Woe to the Complacent on Their Beds of Ivory

26th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Thus says the LORD the God of hosts:

 Woe to the complacent in Zion!

 Lying upon beds of ivory,

 stretched comfortably on their couches,

 they eat lambs taken from the flock,

 and calves from the stall!

 Improvising to the music of the harp,

 like David, they devise their own accompaniment.

 They drink wine from bowls

 and anoint themselves with the best oils;

 yet they are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph!

 Therefore, now they shall be the first to go into exile,

 and their wanton revelry shall be done away with.

We met the Prophet Amos last week when he was preaching against the wealthy merchants who did not like the idea of refraining from business on the sabbath and other holy days. Our passage this week comes from an earlier section of the book containing three declarations of judgement against Israel for being sinful, unrepentant, and complacent. Here he preaches against the comfortably wealthy who are not bothered at all by the collapse of God’s people, referred to here as Joseph. 

The Spirit is calling to our attention that we must not be complacent in the face of evil, of the mistreatment of our fellow man who is created in the image of God and for whom God became man and died on a cross to redeem. The plight of our neighbor, who is every man, must break through our own comforts to reach our hearts. We may not be able to end the wars raging around the world, solve the immigration crisis in our country, or fix all the injustices at the office or in school, but we should be moved by these things enough at least to offer up a prayer for their resolution. And we must do what we can to address the injustice. St. Teresa of Calcutta once said if you cannot feed the whole world, then feed one person. 

In every age, comforts and stuff can skew our vision and distract us from what really matters. This is why we all need Lent. This is why the early Church fasted regularly. Is your heart feeling a little hardened? Are you too comfortable to care about some issues that should be more important? Maybe this week, the Lord is inviting you into a voluntary exile, a mini-Lent, a single day of fasting in reparation for the injustices around us. It’s worth a try.