COWS OF BASHAN

Amos 4:1  

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan

who are on Mount Samaria,

who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,

who say to their husbands, “Bring something to drink!”

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Am 4:1.

Bashan was a region known for its cattle. Amos takes on the role of the comedian, reconciling the absurd. To call the women of Bashan “cows” was a sarcastic play on their exploitative culture. It is fascinating that he goes after the women. It’s quite obvious, when reading Amos, that he has no qualms about naming the oppressive and dehumanizing ideas/practices of men. To include the women, however, should give the reader some pause, an opportunity to stop and ask why? What lesson is there for all who will encounter this text, no matter their location in history?

A critical insight the prophet invites us to explore, with an achy curiosity, is that one does not have to actively and directly inflict oppression to be oppressive.

Indeed, we can be complicit, mindlessly immersed, in oppressive systems without any direct intention or action. This is what the prophets warn us of, over and over again. They serve as faithful friends, wounding our assumptions and sensibilities, yet always with the hands of a surgeon and a physician to heal, not harm—even with sarcasm (you cows).

In 2019, I read these words from Stephanie Spellers and Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, and they have not left me since:  

“Luxurious lifestyles are bought on the backs of underpaid and abused workers...”

"Luxury rarely happens without creating deprivation somewhere else in the system."

This is good to remember. We should never forget.

Let us not believe in the myth of innocent wealth.

St. Chrysostom, while giving a homily on 1 Timothy, paused to consider the “mammon of unrighteousness” mentioned in Luke’s Gospel. He turned his attention to the gross inequity of his time and challenged the very notion of righteous wealth.

“Tell me, then, whence are you rich? But can you, ascending through many generations, show the acquisition just (righteous)? It cannot be. The root and origin of it must have been injustice. Why? Because God, in the beginning, made not one man rich and another poor. Nor did He afterward take and show to one treasures of gold, and deny to the other the right of searching for it: but He left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, have you so many acres of land, while your neighbor has not a portion of it?”

May we always remember that our normalized culture of consumption, acquisition, ownership, and possession is a rationalized facade for abuse and exploitation. Amos calls those who, in all others’ opinion, were quite benign and innocent, “cows of oppression.” Why? Because luxury, ease, and consumerism… the stuff of interior design, square footage, home remodels, gated neighborhoods, brands, clothes, gadgets, five stars, vacations, restaurants, prestigious schools, financial portfolios, and all “projections” of the good life, have become a cloak of innocence and neutrality that hides an immense, dehumanizing toll. Luxury is afforded to the few on the backs of the exploited and underpaid. The higher the luxury, the wealth, the exclusivity, the greater the gap and deprivation.

“Therefore, however much you exceed in wealth, so much so do you fall short in love: else long since you’d have taken care to be divorced from your money, if you had loved your neighbor.” - St. Basil (Homily on the saying of the Gospel According to Luke, ‘I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones.’)

Amos wants us to see the relationship between comfort (luxury) and exploitation (suffering).

What a dangerous endeavor to catch the divine vision. For once that happens, our drinks become sour (what a blessing), and we run to communion, the meal of the poor, for true wine.

Lord, have mercy on us… consumers of (seemingly) desirable stuff. In your mercy, open the eyes of our hearts. Drawn us into “the givenness of all things” until we find God's gifts to be restless in our hands, until they are given again back into the rightful hands of whom they belong. May we prayerfully work to return to the ancient Christian ethic where “the one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little." (2 Cor. 8:15, Ex. 16:18)

Bring us something to drink; the Cup of our Salvation.