Hope that Transforms | 12/21/25
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This sermon describes a passage that “disrupts the gentleness” of Advent. When have you experienced a moment where God disrupted your comfort in order to invite growth or change?
Amos was an outsider called to speak a difficult truth. Who has been a truth-teller in your life, and how did you respond when their words were hard to hear?
The phrase “justice over just us” challenges narrow understandings of faith. In what ways might God be calling you to widen your circle of concern
The sermon emphasizes that Advent means there is “still time to get it right.” What is one area of your life where you sense God offering an opportunity for change or renewal?
The closing question asks, “Will we choose to step into the flow?” What might it mean for you—personally or as part of a community—to step more fully into the flow of God’s justice and righteousness?
Transcript:
So I have to tell you, as I start today, that I feel like I drew the short straw this Advent, and here’s why. Every year in the season of Advent, somewhere in these weeks, a scripture passage shows up that disrupts the gentleness of the season. It drop-kicks me out of a place of nostalgia and sentimentality and becomes a wake-up call, because it’s something that comes that we don’t expect in this season — and yet it’s something that often comes right on time.
Because you see, as we move closer to Christmas morning, surely there are good tidings of great joy to be had at the news of a baby who comes in a manger. And this newborn king who shows up will lay claim to our lives in ways that create great expectations and provide challenge and even accountability in the ways in which we choose to embrace God’s ways in the world and go out and live them among others.
So this morning, after having heard more comforting passages from the prophets in recent weeks — like the one Marissa started with on the first Sunday of Advent about the child who is born to us, who will come to be Wonderful Counselor and Prince of Peace (thank you, Marissa) — and then the news of “prepare the way in the wilderness,” giving us hope even in those darker places, and then last week the reminder of the surprise that God will choose to bring one out of the little town of Bethlehem for such a reason as this — we get to today.
And on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I get to tell you about the angry prophet.
The one who has a harsh word for the people of Israel. But the word that Amos brings to us this morning is one that is needed. And I invite you to linger with me long enough to the point where we realize that even Amos carries hope for us in this season. Even Amos ultimately is about bringing good news — not only to us, but to all of God’s people.
So hang with me as I start to read today. If it shocks your senses a little bit, that’s okay. Just hang in there with me. We’ll get there, okay?
A word from the prophet Amos in the fifth chapter:
“Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord. Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light. As if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear, or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
“I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
I know — this is not like any Advent passage you’ve listened to before, right? I told you it might shock your senses.
This is the Word of God for the people of God, and God’s people say, “Thanks be to God.”
Would you pray with me? Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, that they might carry a word from you into our hearts and lives this morning. Amen.
Amos was a shepherd. It was his life’s vocation — the work that he had invested himself in, in the little community where he lived. We’re accustomed to hearing about shepherds this time of year, aren’t we? There’s a familiarity to that as we remember the ones who were watching their flocks by night, the ones who were the beneficiaries of the first Noel that the angels came to share unexpectedly with that band of shepherds out in the fields.
So hearing about shepherds this time of year is no surprise for us. We meet Amos in scripture about 750 years before those shepherds, though. And like the ones we will remember in just a few nights on Christmas Eve, Amos was chosen to play a special role in the revealing of God’s plan for salvation.
But in terms of his particular assignment, we might say that Amos also drew the short straw.
Rather than being the recipient of wonderful news and an announcement of great tidings of peace to all people, Amos is instead appointed to deliver a message to an audience that has zero interest in receiving it. To make matters worse, Amos is an outsider. You see, he’s from the town of Tekoa — not the one just up the road in Georgia, but Tekoa, a town in the southern kingdom of Judah.
Amos is a Southerner who is called to cross the border into the northern territory and deliver a message to the northern kingdom of Israel. By the time Amos comes along, it’s almost 200 years since the northern and southern kingdoms had split, and there is no love lost between them. So Amos steps across into that territory to deliver a message that nobody, at any time or place, would really want to hear:
“You’re messing it all up. You’re doing it all wrong.”
Now, mind you, Amos is sent to prophesy to a people who, in that moment, were all too proud of themselves. From their perspective, everything was great — just grand. As a nation, Israel was flourishing. There was prosperity all around — or at least it seemed that way to them.
But one biblical historian describes the reality of that day in this way: wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few ruling elites who controlled the government. Amos witnessed wealth flowing from the working peasant class to support the luxurious lifestyle of a few politically powerful elites. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer. During the reign of Jeroboam II, an increasing number of people lost their jobs. Furthermore, vast amounts of the nation’s resources that could have been allocated toward humanitarian concerns were siphoned away to support King Jeroboam’s ill-conceived causes.
Amos was sent to speak the truth — to sound the warning. God is not pleased.
You may remember that from the beginning, God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel included the expectation that they would remember where they came from. They were a people who had been enslaved. They knew what it was like to be under oppression, to suffer hardship, and to be mistreated by those in power. God freed them from that and brought them into a land of promise. And in making a covenant with them, God called them to a way of life in which they would never forget where they came from and would always pay attention to those on the margins among them — caring for the least in their society. However, the people had forgotten.
And so Amos announces the offenses of those in charge. Just a few verses before our passage for today, he reveals that the powerful had at best been ignoring, and at worst exploiting, the powerless. It’s because of that that Amos’s words sound so harsh in today’s passage. God wants nothing to do with empty displays of worship when lives do not match professions of faith. God is even disgusted, Amos tells us, by the sights and sounds and smells of their temple gatherings.
What good is a display of worship if we are not living out the ways of God in the world?
It’s not that worship itself was bad. It was incongruent with the life and the community to which God had called them. And Amos calls them out.
Then Amos turns his attention to what God does want from them. It’s a blessing when someone has to say a hard thing. Maybe you’ve had to say a hard thing to someone, or maybe someone has had to say a hard thing to you. It’s a blessing when a hard word comes with direction — with hope.
So Amos doesn’t leave the people wallowing in their brokenness. He points them to what they can do right: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
The Hebrew word here is mishpat — justice — a word used again and again in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe the character of God. At its core, mishpat is about upholding the dignity and well-being of all human life. It reminds us that from the very beginning, God created us — male and female — in God’s own image and called us good. Not just some, but all are of sacred worth.
The people had forgotten this.
And so the Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, Dean of the Chapel at Duke, says, “The wisdom of Amos offers a challenge to integrate one’s lip service with one’s life service.”
Every time I hear that final verse, I can’t help but hear it in a particular voice — one that echoes from many years ago, spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I hear the voice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who quoted Amos that day: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Dr. King was a preacher who could have stayed within the safe confines of the sanctuary, but instead felt compelled out into the streets — into a justice movement that proclaimed the inherent worth and dignity of every human life and cast a vision of the beloved community.
Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. As we draw closer to celebrating the arrival of the one who perfectly embodies God’s justice and righteousness, we remember Amos’s message and how it resonates with the message we will hear from the Shepherd who will show up this week — the Good Shepherd — the one who shows us the path to life as God intended it, who comes for the redemption and salvation of all the world.
And the good news of Advent, friends, includes the message that there is still time for us to get it right.
Just as Amos challenged his listeners into changed lives that step into the flow of God’s justice and righteousness, so the Good Shepherd invites us into that flow as well — to offer ourselves more fully, more completely, to the ways of God in the world. To make choices that honor God and honor life. To choose commitment over complacency. To choose following over façade. Practice over pageantry. Discipleship over deceit. Righteousness over recklessness. Justice over just us.
The good news comes because God comes in Emmanuel — to show us in the flesh what justice and righteousness practiced look like. And make no mistake, friends: in coming, the reign of God’s justice and righteousness is inaugurated and will surely come like mighty waters, that carry on to the final fruition of the Kingdom of Heaven as it is intended on earth.
The invitation — the question for us is this: will we choose to step into the flow?
Will you pray with me?
[Singing] “Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.”
Amen.
