Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
September 23, 2007
Amos 8:4-7
1 Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13
Psalm 113
Proper 20
Lectionary 25
Year C
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)
When I know that the prophet Amos is going to speak, more than anything in the world, I want to run away. I want to take a breath, and wait until it’s over with.
Amos lacks tact. He doesn’t mince words. When he speaks, the hairs on my arms stand at attention, and I am laid out. I am thoroughly convicted.
I imagine Amos to be a little guy with a megaphone mouth. I imagine Amos to be wearing grass-stained clothes, as he was sent to call Israel to be responsible while trimming sycamore trees. God uses all kinds of people to speak the truth in order to affect change.
In today’s first reading, Amos rails against corruption in the marketplace. He speaks plainly about the greed of merchants. He knows they lay their fingers on the scales to inflate the weight of the produce they sell. He knows that they mix the crappy chaff, the unusable part of the grain, with the wheat. He knows that all they care about is the almighty dollar (or shekel, as the case may be), and that in those days when it was forbidden for commerce to run on the Sabbath, Amos describes the salesmen as paying more attention to the clock than to God waiting for the Sabbath to end, so that they could stick it to the poor unsuspecting patsies when the work week began.
Today’s passage ends with a wagging finger, “The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ” Gulp. Are you finished? Can we go home now?
I don’t knowingly rip anyone off. I do not have a reputation for trampling the needy, or bringing the poor of the land to ruin.
On the one hand, it would be easy for me to cheer Amos on and say, “you go get ‘em, little guy from Tekoa! I’m with you all the way!” But after I would say, Can we go home now?
Because going home, with the wagging finger and ending words still stinging my ears, I would look at my stuff. I would read the labels of my clothes with made in Vietnam, manufactured in Sri Lanka, made in Peru, and wonder who made my clothes? Do they get a decent working wage?
I’ll look at a tuna fish can saying that it comes from Thailand, dolphin-free, and wonder under what conditions was this tuna packaged?
I’ll walk around the neighborhood and think, do poor people here? Could poor people live here? Why couldn’t poor people live here? Or why don’t I see them?
And then I figure out just how comfortable I am, how privileged I am, to live with people who have stuff just like I do, two cars, income enough to provide food, shelter, and to go to the movies on occasion, and it’s nice, and it’s blessed, but if I do nothing at all to consider the poor, or to engage with issues of justice and oppression, or to grapple with the inequities between those who have and those who go without, then I have a spiritual problem. I am spiritually poor at best, or I am one of those who are trampling on the poor at worst!
Do you know the board game called the Game of Life, by Milton Bradley? You get a car, you get a job, you pass pay day and get income. You can play the stock market and gain money. You can lose money in a gambling incident. You can lose your money if you don’t have fire insurance. You can get money if you win the sweepstakes. And when you come to the end of the road, you come to the Day of Reckoning. Once you count all your money, and your insurance policy, there are two places to go, either Millionaire Acres or the Poor Farm. What a stupid game!
There’s something wrong with the system where those are the only two places to go. There something wrong with the system where the housing market is so soft that houses for sale don’t move or are under foreclosure proceedings, while there is a boom in the market for multimillion dollar homes.
There’s something wrong with the system if I remain complicit with the way things are, and do nothing to change my ways.
This I think is the key way to enter the gospel story that Jesus tells, which is one heckuva troubling story. The thing is, God is none of the characters. The thing is, it’s a morality story. It really begs the question, what is your ultimate value? Is it your stuff, your comfort, and thereby your net worth? Or might it be something else? Couldn’t it be something else?
In the story, the system was corrupt. The dishonest manager bilked his clients for everything they were worth, and cooked the books for his boss. The boss caught on, and for the manager like the Game of Life it was the Day of Reckoning. I think he bucked the system. I think he chose another way. I think he was a little faithful. What did he do? He settled his accounts not by demanding what he was owed, nor what he was used to extracting from his vendors. Instead he was merciful. He treated them with a measure of justice, and a heap of mercy. In other words, he treated the poor like people for whom he might care for rather than see dollar signs in front of. His motivation may not have been the purest, saving face in front of his boss, but in the end, he did something rather than nothing.
I don’t think Jesus is applauding the system when he speaks of the shrewdness of the children of this age, and making friends with dishonest wealth. What I think is that Jesus is saying if people within the system can work it, why can’t those who think something is wrong with the system be something other than complacent? Which reminds me of Amos. Lacking tact. Not mincing words. The hairs on my arms standing at attention, and I am laid out, and thoroughly convicted, by Jesus.
God will not be trifled with. It is only too easy to give lip service to God. What God wants and desires is true devotion. This means opening up our eyes and hearts to discover that above all, it is not money that makes the world go ‘round, but that it is the righteousness and graciousness of God. God’s mercy toward the poor and needy breaks the cycle of an unjust system. Jesus’ notice of the outcast, the stranger, the widow, the sick, and the child shows his ultimate value.
We are not called to be perfect, we are called to be faithful. We are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful. We are not called to be wealthy, we are called to be faithful. By doing justice in small ways, going on a CROP Walk, volunteering at Anne Marie House, learning about Liberia, puzzling through the plight of the Palestinians, seeking to love the stranger here at Christ the King and in other places we go, over time and with the strength of a community centered on Christ’s mercy, these small acts become huge, they speak of the reputation of the church, they lead to systemic change, and they participate in God’s great act of saving the world.
Can we go home now? Not before we enact mercy and kindness some more, in song, in table fellowship, and in prayer. Who knows, maybe we’ll even warm up to Amos!
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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