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“You’re a pastor? Oh, your Dad must’ve been a pastor too, maybe?” That’s what people often ask me on first meeting. “No. My Dad was a horse ranch manager when I was born. Then he bought a country store. I grew up in a small town at an old gas station.” The looks of surprise are priceless. 

I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to a line in the biblical book of Amos when he describes his sacred calling. In ancient Israel, priests were only eligible to serve if born into the tribe of Levi. 

Correspondingly, some prophets were born to be priests. Others, many whose names we don’t even know, may have come from homes where their fathers before them were also priests. The streets of biblical times were practically teeming with those who were from various schools of prophets. 

Not Amos. He was what one writer describes as “a businessman.” He was a herder of flocks and dresser of sycamore trees. The fact is, many of the Bible’s prophets were not from these schools at all. They were ones that Yahweh somehow placed an unmistakable calling upon to speak for God. 

Like Amos, being a pastor of any kind was not my original plan at all. Even after I finished seminary and began serving churches, I still envisioned myself spending my career as an associate pastor. I had grown up in a larger church with a variety of professional ministry positions. There, I saw honorable service in God’s kingdom modeled by capable people whose titles did not have the words “senior pastor.” 

The reluctant Amos accepted God’s late call to work as a prophet. In fact, Amos’ field of call to serve as a prophet would not even be in his native Judah. Amos moved from his work and relocated to the Northern kingdom of Israel. The reaction to this intruder from down South was almost predictable. 

It didn’t take long for Amaziah, priest at Bethel, to complain about Amos. That’s the first thing that people who hear something they don’t want to hear will do. They’ll run and tell someone else what you said, and they’ll say they didn’t like it. What had Amos prophesied that was so distasteful? 

He was okay when he was attributing the notion of sin to other nations. He could talk about their injustices and get away with it. In fact, there are some Christians today who absolutely can’t stand Amos’ prophecies from God because they are hit just as hard by his truths. All Amos did was to hold up a mirror. 

It was fine for him to point out their wage inequities and how powerful people built unfair lives on the backs of poor and powerless people. That is, it was okay until he turned toward Israel and pointed the very same fingers at them. 

That’s when Amaziah lodged his complaint and told Amos to go back down South where he belonged. In one of Amos’ better known oracles of chapter seven, he told them he saw a straight wall built with a simple plumb line, like a builder would use. God asked Amos, “What do you see?” 

“I see a plumb line,” God affirmed him. “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will spare them no longer; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Like today, when Christians are even setting aside Jesus’ words and teachings in favor of a more general adherence to what they call “the Bible,” a prophet’s inconvenient mirror to gaze into will often be rejected. He pointed out to them that the ways they had been living were out of plumb with God’s straight lines. 

Amos modeled for reluctant preachers the toughness to do the job at high cost. You see, nowhere does it suggest that Amos enjoyed delivering this bad news. Truth is, like all good prophets, his message is laced with hope of a turn by those who he called upon to gaze into his mirror. He hoped for their awakening so that they might turn in time. 

That’s what pastors do sometimes. Sometimes, like Amos, there is a price to pay. No one is certain if Amos was executed or simply sent away in exile. He disappears at the end of his book. Still, he did his job.

Faithfully. That is the calling.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.