Moon Face told them all about the land of Take What You Want. “It’s a marvellous land,” he said. “You are allowed to wander all over it and take whatever you want for yourselves without paying a penny. Everyone goes there if they can…”
(From Enid Blyton, The Enchanted Wood)1
Of course this is a quote from The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton. The Land of Take What You Want was one of many strange lands encountered by the children Jo, Bessie and Fanny. They had many adventures like this one in the enchanted wood near their house.
But this was of course a world of make believe – a place of fantasy.
I always feel slightly uncomfortable when I’m reading this part of the story to the children because I know that this could be used as a description of our world. Throughout history, powerful or wealthy nations or organisations have taken advantage of less powerful nations and stripped them of their resources and wealth in the same way that visitors to the land of Take What You Want just walked in and took whatever they wanted.
Certainly in our OT reading today, the prophet Amos seemed to think that something like this applied applied in his land. In this portion of the book we have as our OT reading today we hear his condemnation of those who take advantage of the poor. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “…we will make the shekel great, and practise deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of wheat.”
This book was written at a time of great material wealth in Israel. But it was also a period of social and religious corruption. It was a calm before a storm because not much later Israel fell to the might of Assyria.
But Amos was concerned with what we would today call social justice. Israelite religion valued highly the covenant relationship between God and his people. The quality of one’s relationship with God depended on the quality of one’s relationship with your neighbour.
At the time the book was written, many among Israel’s powerful had chosen to ignore this aspect of faith. The disadvantaged were being mistreated and this was going uncorrected.
Wealthy landowners oppressed the less fortunate, taking over the landholdings of the smaller landholders.
But there’s something very earthy about this prophecy. What gives Amos a down to earth feel, is the fact that he was probably a landowner or farmer himself. By trade, scholars believe he was a breeder of livestock (possibly sheep) and was as well a tender of mulberry figs (7:14) whose job it was to puncture immature fruit to make it turn sweet.
Whatever the detail, he was well placed as a farmer, to see how life in Israel was happening at grass roots level, and then as a prophet to write about it.
In the portion of the book we have today, he picks out at least two practices for specific mention:
1. He condemns those who scrupulously observe feast days while at the same time, in their business dealings, practice injustice against their neighbours.
2. They make the ephah small and the shekel great. In other words the measure by which they sold was fraudulently small, and the weight by which they tested the money paid was dishonestly great. In other words they were supplying less per weight and charging more for it.
So the wealthy and powerful of Israel were condemned by Amos for stripping society of its resources. It might as well have been the land of Take What You Want of Enid Blyton!
How does Amos’ condemnation of the practices of his day apply to us?
Today we should also be concerned about some of the things Amos was highlighting.
Trade means a livelihood for individuals, nations and communities. Fair trade means food on tables, clothes for the children, proper accommodation. For communities it means the supply of essential services and infrastructure.
Unfortunately though such fair trade is not a feature of our world.
The global trading system turns over $10M a minute. The poorest countries represent a tiny fraction of this despite the fact that they have a much greater proportion of the population.
Because trade can make a few people a lot of money, it’s
open to abuse and unfairness, like it was in Amos’ day.
Like Amos, we perhaps could think of some reasons why trade today is unjust:
1. Tarifs make it impractical for poorer countries to sell their produce abroad.
2. Western countries dump surplus produce onto world markets and cause prices to collapse. This undermines the livelihood of smallholder farmers in developing nations. It undermines our own farmers as well, but in developing nations there isn’t the infrastructure in terms of social security and healthcare or pensions as a fallback.
But like Amos, we don’t just want to condemn. Amos was, after all, a prophet. His aim was not simply to condemn but to get people to change their ways so that a better, more just society might be created. One that lived by the standards of God’s covenant with Israel, based on love of God and neighbour.
So what can we do to change things for the better?
Firstly, we can make sure our own dealings with those around us are fair and just. This means showing our love for God by dealing with others as we would want him to deal with us.
Like the dishonest steward in today’s gospel parable (Luke 16:1-13), we are to act decisively and urgently in all our dealings (in our case for the Kingdom and not for ourselves).2
Secondly, we can encourage organisations to adopt just practices towards those whose lives are affected. British campaigners have successfully persuaded high street retailers to take responsibility for the treatment of workers producing the good they sell. Challenging them to adopt codes of conduct and introduce independent monitoring of conditions. 3
Thirdly, even something as simple as purchasing fairly
traded goods can have a real effect. Even if 10% of everyone’s weekly shop
consisted of fairly traded products, it would send a powerful signal to the
food industry that we, as consumers, are genuinely concerned about the people
who grow our food, both locally and in the developing world. 4
So the message of Amos to the people of Israel is relevant to us today. It’s relevant in a world where trade and economic relationships between people have gone askew, as they had in his day.
We benefit from his earthy prophecy, grounded in the agricultural and trade relationships of the day.
Despite Amos’ concerns, there remains an underlying attitude of faith and trust in God. He sees the troubles of Israel in the context of God’s saving design. For those who want to listen and respond, God offers a way out.
Fair trade and fair dealing is a powerful means of lifting people from situations of vulnerability into a place of security: but only if the trading relationship respects everyone in the supply chain.
So for Amos, and for us today, it all comes back to right relationships with God and those around us.
1 Enid Blyton, The Enchanted Wood, 1987, Hamlyn Publishing
2 Robert Karris The Gospel According to Luke,
3 Making a Difference, The Rough Guide to a Better World, p. 48
4 Making Trade Ethical, The Rough Guide to a Better World, p. 63