20th July 2025. Amos 8.1-12
The other week Kim and I attended the Turret’s performance of The Tempest at The Witham. The play was heavily adapted for performance by the young cast: our young star was a sailor and then a companion, strutting his stuff and looking fierce with a sword in his hand. There’s a scene at the end of the play when Prospero lays aside his magician’s staff and addresses the audience directly: he asks that they set him free from the world he has created. Believing The Tempest to be one of Shakespeare’s last plays, many folk see this as William Shakespeare himself laying down his pen to leave the stage once and for all. Down the years he created many a world through his words but now he is going to fall silent. It’s a powerful moment as the magic of his creation dissipates and the audience leave the theatre recognising that Shakespeare has put down his pen.
Today’s Old Testament reading is about words: most particularly ‘the Word of God’, what it does and what its absence might mean. Words are powerful. Think ‘Shakespeare’, think also of those great public speakers whose words shaped the world around them: Martin Luther King – ‘I have a dream’; Obama and his offer of ‘Change’. Think of Churchill, ‘never, in the field of conflict…’ In the Cathedral at the moment you can see three copies of the Magna Carta: the words written there established rights and freedoms we still value: rights and freedoms that had not existed before. Words create. Words bring things into being. In Genesis God said: ‘Let there be’ and there was! Getting the right words is important in Hebrew thinking and understanding. In Genesis chapter 2 Adam is given the task of naming the animals of creation. This ‘naming’ is more than a scientific categorisation of species: the names given encapsulate the essence of the creature being named. In this process word and creature are united: there is no such thing as ‘a cat’ until it is named. Once we have a name, we know what cats are.
A faith that is built on ‘The Word’ is careful with language, indeed, one of those words is to ‘not bear false witness’. False witness, the misuse of words, corrupts and is one of the ‘thou shalt nots’ of the ten commandments (strictly speaking ‘the ten Words’). Poets and authors stretch and play with words but when a word is twisted out of all recognition different realities come into being. Think of the big issues of the day: is ‘assisted dying’ actually ‘assisted suicide’? Is a ‘transwoman’ actually a ‘trans identifying man’? The language we use matters because it frames our perception and therefore our action: clarity of terms is important and contested. When black is white and white is black all is lost. Listen to a press release from the Kremlin and you’ll know that language (words) matters. Words create an alternate reality they can leave us grasping after Truth. Peter Pomerantsev wrote about how the misuse of words has infected Russian government and called his book ‘Nothing is true and everything is possible’: imagine living in a society where nothing is what it seems to be.
On your behalf I say that words create. The bread on the altar behind me, the wine: they are just that until we say words over them, then they become for us ‘the body and blood of Christ’. At the foot of the chancel steps the young couple wait for words to be said and something new to come into being: ‘I therefore proclaim that they are husband and wife’. Until the words are said a marriage has not taken place? At the funeral service something happens as we entrust our loved ones to Christ. Is that ‘something’ just in our heads or is it a reality we can only begin to comprehend.
These last two weeks we have been given readings from the book of Amos. Last week you may remember that the reading saw Amos the prophet being taken to task by a ‘court sponsored prophet’ in the Northern Kingdom of Isreal. Amaziah took exception to Amos’ prophecy in which he spoke of God’s judgement upon Israel and reported him to the King for treason. Why? Because Amos’ words carried weight. His speaking of them was bringing something dangerous into being. Amos was not just voicing an opinion: somehow his words of judgement were affecting the nation. (At least, this is the understanding of prophecy that is at work). Amaziah suggested to King Jeroboam that Amos should be silenced for ‘the country cannot bear his words’ they lay so heavy upon Israel. ‘Take yourself off to Judah and prophesy there’, he proposed. Send him into exile.
The Word of God? We sort of think we know what it is, but I wonder whether our understanding is too narrow? For the prophets this Word was something that came from outside them. They could not but speak it. The Word burned within them, it left them faint with carrying it. We might read their words and track their expressions back to being reflections upon the covenant relationship that sits at the heart of the Old Testament – but their prophecies don’t come about through academic study: they erupt from within them. We Christians might identify the Word of God with scripture, the bible, our Old and New Testaments. This must surely be the case. But ‘The Word’ is much more than this though certainly not less. After all, ‘The Word’ in John’s Gospel is our Lord, Jesus Christ: the creative Word truly being revealed as part of His creation: if we needed it the example par excellence of Word and embodiment coming together.
‘The Word of the Lord’ in scripture has a life of its own. In Isaiah chapter 5 it is described as being like ‘the rain and snow that falls down upon the earth’, that ‘does not return to God without fulfilling its purpose’. Whatever that description might mean it seems that God’s Word is living and active: it is not confined to our expressions of it, nor locked away or held within the shut covers of a book. God’s Word is at work even when we are not reading it or listening to it.
The other week I mentioned some reflections upon creation: how a Christian understanding of creation is that it is ongoing rather than being something that was just set in motion billions of years ago and left running. We may well sing ‘At his voice creation, sprang at once to sight’ but creation is still taking place, it is still happening. If God creates through his Word then presumably God is continually speaking, continually bringing life into existence, continually holding and sustaining it. Everything collapses into chaos without this creating, sustaining Word.
Which is why the prophecy we read today is so terrifying.
11The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. 12They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.
If Jesus was right in saying that ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ then for God to be silent, to choose not to speak, is for the source of all life to be cut off from us. We cannot force the Almighty to speak. We cannot force others to listen, but we can listen ourselves. There is a power, a strength, a comfort in hearing the scriptures read in waiting upon the Word of God. Those of you who read our lessons in church stand tall as you read: yours is an important task! As you read, His words are let loose among us, they bring life, they shape our thinking and praying, they mould us. ‘This is the Word of the Lord’ you say. Indeed! Without it we are lost.
There is a desperation in our society, a seeking after solid ground. Old certainties are giving way: the world is a frightening place. People are ‘running to and fro’, seeking for they know not what. God is still speaking but are we listening? Words that proclaim the Kingdom are needed; words that speak of humanity’s high calling as sons and daughters of God; words that speak of judgement met with mercy, forgiveness and grace. Who is speaking words of hope? Who is offering words that include and embrace? Where can we hear words that heal and forgive and words that welcome? Where will we find words that challenge and direct, that stretch us and inspire us? Here. You can hear these words in this place for here we pray ‘Speak Lord, your servants are listening’. The Words we hear can be God’s words and they bring life. We read them (keep reading the Word) we pray them (keep praying the Word), we sing them (keep singing the Word), we feel and enact them (keep doing the Word) for when God speaks all creation lives and grows to fulfilment and fruitfulness.
Our prayer then is for ourselves and for all God’s creation that we might hear and respond to God’s word.
O let me hear thee speaking
in accents clear and still,
above the storms of passion,
the murmurs of self-will;
O speak to reassure me,
to hasten or control;
O speak, and make me listen,
thou guardian of my soul.