to admit that our nation makes mistakes as well as others, that we are one among all nations which stand under the bar of the judgment of justice and mutual responsibility, be of good cheer for you too are beginning to move under the same sanction as the great ethical prophets.

In my lifetime, I know of no time when we more sorely needed the promise and hope of the great dream of Isaiah: (2-1/4)

"they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks,
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more."