Artist and organizer Stephen Pavey finds parallels between Israel during the prophet Amos’ time (8th century BCE) and the United States today:
In Amos’s time, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had extended its lands and increased its influence over trade routes, which brought great economic prosperity to the nation. God’s vision of society—in which wealth is shared and the needs of every member of society are met—was fracturing because of rampant materialism, greed, corruption, and bribery. Like we see in the United States, the gap between the wealthy few and the masses of poor and oppressed had grown wide. While moral standards were collapsing in the public sphere, religious practices and worship of God remained very important in society.…
In chapter 5, Amos begins a lament, or cry of sorrow, against this way of life: “There will be wailing in all the streets” (5:16). In our own day, the prophet Callie Greer, who lives in Selma, Alabama, and organizes with the Poor People’s Campaign, tells the nation, “You must let me wail.” In February 2020, she testified to her pain and oppression at a public gathering in Selma: years earlier, her daughter had died in her arms due to poverty and lack of health care. Callie cried out, “You must let me wail for the children I’ve lost to poverty and will never get back, wail for all the children we mothers have lost. I won’t waste my pain. I hope I make you feel uncomfortable. I hope I make you feel angry. I’m wailing because my babies are no more.” [1]
Richard Rohr reflects on Jesus’ blessing for those who weep:
Jesus did not intend his statement “Blessed are those who weep” (Luke 6:21) to be sentimentalized or remain unnoticed. Hard-heartedness, or what Zechariah and other prophets called “hearts of flint,” prevented the people from hearing the law and the words that YHWH had sent by the Spirit. A heart of stone cannot recognize the empires it builds and the empires it worships. Lamentation does. It moves us through anger and sadness, empowering us to truly hear and respond to the always-tragic now.
The prophet Ezekiel says: “I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you…. You shall be my people and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26–28). This is the organ transplant that we all long for, the interior religiosity that all spirituality seeks.
Of course, language about God having emotions is always a projection of our human emotions onto God. But if we can understand that God weeps over the human situation—as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, again over Lazarus’ death, and in Gethsemane—we know it’s a universal truth. God doesn’t hate anything God created; God pities it in the true meaning of the word pity, which is to have compassion for the suffering of everything. [2]
References:
[1] Stephen Pavey, “You Must Let Us Wail,” in We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign, ed. Liz Theoharis (Broadleaf, 2021), 55–56.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (Convergent, 2025), 8–9.
Image credit and inspiration: Noé Barnett, Untitled (detail), 2024, oil paint, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. A painted image from art by Noé Barnett, inspired by Richard Rohr’s book The Tears of Things, a hand holds a single tear gently and with great care.
Story from Our Community:
Each morning, after brewing a cup of tea, I retreat to my sacred space to reflect, journal, and join my spiritual community at the CAC. It is the most important part of my day. I feel held by each one of you, and am often brought to tears by the stories of others in this connected community. During my meditation, I often hear a short phrase that I know is God speaking to my soul. I have noted them in a special journal. I am often overwhelmed by the sense of God’s presence and love for me.
—Janice D.
