Proper 11C: Amos and Martha and Mary
Hear this, you that
trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying,
“When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so
that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel
great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”… I
will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I
will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it
like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
(Amos 8:4-6, 10)
Sunday’s reading from Amos (Amos 8:1-12) does not describe
the people with power and money in Amos’s time in a flattering way. They walked
all over poor people in order to advance their own enterprises. Far from
enjoying the opportunity for rest and joy in God’s creation on the Sabbath,
they were impatient for it to end so that they could get back to selling wheat
and making money. While they followed the letter of the law by not working on
the Sabbath, their hearts were centered on their wealth rather than God.
When we look at the people Amos describes as a group, it’s
hard to find any compassion for them. They sound like arrogant, self-centered
people who think their agenda is more important than the lives of those who
have less than them and even more important than God and God’s commandments.
But I wonder what it was like to be one of these people. A child growing up in
a family and a community that has unholy priorities will learn the same twisted
values as the generation before. Someone wanting to make a living and have a
comfortable enough life could easily have gotten caught up in business
practices that oppressed the poor out of fear that not participating in the same
deceitful practices as others might put them at a disadvantage in the
marketplace. Close attention to God’s word could have reminded people that
their way of life was sinful, but the system that encouraged all of this taught
people to care for the acquisition of wealth more than the word of God. Only those
like Amos who managed to stay spiritually awake and focus on God’s could see this
oppressive system for what it was. While everyone going along with the system
could and ultimately would be held morally responsible for their actions, most
of us know all too well how easy it would be to go along to get along.
Even while seeing from a distance how wrong this way of life
was, we can then have some degree of compassion for them. If we are honest with
ourselves, we can see that our own situation has a lot in common with theirs,
giving us reason to feel empathy for these ancient people and reason to reflect
on changes we need to make here and now.
Our culture holds up prosperity and comfort as ideals. A
perfunctory practice of Christianity that ignores most of the teachings of the
Gospel is encouraged in an attempt to support the pursuit of wealth and
jingoism.
Just as poor people in Amos’s time suffered because of the
pursuit of wealth by the powerful, the poorest people in today’s world suffer
because of our pursuit of wealth. Greenhouse gas emissions, most of them historically
from the wealthiest countries, have already produced enough warming to cause
drought, record heat, epic flooding, and sea level rise that affects people in
other places right now. Some people worry about climate change because of the
effects it could have on their grandchildren, and that’s a legitimate and
serious concern. But in many parts of the world, the suffering has already
begun for other people’s children and grandchildren, and for adults whose
seasons for planting and harvest have been disrupted, whose homes have been
destroyed by floods, high winds, or rising seas, and whose risk of acquiring
diseases like malaria and dengue fever have increased. So much of the suffering
is invisible to most people in the United States, as it gets little news
coverage and all seems so far away. But
that’s the way it has always been when poor people suffer because of the
self-centeredness of others: they are all but invisible to those whose way of
life produces the suffering. As Christians, though, we are called to see them
and to have compassion for them.
Like the people of Amos’s time, we are caught in a system
not of our own making. We can be gentle with ourselves even as we step back
from it all and resolve to work for changes that make life more sustainable for
all of us. God’s word can help us see the way; immersing ourselves in the
Gospel can keep our eyes clear and our hearts focused. If we have compassion
for ourselves, we can allow ourselves to step back from a destructive system and
ground ourselves in Christ.
Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Luke
10:38-42) is the story about Jesus’s visit to the home of Martha and Mary.
Mary is focused on listening to Jesus’s words, while Martha is busy with her
household tasks. There will need to be a meal for the entire household and its
guests, so at least some amount of work is necessary. But evidently Martha’s
tasks have distracted her to the point where she isn’t listening to Jesus’s
words, as he says: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many
things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part,
which will not be taken away from her.”
Our distractions have skewed our priorities, making it
difficult to hear God’s word and making it difficult to see the very people in
the world that Jesus always managed to see and feed and heal. Compassion for
others calls us away from our system of selfish distractions to a willingness
to see and serve those who are suffering in today’s world. Compassion for
ourselves and our children and for all of our sisters and brothers on this
planet calls us to ground ourselves in the Gospel so we have the strength and
faith to do whatever we must to make life more sustainable for all of us and to
rediscover the joy of following Christ.
The World Is Too Much
With Us
(William Wordsworth)
The world is too much with us;
late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste
our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is
ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon!
