A Lament and Call to Repentance

Pam wrote the following responsive reading based on Amos 5: 14-24 and Micah 6: 8 that we will use as a part of Tapestry’s worship gathering. My wife is pretty cool.

Speaker: Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

Congregation: Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Speaker: Therefore, this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says: “There will be wailing in all the streets and cries of anguish in every public square. The farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail. There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass through your midst,” says the Lord.

Congregation:  Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Speaker: Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

Congregation:  Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Speaker: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.”


Congregation:  But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Speaker: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?

Congregation: To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.