Lectionary 28 (B) — Amos 5:6–15; Mark 10:17–31
Seek the Lord and live.
At first, I was annoyed at my schedule. If I’m here for all of October, couldn’t I have kept working? If Global Mission had just made up their minds sooner, we could have gone an extra month. But now I’ve started preparing for the move. It’s more difficult than I’d thought. Exactly twenty-one days from now, I have to hop in the car and leave, for good. I’m not sure I’ll be ready.
I’ve listed my books on Amazon and they’re selling, slowly, but it feels like giving away my children. I sorted video games the other day, and finally gave up, and threw them all in a box, and took them to a resale store. My car already has a few things for Opportunity House’s shop. But it should have a lot more by now. My goal is to whittle it down to a 5’x5′ storage unit, but right now I’d have to rent a whole apartment just for “stuff.”
In August, I preached on some of the little prophets toward the end of our Old Testament. But I skipped my favorite. Amos is an angry guy, with almost nothing positive to say. Strange, because Amos has everything he could ever want, in a rich society. He says he’s just a farmer, but it’s clear he’s actually owner of a big ranch, cattle and servants and a vast orchard. He’s wealthy enough to take a vacation north to see the cities of Gilgal and Bethel.
He sees great prosperity. Northern Israel had major trade routes running through both sides of the land. The big coastal trading cities of Tyre and Sidon were nearby, and wealth and expensive goods traveled through Israel. Archaeologists have found precious stones, gold and silver, and beautifully carved ivories. The Israelites benefited greatly from the merchants that traveled through their lands.
Or, well, some of the Israelites benefited. But when wealth increases, it usually isn’t equal across all of society. The wealth of the rich does not trickle down to the poor automatically. And usually, the wealthy has no intention of sharing.
In other places in his book, Amos talks about this class-and-means imbalance, but in our passage today, in Amos 5, he goes further. He talks about turning justice into wormwood, a bitter vegetable, a so-called justice that is completely unpalatable, and righteousness smashed into the ground. He describes how people come to the gate of the city, where judges would sit to give all people a chance to have their cases heard. But Amos saw judges and the wealthy annoyed by the “rabble” and their complaints, who expected cases to be heard based on the truth rather than on who had the best bribe.
In verse 11, he talks about the heavy taxes for the poor, describing it as stealing. Amos declares that since the poor have had what little they owned stolen, so too would the wealthy have their homes and plantations stolen away from them when a foreign army comes.
All of this is wrapped in a kind of poetry that everyone in the ancient world would have recognized: A funeral dirge. “Fallen, fallen is Israel, never to arise again,” he says in verse one. Israel is not dying; it is dead. And now, there is no hope.
Seek the Lord and live.
Jesus hears how the rich young man is faithful to God. When he says he keeps the law, Jesus doesn’t doubt him; he knows it’s true. He looks at him and he loves him. And out of that love, he tells him to do one more thing. Get rid of everything you own, give your wealth to the poor, and then, follow me. And the man is shocked, and grieving, for he had many possessions.
The problem is not that the man has wealth. Wealth allows us to provide for ourselves and others. It is a resource. The problem is when it becomes more than a resource. Money, possessions, these things are inanimate objects, but sometimes they act like they’re alive. In the Gospel story, the young man loves God, deeply, powerfully, but his response to Jesus shows that he loves his wealth more. He cannot bring himself to give it up. He grieves, because his heart is in love with two things, and he wants to follow Jesus, but like a bad love affair that destroys everything that a marriage has built up, he cannot let go of his wealth.
But while he cannot, God certainly can. God can do anything. God can free us from our evil relationships with possessions and money. Amos knows this. He does not say, “Be good, and live.” He says, “Seek God and live.” It is God that is the source of life.
In fact, the verses we skipped today, a lot of scholars think somewhere in history, they slipped to the wrong place. They’re a weird interruption. “The one who made the Pleiades and Orion,” he says, “and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name!” Why would Amos stop to sing of the Creator of the universe? The one who makes life? The one who is life?
Accident or not, I think these verses belong here. Because the Israelites, and we, too, rely on inanimate objects, dead things, and so we are dead, too. But reliance on God makes us live, because God is life, God is more alive than anything else in the universe.
When I teach stewardship, I don’t talk about giving to the church, not ever. Sure, we the church need resources in order to carry out our mission. But giving and funding are different things. The point of giving is simply giving itself. It almost doesn’t matter what you give to, so long as it doesn’t benefit you. It just matters that you give. Give away enough of your resources so that, instead of your money controlling you, you feel like you’re in control of your money. It’s only then that you give control to God.
This is a lesson God has been trying to teach me for years. I moved to Chicago for seminary, and then Pennsylvania, and Nebraska, and Chicago again, and Pennsylvania again, and Massachusetts, and another place in Massachusetts, and a dorm room in New Jersey, and then Southeast Asia, and Pennsylvania again, and now South America. I can’t seem to stay in one place for more than a few years. Every single move has meant packing all my stuff up into boxes and dragging it all across the country or more. New England was the worst. Two dozen boxes of books, heavy furniture, a whole truck load, and then I got there and wasn’t sure I could get into the apartment before the truck needed to be returned. I should have learned.
So now I’m taking things to Opportunity House, and I’ve traded my books and video games for moving money, and it’s time to freak out the cat by eliminating furniture. And although I have some worry, I have to say that every object that goes out the door takes a little more weight off my shoulders. “What will I do without dishes?” I think. “If my couch goes, where will I sit?”
And that forces me to remember: I’m doing all this because of God’s call. And if God has asked me to do this crazy thing, well, God will make sure I have what I need for it. Not having “stuff” is worrisome. But without it, perhaps I will finally, truly be able to seek God, in whom all things are possible, in whom we all can live.