This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:

MORE THAN 50 DEAD IN SECTARIAN ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN

During the Festival of Ashurah

AMOS 7

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel, sent a message to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos is conspiring against you, in the very heart of Israel. The people cannot bear what he is saying, for Amos has declared:

Jeroboam shall die by the sword,

And Israel must go into exile,

Far from her own country.

Then Amaziah said to Amos:

Get out, you silly dreamer! Run away to Judah,

Earn your bread and make your prophecies there.

You shall no longer prophesy at Bethel

Here is the king’s holy place, and here his royal palace!

Then Amos replied to Amaziah: I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet

I am a shepherd and I tend sycamore trees.

But it was the Lord who took me from herding my little sheep,

and it was the Lord who said to me,

Go and prophesy against my people Israel.

Now therefore, hear the word of the Lord !

You say to me, Do not prophesy against Israel,

And speak no word against the house of Isaac.

Therefore the Lord says this:

Your wife shall be ravished in the public street;

Your daughters and your sons shall be killed by the

sword.

Your land shall be divided up into pieces,

And you yourself shall die upon pagan soil!

And Israel shall surely go into exile,

Far from her own land.

killed by nationalist Christians in Bosnia

It’s easy to see why Amos was not popular. Amaziah imagines that Amos is a paid prophet who is doing a job for some employer who wants to spread gloom in Israel, so he tells him to get out of the royal shrine and back where he came from. Amos denies being a prophet: he is no paid performer but a shepherd forced into service by the Lord. He says what he knows, as the day of Israel’s catastrophe draws nearer. His insight into the power politics of the area is sounder than the king’s; and he interprets that stupidity as a punishment from God. His reply to Amaziah is not a brutal threat but a horrified anticipation of the scenario of conquest.

Amaziah assumed that he, the priest of Bethel, was responsible to the King; religion was a part of social cohesion and control. That however was fairly benign compared with some of the uses of religion by the state. I had brief experience of the use of Christianity by the Serbian state during the Bosnian war, to give soldiers a license for atrocities against Moslems. It would never be comfortable to have Amos denouncing the government in the name of God, but his robust separation of the justice of God from the state apparatus is wholly beneficial. My own church, the Church of Scotland is established by law but begins all its ceremonies with a reference to Jesus Christ, the King and Head of the Church. It has, especially in the last 30 years or so, a good record of speaking up forcefully, as Amos did, in favour of justice for the poor.

Matthew 22:34-46

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42‘What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?’ They said to him, ‘The son of David.’ 43He said to them, ‘How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

44 “The Lord said to my Lord,

‘Sit at my right hand,

until I put your enemies under your feet’ ”?

45If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?’ 46No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Torah needs interpretation

Of course one sort of right answer to the stock question about the greatest commandment is to dismiss it as a trick: all commandments are God’s and therefore equally important. Jesus rejects, as other Rabbis were to do, that sort of piety. Wholehearted love of God and of neighbour includes everything else in the scripture. Jesus was not relegating other scriptures to relative unimportance but rather suggesting a principle of interpretation: the intention of all scripture is to command love of God and neighbour. This would still be a good principle for contemporary biblical studies. Jesus shows no false reverence for scripture. It is a servant of faith, not its master. It must be interpreted with the help of the Spirit. There is plenty evidence in Scripture for the Messiah as son of David but Jesus draws attention to Psalm 110 which seems to say that the Messiah is son to one greater than David. Matthew of course believes that Jesus is the Son of God Messiah and in himself the clearest interpretation of scripture because his life is lived out of love for God and neighbour.

Believers who use scripture to support their prejudices or sectarian certainties should pay attention to the practice of Jesus.