Indictments
Amos 8:4-7; I Timothy 2:1-7
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
September 21, 2025
The verses we heard from Amos 8 are the fourth indictment the prophet brings against Israel’s rich and powerful for their oppression of the poor. The fourth indictment. At least two scholars I read this week used that word “indictment” so it made an impression on me. By the time of Jesus, people often referred to the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible as The Law and the Prophets. By the time of Jesus, the tradition of prophecy was well-established. Prophecy is speaking unpopular truth to power and warning of the consquences of continuing down the current path. Amos is believed to be the earliest of the prophetic books,[1] making Amos the first to write down his prophecies. Warnings against oppressing the poor are repeatedly raised by other prophets like Micah, Zechariah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The consistency of this theme by those who speak for God tells us about the character of God. It tells us that the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Moses and Miriam, and the God of Jesus has a deep, enduring concern for justice.
Amos prophesies to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam, 800 years before Jesus. Jeroboam’s reign of 41 years was marked by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism and unprecedented national prosperity. Amos is concerned about the concentration of wealth among urban elites, because the prosperity being enjoyed by those at the top comes through exploitation and cheating the poor. Amos charges them with corruption and fraud.
Worship has become a sham, a pretext. Amos says that they can’t wait for church to be over, so that they can get back to gouging the poor. They take pride in their religiosity and their history as God’s favored people, but Amos says they are deluding themselves. In reality, they have completely abandoned God’s ways. He indicts them for their hypocrisy.
There was no legal way for Amos to hold his government accountable. No mechanism by which ordinary people could legislate systemic provisions for the poor or set standards of decent human behavior. Thousands of years have passed between us and Amos and yet, our contexts have much in common. Indictments in our time can be set aside or overturned so easily that it may seem like they don’t even really matter.
But they do matter. Even when the person indicted pays no penalty for wrong-doing, the fact of the charge matters because it reveals the truth. Amos charged the businesses of his time of cheating with dishonest scales. Archeological excavations from his time and region, have uncovered shops with two sets of weights, one for buying and a different one for selling.[2]
Amos spoke the truth loudly and often, not because he had authority or influence, but because it needed to be said. Perhaps Amos would have agreed with that future prophet, Martin King who said, “A [person] dies when [they] refuse to stand up for that which is right. A [person] dies when [they] refuse to stand up for justice. A [person] dies when [they] refuse to take a stand for that which is true.”[3]
Last Sunday afternoon, Jim and I attended an event at RISSE celebrating new citizens in Albany. There was a panel of 4 people who were originally from Afghanistan, Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan. They were asked about culture shock, about what they remembered from their first days and weeks in the USA. The man from Afghanistan had worked on the Bagram Airforce Base and lived nearby. He described his journey as a series of long flights after which he finally reached Albany at 7:00 p.m. Succumbing to the stress of travel and jet lag and finally reaching his goal of being in the USA, he fell into bed and slept. He slept for a long time, finally waking at 7 p.m. the next night. He was very surprised at how well he had slept, saying that no one ever really slept at home, because it was a war zone and you were always wary. The Congolese woman said that her culture shock was discovering that she could walk freely outdoors at night.
It immediately struck me that they were naming particular elements of the peaceful and quiet life described in the reading from I Timothy. A life with freedom to move when and where one wants without fear and to sleep soundly.
Many scholars believe that the letter to Timothy comes from the time when Nero was Emperor. Nero’s reign was characterized by political turmoil, economic instability and widespread social unrest. Nero targeted Christians with his cruelty, executing them in torturous and humiliating ways. One historian of that time said that Nero was not motivated by a sense of justice, but by a penchant for personal cruelty.[4] Hmm.
That is the context in which Christians were urged to pray for everyone, including kings and others in high positions. At the same time, the author asserts that there is only one God, and that Jesus Christ is a mediator and saved humans through his death. Remember that in the Roman world, the emperor was believed to be divine. To pray for him, implies that the emperor like everyone else, depends on the guidance and mercy of God. This is the subversive part. By praying for the emperor, instead of to him, you inherently recognize that he is a human like everyone else.[5]
Pray for kings and others in high places – pray for them, just as Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies – so that so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. Pray for rulers so that Christians can go about God’s work in peace. Pray for those in authority because they have the greatest sphere of influence. Pray because they might yet change. The writer is suggesting not rebellion, but transformation.
Human behavior is slow to change. We seem as driven by consumption and profit as those in ancient Israel of Amos’ time. Despite the progress of human rights and participatory government since Jesus’ time, we are still subject to those whose rule is characterized by corruption and hyprocrisy and cruelty. Our context is not the same. We have tools which were not available to our faithful ancestors -- the ballot box, court hearings, peaceful protest, and non-violent resistance. And we should use those with godliness and dignity. But today’s texts remind us of the spiritual power offered in prophecy and prayer which we dare not neglect.
The Rev. Paul Raushenbush is an American Baptist pastor and activist. In a sermon on courage last Sunday, he said, “Throughout our history, there have been terrible times of violence and threat, especially against marginalized communities, and too often it has come with the legitimizing support of powerful people who bear the name of Christ, and yet our country has other examples of followers of Jesus who chose to love God and to love their neighbor and in that decision they accessed the courage to meet their moment just as we will meet ours.”[6]
Pray for kings and those in high places. In November we’ll mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A deadly divide which many people believed was permanent, but which has now been down for longer than it stood. Its collapse began with prayer. In the 1980s, St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig held meetings to pray for peace. These prayer meetings led to pro-democracy actions in the church square, sparking the larger, nonviolent Monday Demonstrations. These in turn spread to other cities, and on November 9, 1989 the wall came down.
Pray for everyone. In June, you might remember there was a Saturday with a military parade in Washington DC. It was the 250th anniversary of the US Army and also happened to coincide with Donald Trump’s birthday. That same weekend, all across the country, there were No Kings events, organized non-violent protests against violations of the US Constitution that have become commonplace. One pastor wondered how to minister to people in DC who had to go back to their jobs in the government after that weekend. So he organized teams of pastors and lay leaders who showed up at Metro stations and bus stops across the the region.
When the people came up the escalators at Metro stops, they encountered folks wearing stoles or clergy collars and holding signs. The signs said “Here with prayers for you.” “Praying for Federal Workers” “Grateful for your service.” “We see you.” Many of them had signs, but some intentionally did not have signs, so that their hands were open. They anticipated that some people might come forward and ask for specific prayers, which they did. One person said that even when people on the escalators did not speak, they would do a double take and make solid eye contact. They said, “You could see the grief and gratitude in their eyes, and I realized that, now God was in their day. The Spirit was in their day now.” [7]
Remember to pray. And also to prophecy – to speak inconvenient and unpopular truth -- when it seems that those with power prefer to traffic in distortions and lies. If due process and a free press are up for grabs, then bring the indictments into the public square. Two weeks ago, tens of thousands of people marched in Washington DC against the occupation of that city by the National Guard. In the middle of the route was Foundry United Methodist Church which rang its bells over and over again in solidarity as people walked by. Afterwards, people from every kind of background pointed to the impact of those bells as the most important moment of the day for them.
We are a people of peace who desire only to live in peace and quietness, but we live in a time of violence and threat. May we remember our ancestors in faith, the first Christians who followed Jesus in a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society. A movement for peace, for love, for joy, for justice, for integrity.[8] May we be found among those who choose to love God and to love our neighbors and may God grant us the courage to meet this moment just as they met theirs. Amen.
[1] Donald Gowan, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume V, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), p, 339
[2] James Luther Mays, Amos, Old Testament Library Series (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1969), p. 144
[3] From Dr. King’s sermon on courage delivered on March 8, 1965 at Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama
[5] Christian Eberhardt, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-1-timothy-21-7-3
[6]Paul Raushenbush, Cathedral of Hope, Dallas, Texas 9-14-2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fEZtBvUcwY
[7] https://pres-outlook.org/2025/08/d-c-churches-respond-to-federal-show-of-force/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ap_wz8zvofpie
[8] Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), p. xv.