Amos 5:5: Worship is about God
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me and live; but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing. Amos 5:4-5.
Hundreds of years earlier something amazing had happened. The Hebrews had crossed over the Jordan River on completely dry land. It was a momentous occasion, with the priests holding the ark of the covenant in the middle of the river bed, allowing everyone to pass through. Waters were stopped, pulled apart, dried up, and kept that way for an entire nation to cross a river. If you were a Hebrew, this was a big part of your story. God had promised a land, and this was the moment when your people first went into it. The moment. The moment of promise-made-true.
God acknowledged the moment, too. He asked the Hebrews to set up a memorial so that they would remember it. The memorial was put together by all twelve tribes, bringing unity in history to the Hebrews. God wanted this moment to be remembered. He wanted it to be passed down through generations. In particular, he instructed them, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” Joshua 4:19-24.
A memorial. A moment to remember. This was Gilgal.
Yet now God is telling his people to not enter into Gilgal. Don’t go there. Don’t be around it. Don’t entertain the thought of it. It is almost as though he is telling them to forget about it.
Why? How did such a place full of such history turn into a place God told his people to avoid? This is where Israelites should take their children for field trips or history lessons. This is where they go back to see what God did and how God miraculously fulfilled his promise. This is the story that grandpas were supposed to tell grandkids. So why, now, is God telling them to not go near it?
I will venture a guess. God is instructing his people to not go into Gilgal because the place that was meant to be about worshipping God became a place that was about worship itself. The act of worship was more important than the object of worship. The trip down to Gilgal, the routine of the story, the experience of the place – all of that had replaced the point of the story. The story itself had surpassed the point of the story.
