Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 7/18/10
Choosing the Best
Amos 7:7-17
Luke 10:38-42
I came across the story not long ago of woman who went to a pet store and purchased a parrot to keep her company. She took her new pet home but returned a short while later to report, “That parrot hasn’t said a word yet!”
“Does it have a mirror?” asked the storekeeper. “Parrots like to be able to look at themselves in the mirror.” So she brought the mirror and returned home.
The next day she was back, announcing that the bird still wasn’t speaking, “What about a ladder?” the storekeeper said. “Parrots enjoy walking up and down a ladder.” So she bought a ladder and returned home.
Sure enough, the next day she was back with the same story – still no talk. “Does the parrot have a swing? Birds enjoy relaxing on a swing.” She bought the swing and went home.
The next day she returned to the store and this time announced that her parrot had died. “I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” said the storekeeper. “Did the bird ever say anything before it died?”
“Yes,” the lady replied. “It said, ‘Don’t they sell any food down there?”
At first glance, that lesson from Amos would seem to be lacking in what we might call “nourishment for the soul.” This doesn’t strike us as a message that will inspire us or prove uplifting. It has the quality, rather, of a bad nightmare. The judgment offered is a harsh one – your spouse becoming a prostitute, your sons and daughters dying a violent death; your property lost and you yourself being taken away into exile where you will die in a foreign and unclean land.
What exactly had Amaziah done to merit such condemnation?
Under their King, Jeroboam, the northern kingdom of Israel had prospered; experiencing a long period of peace and reaching its peak in terms both of territorial expansion and national prosperity. But at the same time this prosperity had led to gross inequities between the have’s and have not’s. Lenders were using even the smallest debt to take over the land of small farmers – land that had been part of their ancestral inheritance.
Amos wasn’t part of the social, economic or religious elite. He had been a simple herdsman, and a man who tended fruit trees for his living. But God had raised him up to confront the injustices that were taking place. We find the heart of his message in 2:6,7. Israel nation was going to be punished,
Because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way…
The God Amos knew, the God who called him from his quiet life out into the public arena, was and is a God who passionately cares for all his people – for the wealthy and for the poor. This is a righteous God, a God of justice and compassion – the same God who called the oppressed Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and led them into the promised land.
So Amos is proclaiming God’s judgment upon these people and their leaders – a judgment that was ultimately fulfilled just forty years later when the northern kingdom fell to Assyria.
But Amaziah, the official priest at the royal shrine in Bethel, objects. He doesn’t like this talk of the King being killed. He doesn’t buy this message that Israel is going to fall. He demands that Amos leave at once. He bans him from the temple.
It is at this point that Amos offers God’s judgment; at this point that Amaziah is condemned. Why now? Because Amaziah has just revealed his real loyalty. Even though he is a priest, even though he is called to stand between God and God’s people – bringing God’s will, bringing God’s intent down to the people, it is very clear here that his highest commitment is not to God; it is to the King and to these people of the northern kingdom. Very clearly, he wanted to please them.
Well it is that choice, that confusion of priorities that brought God’s judgment down upon him. It is right there that he missed it because in making that choice he had betrayed God, betrayed his calling, and ultimately betrayed the very people he was trying to serve.
Is there any parent here who thinks it is a good idea to always protect our children from the consequences of their choices? We know almost instinctively that it is important for our kids to understand that there are consequences; that if you reach up to the stove, for example, you are going to get burned. Judgment and condemnation, in that sense, are not expressions of hatred or anger but expressions of our love. They are part of how we teach our children and help them grow so that they might avoid more costly mistakes further down the line.
The people and leadership of Israel had blown it. They had turned their focus away from God. They had allowed the poorest and most vulnerable in their midst to be abused and taken advantage of. God’s judgment here is inseparable from God’s love. It is the visible expression of just how much he cares; cares for all his children, not just the wealthy and the powerful, but also the poor and the oppressed. In trying to ban God’s messenger here, the priest Amaziah had done a great disservice. He had tried to shield the people from the very consequences that would have helped them grow and change and perhaps even get life right.
He, of all people, should have been able to keep his focus on God. That was the very reason for his role and place. But he, along with everyone else, turned away.
So the message here is fairly simple: keep first things first. Stay focused on God. And that is very much the lesson of our second text, as well. Jesus has chosen to stay with Mary and Martha, and Martha has immediately gone to work – taking on all the tasks that would have been part of extending hospitality in that particular culture. But Mary, her sister, isn’t helping. She has chosen instead to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen, and Martha is incensed.
Now to get this text it is important to understand that Martha was doing the right thing, the expected thing. That culture placed a premium on hospitality, and women were expected to do all the work while the men relaxed and talked. Women certainly weren’t allowed to act like disciples and sit at a rabbi’s feet.
So it is easy to picture Martha busily moving around the home, doing this and that to make everything ready, and all the while looking at Mary out of the corner of her eye and building up steam. This just wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair! And finally she explodes. She appeals to Jesus, “Look at all that I’ve been doing! Can’t you tell this sister of mine to get up and lend a hand?”
The shock here is that Jesus doesn’t do that. He actually criticizes Martha, criticizes her for doing the very things that were right and expected! But take a closer look. He doesn’t criticize her for being so busy. The criticism, rather, is that she has allowed herself to get distracted, “you are worried and upset by many things.”
Martha has lost her focus. It was not on Jesus or she never would have put him on the spot by asking him to judge between her and her sister. No, she was worried about doing the right thing; worried about appearances, and how she would measure up. She was thinking how unfair it was that she should be doing all the work. She had lost track, in other words, of the only thing that really mattered. She had lost track of Jesus.
Attend to Jesus not just with a part of our lives but with the whole of who we are. Get our focus right and everything else will follow.
Some of you will remember the ill-fated mission of Apollo 13. On their way to the moon an oxygen tank had exploded, wreaking havoc and placing both space-craft and crew in jeopardy.
In space you can’t just turn around and go back home. The crew had to fly all the way to the moon in order to use its gravity to turn around and head back towards earth once more.
There was a critical moment on the sixth day of the flight. They had to adjust their course if they were going to make it back to earth. The problem was that the computer that steered the craft had been shut down to conserve power. Jim Lovell figured out that if they could keep a fixed point in space at a specific spot on the space-craft’s window that that would guide them on the right path.
For thirty-nine seconds while the main engines burned, Lovell kept the craft right where it needed to be by staying focused on that reference point. It was the reference point that proved crucial in helping them make it safely home.
There is that part of us that keeps wanting to diminish the walk with Jesus to a series of do’s and don’ts; a bunch of rules and expectations. But the point in this second lesson isn’t that Martha was busy and Mary wasn’t. These two texts have nothing to do with a bunch of rules. They have everything to do with a relationship, and where our focus is.
Jesus’ focus was crystal clear, “I do nothing on my own,” he said (Jn. 8:28), “but I speak these things as the Father instructed me.” Everything he did, everything he said, came out of his relationship with the Father. His focus was always right there.
“There is only one thing necessary.” Get our reference point in this life right, and all the rest will follow.