Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
I want to take you back to the year 2007 and tell you a story about a man-- we’ll say his name is John. As far as John can tell, things could not be going any better. He just moved into his own office in a beautiful building on the corner of Broadway and Wall in Manhattan. It’s not a corner office-- those are for the real big shots-- but it’s a perfectly respectable office. It’s got a window, and there’s a name plate on the door with his name on it. And to top it all off, he just got a nice hefty bonus check. Yes, things are definitely going well for John. Everything seems to be going his way. The only thing that could possibly put a damper on all of John’s success is that in the midst of his prosperity, there is the dim awareness of a kind of background noise— some doom and gloom guy, probably from somewhere in from Washington, who thinks himself some kind of prophet, who keeps saying that the success that John and his colleagues are enjoying is somehow not fair. That it’s been built on the backs of the poor and vulnerable. Something about predatory lending… But John brushes all that aside. Because even if all that were true, he’s not the one making the loans, he’s just a numbers guy. He can’t be held accountable for other people’s bad decisions. And what do they expect him to do about it anyway? Is he supposed to just walk away from it all? After all he’s got a mortgage to worry about too, he’s got kids in college and a family to support. No, he’s worked hard for his success, and he’s not going to let a bunch of naysayers in Washington that have nothing to do with him make him feel guilty about it. He just keeps on doing what he’s doing, because it’s working out just fine.
Well. We all know how that turned out, don’t we? 2008 rolled around, and the doom and gloom prophets turned out to be right this time around. Tremendous financial gains that had been built on unethical practices turned out to be bad for everyone. We all know this story very well by now. We’ve heard it told a hundred times—though often it’s by politicians who are trying to make one another look bad. I am telling you this story, however, to help us understand—even if only by a tiny fraction-- how the people of Israel might have reacted to the words of the prophet Amos which we heard in our first reading this morning.
Around the time Amos came along, Israel was also at the top of its game as a nation. They were expanding their territory, agriculture was booming, and cities were clothed in elegance and splendor. The rich built palaces adorned with costly ivory, and food and wine was plentiful. Things were going pretty well for Israel. And so I sort of wonder if the prosperous elite of Israel may have felt the same way about the prophet Amos as the elite of Wall Street may have felt about those who were predicting their demise back in the mid 2000s. Just another doom and gloom prophet begrudging the success of others and trying to make everyone else feel guilty.
“You who turn justice into wormwood,” Amos says, “and bring righteousness to the ground. Because you trample on the poor and take from them in order to build your houses of stone, you will not live in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. Seek the LORD and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire, and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it.”
Ouch.
Even those of us who hear the words of the prophet today may feel they are a bit harsh. So full of fire and brimstone, anger and judgment. For those of us who may have grown up in churches that placed a heavy emphasis on sin and guilt, this may be exactly the kind of religion we are trying to get away from. But there’s a little more to it than just that fire and brimstone version of old time religion. The prophets are harsh, yes, but that’s because they are passionate about a better world. They are tough on us only because they believe deeply that we can be better, and that we were created for something more than just economic advancement. Old Testament scholar Carolyn Sharp writes that the words of the prophets can be daunting and challenging, but it’s because we have only one life to live, we only have one life to offer to God, “and the prophets want to make sure we know what is at stake in every moment of it.”
“Seek the Lord and live!” the prophet Amos declares. Reminding his people that luxury, ivory palaces, and opulent feasts may be nice, but they will not give us true fulfillment in life. And in fact, it’s more likely, that those kinds of things will only ever get in our way. The affluence of the Israel had dulled their Spirits to the Lord. The decadence of their ivory palaces dulled their eyes to the beauty of God’s creation. The excess of food and wine had dulled their minds to the presence of the Spirit. The isolation of their wealth had dulled their compassion for the poor.
“Seek the Lord and live!” Amos cries, calling them and us to live into the best versions of ourselves. The version of ourselves that God created us to be.
We listen to the prophets because they call us towards greater purpose and closer communion with God. And we listen to the prophets because they were in fact the ones who paved the way for Christ himself, who called his own disciples to a higher and more noble purpose. And lest we think that Jesus was willing to accept mediocrity or lackluster faith where the prophets were not, we have this morning’s gospel reading to shake us out of our complacency. The story of the rich young ruler is one we also all know well. It’s presence in three of the four gospels makes it pretty likely that his story is true, though perhaps many of us wish that he hadn’t shown up at all. Because of this man, we have one of the most challenging texts in the Bible. More challenging perhaps, than any of the words of the prophets, because quite frankly, Jesus is a little harder for us to ignore.
“Go, and sell all that you have. Give the money to the poor. Then you can come and follow me.” Again-- Ouch. Are we really supposed to do that? Could we do that— even if we wanted do? As far as we know, the rich young man was unattached— no family, no debt, no mortgage, no children. Perhaps he was free to leave his riches behind with no negative consequences for anyone else. But what about us? We have kids to raise and put through college, mortgages and student loans to pay off, families to support and care for. We can’t just walk away. Not to mention we how much money we do give away. Not to mention that many of us already struggle with the feeling that we don’t do enough. We already feel guilty because of our own inner critic-- the one that chides us for our doubts, our weaknesses, and our attachment to material things. I mean, honestly, do we really need more voices from the outside reminding us of all the ways we aren’t living up to our potential? Don’t we do quite enough of that ourselves?
Let’s be real here for a minute. None of us are rich Wall Street executives. We’re not the elite of ancient Israel living in ivory palaces. We’re not the rich young man, unattached and uncommitted. We’re just regular people, doing the best we can. And yes, we know that sometimes, we could do better. But still, we are doing the best that we can. So where do we fit into all of this?
The gospel says that when Jesus saw how earnestly this man desired to follow God, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus looks at the man, and really truly sees him. Jesus sees past the wealth, and into the depths of this man’s heart. He sees that this man is a seeker—a man who knows there is something more beyond desperate accumulation of wealth, and he wants desperately to know what that something more is. But like a doctor making a diagnosis, Jesus also sees the problem. He sees what it is that is holding the man back. And like the prophets before him, he offers the man a harsh course of treatment, because he knows that it’s the only course of treatment that will truly allow this man to live the life to which he has been called. Give it all away,” Jesus says. “It’s your stuff that’s holding you back. So get rid of it.”
Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes that we Christians tend to misunderstand this story in one of two ways— either by thinking it’s all about money, or by thinking it’s not really about money at all.
First of all, let’s be clear-- this is very much a story about money. Jesus and the prophets before him understood that money has a lot of power. Power to do good—yes— but also power to dull our senses and our hearts to true freedom in God. It’s about money for this rich man in particular, and it’s also about money for us, because we all have the same appetites towards material comforts. As human beings, it is simply our nature, that the more affluent we become, the more easily we cast aside dependence on God. In our Thursday night Bible study this week, one member observed this quite keenly by pointing towards the trends of decline and growth in Christianity around the world. In affluent countries like ours, fewer and fewer people are going to church. Fewer and fewer people are finding it important to set aside time for communal prayer and worship. In the global south, however, in some of the poorest countries in the world, Christianity is exploding. And while I’m quite sure there are many reasons why this is so, I’m also quite sure that one of the reasons is that in some of these poorer countries, wealth has not yet become an idol to place above God. Faith in human economics has not yet trumped faith in God. So make no mistake, this story is about money. It’s a story about how wealth can easily distract us and keep us from truly seeking God.
But… it’s also about more than money. Because we all know- or at least we should know- that the kingdom of God is not for sale. The rich cannot buy it with their riches any more than the poor can buy it with their poverty. The kingdom of God is free. Grace is free. God’s presence is free. Tapping into who it is that God created us to be—that’s free as well. But here’s the catch-- we have to be free as well. We cannot receive it if our hands are already full, if our lives our already too preoccupied with other things.
And so ultimately, I think that where we fit in all of this, depends on what Jesus would see if he were to look into our own hearts. What would he see holding you back from being the person who you were created to be? What would he see holding you back from seeking the Lord and truly living? What are we holding onto so tightly that we are unable to reach out a free hand to take hold of God’s grace?
No one can answer that question for us. Each of us must answer it for ourselves. And I suspect that many of us already know the answer, or at least we have a pretty good idea of what it might be. And so maybe what we need this morning, more than words of judgment, would just be a word of encouragement to keep us on the path. We’ve already received the challenge this morning: Seek the Lord and live. That’s the challenge. And so here is the encouragement: With God, all things are possible. Now I know, maybe it seems like despite the words of the ancient prophets, despite Jesus’ example, despite the modern day prophets who challenge and inspire us and call us to do better, we keep on dropping the ball. We keep on filling our lives with more and more stuff that prevents us from being free to receive God’s grace.
But just forget about all of that for a moment. Just forget it.
Because you are here right now.
And you can be here again next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. And every day—rather every moment-- is another opportunity to seek the Lord and live. To become the person you know you have been called to be. Because with God, all things are indeed possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment