The Jagged, Jarring Word

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 15, 2012

The Jagged, Jarring Word

Amos 7:7-15

“Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

(Mark 4:9)

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it:

God talks and we listen;

Jesus speaks and we hear.

We listen,

we hear,

we learn.

And then we act upon the words we’ve heard,

as we live our lives doing God’s will:

“thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”

That’s the life you and I are called to

as children of God,

and disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But of course it isn’t as simple as that, is it?

God’s words as they come to us through the Bible,

Jesus’ teachings,

can confuse us;

two people hear the same words,

and come to opposite conclusions.

The history of our faith is a history marked by

disagreement and differences

even when we are called to unity in the Spirit.

Even when the words seem so clear,

our Lord Jesus himself can confound us,

as we’ve learned twice recently:

first in the lesson of the adulterous woman,

and just last week in the lesson of the hemorrhaging woman.

Scripture that seemed so clear, so straightforward,

and yet our Lord seemed to walk right past the words.

What Jesus wants us to learn is that

faithful interpretation of Scripture

is always grounded in grace and love,

for our Lord Jesus Christ, the Living Word,

is the grace and love of God

made flesh.

Every now and then, though,

it is nice to dip into the written word,

and come away sure,

come away certain of our understanding,

of what Jesus teaches us,

of what God expects of us.

And among the clearest lessons the Bible teaches

throughout its pages, in both Old and New Testaments

is God’s concern for the poor, the outcast,

the marginalized,

those who lack food, clothing,

the basic necessities of life.

Passage after passage makes this so clear.

As just one example, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah

saying to us:

“seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow.”

(Isaiah 1)

Even Mary, the mother of our Lord,

understood God’s concern for the poor when she sang,

God has scattered the proud …

and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

(Luke 1:51-53)

But we struggle with these lessons;

we don’t hear them as God spoke through the prophets,

as Jesus taught them.

We filter them,

dilute them, weaken them

to suit our own thinking,

our own temperaments.

We do as much as we feel comfortable doing

and then we push back,

protesting that we are doing all we can,

and thinking, if not saying,

that if only some of those people who are struggling

would just work a little harder like we do,

then they wouldn’t be so needy.

But God has no sympathy for such thinking;

God condemns it harshly,

and no book make the point clearer than Amos.

More than 700 years before the birth of our Lord,

the people of Israel were living comfortable lives,

wealth and affluence abounded.

But God saw that the people had lost their way,

that they had become idolatrous.

No, they were not worshiping golden calves

or pagan gods;

They had become idolatrous

in their materialism,

their focus on their own comfort,

the smug satisfaction they took

in their own success.

And so God sent Amos

to tell them that they had strayed

far from God’s word.

God did not condemn the people for the fact of their success;

God does not condemn the wealthy for being wealthy.

The passage from the first letter to Timothy is not,

“Money is the root of all evil”;

it is, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

What God saw among the people of Israel

was that in their affluence

they had grown indifferent to the needs of the less fortunate;

their success had gone to their heads

leaving them callous,

with out compassion or concern for others.

Amos came speaking God’s harsh words to the Israelites,

jarring, jagged words,

“I will not look upon [you],

I will not accept;

I will not listen;

I take no delight in;

I despise,

I hate.”

God imposes upon us,

and Jesus teaches us

that we have a responsibility for seeking justice,

economic and social justice for all,

and especially for the poor and the outcast.

We are called to build the Kingdom of God

and that is a world in which there is no want,

no hunger,

no need.

We hear Jesus say,

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth

to enter the kingdom of God….

it is easier  for a camel

 to go through the eye of a needle

than for someone who is rich

to enter the kingdom of God.”

(Mark 10:13)

and it sounds like Jesus is condemning the wealthy.

        

But Jesus is simply reminding us

that we cannot serve God and wealth;

and that if we chase the idol of money,

of consumerism, of materialism

of our own gains,

God will be left behind.

We don’t like hearing this kind of message.

Neither did the Israelites 2700 years ago.

After hearing Amos’ words,

Amaziah, the chief priest, did not praise Amos

for his faithfulness to Scripture,

for his faithfulness to the spirit of the Lord God;

He told Amos to get out of town,

leave the country:

“the land is not able to bear your words

…Go, earn your bread in the land of Judah,

away from us,

prophesy some place [else]”

Put another way:

“We don’t like your message;

Leave so we don’t have to hear it.”

The fact is that those who have more

are called to a higher standard,

they have a greater responsibility

for those who have not been as fortunate.

In the letter to Timothy we read,

“As for those who are rich,

command them not to be haughty,

or to set their hopes

on the uncertainty of riches,

but rather on God….

They are to do good,

to be rich in good works,

generous,

and ready to share…”

(1 Timothy 6:17)             

We are to seek justice as part of our call

to build the Kingdom,

and that means making a place at the table

for the marginalized

assuring to their needs,

not stopping or letting up as long

as there is even one who is without.

We can protest we are doing as much as we can

but God holds his plumb line up against us

to show us that while in our own eyes

we may think we look fine,

by God’s standards we are out of plumb.      

There is an old saying that God’s words

are “to comfort the afflicted”,

but they are also “to afflict the comfortable”,

to be jarring,

to have a jagged edge to them,

to move us from complacency,

to remind us that where there is injustice,

including economic and social injustice,

God calls us to action.

As our Lord tells us so directly:

“seek justice,

 rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

 plead for the widow.”

…

“let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”

(Amos 5:24)

Could this be any clearer?

Let anyone with ears to hear listen.

AMEN