The senior sermon of Kevin Dellaria, Class of 2008 from the Diocese of Northwest Texas, given on December 5, 2007, in Christ Chapel

Amos 3:12-4:5

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

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It’s hard to imagine Amos as a prophet of hope. Hope, after all, is not usually thought of as that warm feeling you get when a crazy rancher from the next county parades through your town calling down mayhem and destruction. It’s certainly not the excitement you feel when told you’ll be dragged through the streets like fish on a stringer. And, let me assure you, no matter what century you’re in, hope is not the intended message when the preacher refers to the local Altar Guild as “cows” of any kind. Woe indeed to the prophet so called.

Certainly for Amos, that calling must have been particularly bitter. Tasked with proclaiming an ultimate judgment, he’s not even granted the luxury of divine caveat. No “come now, let us reason together” like Isaiah. No “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. For all his trouble, he’s not even offered a prophetic “call girl” like his fellow prophet Hosea. Instead, it seems, he’s given only one very poignant task: “Proclaim the end,” says God. “I’ve had enough.”

And so, faithfully, Amos takes up the mantle, and in those famously haunting oracles of the first two chapters, he outlines the final and definitive charges. “Thus says the Lord,” as the NIV proclaims, “‘For three transgressions of Damascus , and for four, I will not hold back my wrath.” “For three transgressions of Gaza , and for four.” For Tyre . For Edom . Ammon. Moab . Judah . With each passing indictment, the prophecy of Amos crisscrosses the map of Palestine , leaving none of the local kingdoms untouched. Like some cosmic cosa nostra, the prophet seems to say, God is finally coming to collect his debts. In the words of Coppola’s Godfather, “Today I settle all family business.”

Finally, after all the surrounding nations have been named and their sins laid bare; just when it seems safe to think that God has chosen sides; when all of the enemies of Israel have been called out and their sentence passed; it’s then that the prophecy turns for one last indictment: “Thus says the Lord, ‘For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not hold back my wrath.” “As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who live in Samaria be rescued.” “Judgment is coming,” Amos proclaims, “and what remains of you, Israel , the world may no longer recognize.”

Could this possibly be the God of the Christmas crèche?

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As Episcopalians, it’s almost axiomatic to say that we cultivate and proclaim mercy over judgment. Working out our salvation in a world where anger and conflict are passed off as respectable journalism, where war, retaliation, violence and exclusion are often quite literally proclaimed as gospel, we’ve rightly chosen to eschew the masochistic tendencies of some modern theologies in favor of a faith in line with more peaceful biblical summations: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

And yet every once in a while, as we busy ourselves among the overstocked shelves of gaudy plastic Santa’s sold too early, as we fight with all our mental puissance to tune out yet one more holiday duet by Dolly and Kenny, we can’t help but hear that “still small voice” of Amos poking its way out of the Daily Office and into our first week of Advent: “For three transgressions and for four, I will not turn back my wrath.”

It is, of course, right and good and even a joyful thing that in this season of Advent we anticipate and celebrate both the coming of Christ in the manger and his triumphant return with judgment. It’s through the incarnation, after all, that the final judgment of God finds ultimate embodiment in Jesus, and through the cosmic upheaval at the eschaton that eternal salvation is finally and fully granted to creation. But if in this divine scheme there is one hopeful truth that we might allow Amos to speak – if there is some prophetic message beyond the conviction and sentencing of Israel, beyond the kind of guilty verdict that seems to bring an end to all possibility for renewal – it is perhaps the reminder that between the cradle and the consummation there is still a God who is fervently bent on an active, living relationship: a God whose anger is truly understandable only as deep love, whose jealousy is enflamed only by unfathomed desire, and whose judgment is only passed that his beloved might be able to return his gaze, and meet him face-to-face.

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Several years ago, on a rare snowy Christmas Eve in west Texas , I had the honor of serving as chalice bearer for a large and traditional midnight mass. As per my usual custom, after taking my cup I stepped to the side and waited for the priest to get ahead. But in that brief moment before the first tip of my chalice - in the kind of spiritual vertigo you get when God feels especially and unusually present - I suddenly understood, in some small fashion, what it means to live under the judgment that is mercy. For as the people filed up the aisle to receive the bread and wine I saw so many stories I knew; a cross-section of life that only the gospel could bring together: The widow of many years, her life now spent in the service of the church; the devout young family, with little boys in coat and tie reverencing the altar; the faithful gay couple; the long-time politician; the rocky marriage; the secret affair; the swingers; the liberals; the conservatives; the singer with bad hygiene; women who don’t blot their lipstick. On and on they came, down that long nave and up the stairs to the sanctuary, each kneeling at the altar rail with some sense hope and expectation; each longing, whether they knew it or not, for some sense of union with their creator; each asking, as all do who encounter the Christ, that question from the hymn: “Wilt thou own the gift I bring?”; each tipping the cup of wrath to their lips, and drinking in turn the water of life.

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To listen to the prophetic voice of Advent is to recognize that the salvation of God is a wild and beautiful thing; to realize that when judgment and mercy kiss each other, to borrow from the Psalmist, it isn’t always a just peck on the cheek, but at times a passionate make-out session both shocking and scandalous. The beloved of God, like ancient Israel , is never left the same.

And for all of us who from time to time hear that voice of Amos – whose lives for whatever reason don’t seem to measure up – there is always waiting for us that generous table of broken bread and bloody wine: a judgment without condemnation; the gracious gifts of a lover whose courtship seeks nothing less than perfect union . And so, for all the punishment that we deserve, we kneel at that table, open our hands, and say, “Amen. Come Lord Jesus.”