In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Today is the feast of the Prophet Amos. It’s also the commemoration of St. Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow, whom many parishes would be commemorating today, but I have a special connection with the Prophet Amos, and it doesn’t allow me to pass over his service; that’s why we’re doing his service. When I was taking Hebrew, one of the books that we went through—and we went through Amos from beginning to end, and so I studied it in great detail in the original language. When you do that, you feel a little bit more of a connection. I understood his book and got to see the way he used language a little bit more closely than I had with most of the Scriptures.

But he was a prophet of judgment. He was a prophet that was from the southern kingdom of Judah, but God called him to go to the northern kingdom and to pronounce his judgment over them before they were destroyed. By that time they had gotten very far away from God. They were engaged in all kinds of gross immorality, and he basically let them have it. He was a fire-and-brimstone kind of prophet. In chapter 8 of his book, he begins with this; he says:

Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me, and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, “Amos, what seest thou?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then said the Lord unto me, “The end has come unto my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.”

Now when you read that, you might be wondering: What does this basket of summer fruit have to do with what was just said? This is where knowing some Hebrew comes in handy, because the word for “summer fruit” in Hebrew is “qayits,” and the word for “end” is “qets.” So basically it sounds very similar, so it was a play on words. So basically, you see a basket of summer fruit: the end is near. It makes sense in Hebrew; you just have to understand that it doesn’t make sense in English, but it does make sense in the original language. But he’s saying the end is coming, and he’s going to make an end to Israel, the northern kingdom. He’s not going to pass by it any more. This is the end for them.

Although Judah returned after their captivity because they were judged, but it was a judgment that ultimately led to their repentance and restoration, the northern kingdom was never restored. There were some fragments of those people that eventually made their way back to the land, but as a people, those tribes were lost. Then he says:

“The sound of the temple shall be howling in that day,” saith the Lord God. “There shall be many dead bodies in every place. They shall cast them forth with silence.”

When a country is judged, when it’s destroyed, it’s a horrible thing. And when you think about more recent history, if you think about the Soviet Union, what a period of death and destruction! How many millions of people died in just a few decades of Communist rule. You might have come across in the book of akathists—there’s a wonderful akathist called the Akathist for the Repose of the Departed. One of the nice things about that akathist is you can pray for anyone. So if you have non-Orthodox loved ones, it’s a wonderful akathist to pray. But why was that akathist written? It was written at a time when there was so much death and so few priests—people couldn’t find a priest. There were no priests available to do funerals. So this is what someone wrote, so that people could do something: they could pray. He says:

“Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, ‘When will the new moon be gone, so that we may sell grain? And the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great…?’ ”

So to understand what’s being said there, the new moon was a religious time; it was a time when people would especially come to pray in the temple. Of course, the sabbath also was a time they were to observe very strictly, and it was to be devoted to prayer and worship. But these people, they were saying, “When is this going to be passed, so I can get back to my business?” It’s not just that they want to make money: they want to cheat people, they want to make the measure of the wheat that they sell small so that they can make the shekel that they make great…

“ ’...falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?’ ”

So in other words, they’d sell the bad wheat to people. In our country, a lot of you wouldn’t even remember, but there was a time when Sunday was a day when there was no business that took place. There might be some restaurants that were open, but that was about it; every other business was closed. It was even closed by law in most places. What is it today? It’s a time when most people are staying at home, or they’re going out and they’re partying, but it’s not observed as a holy day. It’s a day when most people are taking it as an opportunity to engage in business. You all are here, so you’re obviously not those kind of folk; you’re coming to church. But the message that’s being sent here is you shouldn’t look at the services of the Church, you shouldn’t look at these times of worship as: “Oh, I need to get past this; I’ve got other things I’d rather be doing.” And many people do skip feast days when they actually could be here, and I’m not saying that’s always case. I know in many cases people don’t have any choices because of work, but we should not let these days pass without prayer. We should see them as a time to draw near to God and therefore as a time of joy, a time that we look forward to and not as times that we just either ignore or we look forward to when they’re over so we can get back to our own business.

The Lord has sworn by the excellency of Jacob. Surely, I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this and everyone mourn that dwelt therein? And it shall rise up holy as a flood, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt.

So the image there is a time of turmoil that is coming like an earthquake, and this judgment is going to rise up like a flood. In Egypt before they built the Aswan Dam, the Nile River would flood pretty regularly, and when it did it would cover all the land pretty much, and that was a good thing because that’s how they were able to grow crops, so it was very important, but the image there is of a land that’s completely covered with judgment.

“And it shall come to pass in that day,” saith the Lord God, “that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in a clear day.”

The Fathers say that this is an allusion to what happened at the crucifixion, when the sun turned dark in the middle of the day.

“And I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into lamentation, and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as of the mourning of an only son and the end thereof as of a bitter day.”

So these people who took the feasts lightly—didn’t take them seriously, didn’t look forward to them as times to really draw near to God—those feasts would be turned into mourning. If you think about during the Soviet period, there are many martyrs. You’ll notice they are celebrated on the day of a feast, because the Soviets took some pleasure killing people who were Christians on feast days. It happened very often. And when they weren’t destroying churches, when they weren’t killing Christians, they would often go out there and mock. When they would have Paschal processions, when they were allowed to have them, you would have these atheists that would be out there, mocking them, trying to turn that feast into a day of mourning. It certainly would be a time of great bitterness, a time when one could lose hope if they were inclined to do so. But it was also a time of great triumph for those who had their eyes on God.

“Behold, the day is come,” saith the Lord God, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of the hearing of the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north even to the east, and they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it.”

This has many applications. The Fathers say that it applies to the unbelieving Jews who, because they rejected Christ, they rejected the word of the Lord, that ever since then their temple has been destroyed. They are looking for the Messiah and they haven’t found him. But it is also true of any nation that turns its back on God, and it was true of the northern kingdom. They were sent into exile. As I said, there’s very little remnant of those people. Not to say that they were all killed, but very few of them remained believers in God; they just blended in with the pagan populations, and we know nothing else about them as a people.

We just in the last several months went through a period of time when people weren’t able to go to church in many cases. During Holy Week, I had many people who would call me: “Are you open? Do you know any churches that are open? Is there any place I can go to church?” I know people who drove hundreds of miles to go to a church that was open because there were no churches in the area that were open to them. They could watch it on the internet, but it’s not quite the same thing, is it? I got to watch the Paschal procession on the internet for the first time, the first time in my Orthodox Christian life when I wasn’t present for that. It ain’t quite the same thing.

I think that this is sort of a shot across the bow. It’s a way of warning us: Don’t take these things for granted. Don’t take the fact that you’re able to come to church and worship God— Don’t take the fact that you’re able to learn about the faith now and you’re able to buy Orthodox books and listen to Orthodox podcasts and things like that and educate yourself—don’t take that for granted, because the time might come, and it might come a lot sooner than you think when none of that will be available, and you’ll wish that you had prepared for that famine. Because you know what? If you prepare for a famine like Joseph did, and you gather up wheat when there’s plenty, then you’re going to be okay. But if you don’t prepare for that famine, then you might starve to death.

Years ago, there was a matushka who was talking about the way a lot of people treat church. She said a lot of people think of church as sort of the light inside of your refrigerator: whenever you open up that door, you expect that light to be on. Or you might think of church sort of like a bus line. You don’t want to ride the bus today, you don’t want to ride the bus tomorrow, you might not ride it very often at all—but when you want to ride it, you expect to be able to ride it; you expect it to be running. We need to stop treating church as if it’s a convenience that’s available to us when we feel like it. The things of God are not some sort of a hobby that we should indulge in when we feel like it, when the mood strikes us, because it may soon come when this land is covered by a great darkness. We can see some darkness already, and it’s kind of scary. We’ve seen how quickly things can change.

If you think about how crazy ideas that were laughed at, that someone would suggest that anyone would do such a thing, just a few months ago, we’re seeing people doing it. And we’re seeing more and more people thinking, “Well, maybe that’s correct. Maybe it ought to be done.” Well, don’t assume that the way things are now are the way they’re always going to be. Things could get very ugly very quickly. This church may not be here one day. You may not have any church available to you, and if you have not prepared yourself, what are you going to do? You need to be thinking about that now, and you need to be preparing: What are you going to do?

Maybe it will never happen. I hope that it doesn’t. I hope that peace and prosperity, and the Church blossoms in this land, it becomes an Orthodox country, and we all die in peace. I really hope that that’s the way that things go for my own sake, for the sake of my children, my grandchildren, and for the sake of your children and your grandchildren. But it would be foolish to assume that that’s the way things are going to go, and you need to prepare for that. You need to prepare for that coming spiritual famine by storing up the word of God in your soul now while you have the chance. You need to prepare your family. Dig deep into the things of God now while there’s still time and the freedom for you to do so. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future, and if you’re in a right relationship with him, you don’t need to fear.

As we heard in the gospel reading, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.” Regardless of whatever else is going on in the world, if you’ve got your eyes on Christ, you’re in a right relationship with him, he’ll get you through it. But you do need to prepare, and you need to anchor yourself in God firmly. If you do, you’ll be able to weather whatever may come your way. Amen.