Seeking the Word of the Lord

Amos 8:1-3,12; Luke 10:38-42

“They shall run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord,

but they shall not find it.” Amos 8:12

        My last congregation yearly set aside a week-end in October in which a distinguished scholar was invited to spend time with us in an educational and worship setting. One of our visitors was Roger Nishioka, a good friend and professor of Christian Education at Columbia Seminary in Atlanta. Folks loved his ability to weave the most wonderful stories into his presentation. Things were going marvelously. The word got out and the crowds increased with each presentation. But Roger made an enormous mistake.  In taking on the Mary and Martha story Roger said, “Sometimes we have to pull ourselves from the chores in the kitchen and sit at the Master’s feet.” The crowd grew very quiet and then whispers, especially the whispers of women, could be heard. The disruption was so noticeable that Roger stopped his presentation and asked if there were questions. He was quickly given an earful on what those “chores in the kitchen” entailed, and how no church could properly function unless Martha was faithfully at work behind closed doors. To this day, when our paths cross, Roger still reminds me of the time when he was accosted by a group of angry women, “waving spatulas and knives demanding my head on a platter.”

        Therefore, it is with fear and trepidation that I dare come to this text.  This congregation has a well deserved reputation of working in the kitchen, and the garden, and in the wood pile, and at the food pantry, and even in the justice system. I will not suggest that the role of Martha is less than crucial in the life of a church. Furthermore, our text last week implored us to take seriously the role of neighbor as we work hard to bring about the kingdom of God. And yet, our “doing the word” always needs to be directed by our “hearing the word”. Sometimes we need to stop and be seekers in order that we might truly find the word God has placed before us.

        God has no monopoly on the Gospel. There is “good news” all around us. Economic indicators suggest that we are a lot better off than we were four years ago. That’s good news. Thanks to all the rain this summer, the water table is almost back to normal. That’s good news. As of this morning we haven’t declared war on Syria, Pakistan, or North Korea. That’s good news. As the popular tee-shirt proudly proclaims, “Life is Good.” The kitchen is running smoothly. Why bring up Mary? Why worry about “the word of the Lord” especially as spoken by Amos? Things are good. Why mess with something that is working?

        Of course we might remember the folks in Israel thought everything was going great. They were not at war with anyone. The economy was good, at least for those who were wealthy. Nobody was complaining loud enough for anyone to hear except that ornery prophet Amos. I got a wonderful e-mail from Brian Koster this week which read, “Imagine, a foreign sheep farmer telling folks they are not doing things acceptable to God, despite what they think and their priest are telling them. In the last year more than 2500 books have been published on how to be popular. I don’t think Amos signed up for that lecture when it was given in his neck of the woods. But then God doesn’t ask us to be popular.”     I should have asked Brian to preach.

        Sometimes we work so hard at being popular, at keeping things “nice and neat” or “the way it has always been” that it becomes hard for us to distinguish between justice and injustice. And when there is no distinction between justice and injustice, the word of the Lord has been lost.

        Don’t get me wrong; what Martha is doing is valuable. She is offering her talents for the good of the whole. She has taken the role of servant in order that others might be made comfortable. She is using her hands to help, to soothe, and to make the road easier. She is giving her time and talents in a most beneficial role. She is to be commended.

        For the past two months a handful of us have been playing Martha by taking trips down to Amherst to build a room onto an existing house. There was a need and the recipients will be children most of you will never meet. Arlie Saunders as crew chief and Sue Nichols as financial operator have found ways to somehow rescue what we all thought would be a simple task. But nothing is simple when it involves baking from scratch. Every board, every piece of plywood, every section of drywall had to be cut and measured exactly in order that the end results could give three children a second chance at life. That is what Martha does. She goes into the kitchen and turns a disaster into a meal. But Martha can only take care of one meal in the midst of a community that is starving. You see, as wonderful as our project in Amherst is, we miss the point if we don’t hear the words of folks who are saying child abuse and child desertion are reaching epidemic proportions in Amherst and Nelson County. We will be no better than the folks in Bethel if we say, “We’ve done our part”, and return to our isolated homes where the cries of children will not fall on our ears.  That is not an easy thing to hear but when one dares to venture into the world of Amos, we open ourselves to painful language.

         Amos’s rhetoric exposes difficult theological issues. His creative hyperbole illustrates how life within an unjust culture can make it nearly impossible to hear the word of God. Our acts of goodness can actually distract us from hearing God call us to greater acts of justice. Our band-aid, while much needed to heal a wound, keeps us from venturing into the real problem.  The reason for this is understandable. Social evil overwhelms us, suffocating us to the point we are willing to embrace a project but would rather not hear the truth.

Willis Jenkins, professor of Social Ethics at Yale states, “Amos leaves today’s reader with a theological questions that are immensely problematic: What does prophetic witness require today in order to get the poor on the political agenda of an indifferent governing class?  How does one say in a complex market society that the way to God’s heart is through the uninsured, the homeless and the excluded? It is not enough to preach on oppression or denounce an unjust system. The prophet must find ways to silence the languages of a people’s gods and goods long enough to let the words of justice be heard. She must expose the wrongness of society as the very vehicle by which that culture will eventually collapse.”

That is a difficult and debatable statement. But it is spoken like a prophet, intentionally over the top, causing us to at least stop and ponder its significance. Is injustice the primary cause for the dysfunction and ruin of empires?  Is justice high on God’s agenda? Should this even be a concern of the church? What does the word of God actually say?

The horrible truth is most folks sitting in the pews seldom venture into this book we claim to love. Perhaps that is why Jesus, while certainly grateful that Martha was willing to still his hunger remarked, “Martha, you are so worried and distracted by many things. Mary is willing to listen to one thing. She has chosen the better part.”

We are all good at doing, but how willing are we to listen? What on earth might happen if we are willing to listen to the word of the Lord?

Eugene Peterson tells a great story about a thirty five year old truck driver who grew up in a Greek home and went to a Catholic school but none of it rubbed off. He married a woman who was Presbyterian. She felt it was important for her husband to go to church so he did. Anthony had never read a book in his life but decided if he was going to join a church he had better read the Bible. He read it cover to cover more than once.  Mary was a product of Sunday School and was comfortable with a religion of definitions and explanations but had never really read the Bible. One day Anthony was trying to explain one of the parables to his wife but she wasn’t getting it.  He finally said, “Mary, you have to devour these words. You’ll never figure them out from the outside. You have got to get inside them and let them get inside you.”  

The Word got inside of Amos. The Word left him with more questions than answers and would not let him sit still.

It got inside of Mary. In the mystery over who Jesus might be she was captured by a taste for the divine and wanted more.

And the word will get inside of you. Trust me, the Bible does not tell you what you want to hear but rather what you need to hear. The Bible will leave you hungering for more. It is the most comforting and discomforting book you will ever read. It can be as sweet as honey and still leave a bitter aftertaste in your stomach.  If you dare to read it you will enter a strange world in which God is revealed. Don’t read the Bible to discover who you are. Read the Bible to discover who you might become and in turn what this world might become. This book makes us participants in the world of God’s being and action. We don’t participate on our own terms, we don’t get to make up the plot, and we don’t end up the same. Problems will become opportunities and opportunities will become problems because you will see with a frightfully new and improved vision.

You will probably not become the new Amos. But every church could use a lot more Mary’s.  I encourage you to read the Word, embrace the Word, and live the Word. Dare to witness this world through the eyes of God.   YOU WILL BE STUNNED!