Keeping the holy in our lives
Commentary
Object:
From Amos, we learn that the problems of our society are nothing new in the vast scope of humankind’s relationship with God. When we value money above all, we wind up alienated completely from the holy, and from God. The reading from Colossians directs our attention to the work that God has done in Jesus Christ, reconciling us to the love that binds the universe together. To lose that relationship with God is to lose everything, Amos agrees. And last, our reading from Luke 10 reminds us that we have choices to make in our daily lives. Will we be too busy to spend time building a relationship with God? Or will we simplify our lives so we can lose our sense of running in place just to survive?
Amos 8:1-12
The prophet Amos is speaking to power in this passage. The New Interpreters’ Study Bible says that Amos’ message -- that God is against Israel not because of their foreign policy, but for the way they treat the poor -- is radical for his time and place. Actually, it’s fairly radical in our time and place.
The people of Israel no longer live as God intended. In Exodus 12:8-10 God says: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work -- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
This law has been largely ignored in our society, so much so that a man in a Disciple class I was leading declared that it was no longer binding on Christians. Paul, of course, told the early Christians in Romans 14:4-6: “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.”
But to read that as banishing the sabbath is a stretch.
Some may point to Jesus saying that “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Jesus was not doing away with the sabbath either, but was responding to the Pharisees’ horror that he and his disciples were plucking heads of wheat to eat, which was forbidden because harvesting wheat was forbidden labor on the sabbath. He was objecting to an overly legalistic reading of the Law, not banishing it.
Very likely the keeping of the sabbath was one of those Jewish beliefs that was in contention in the early church. Must we become Jewish before we can be Christians? Do we have to keep the (Jewish) sabbath? Do we have to be circumcised? It is certainly a fact that many of the Christian converts were slaves, with no right to a day off because they followed some religion or other.
The Feast of the New Moon is more obscure to us, but it was not to the ancient tribes. It was called Rosh Chodesh, meaning “Head of the Month.” And its importance to the Hebrews cannot be overstated. The first law that God gave to the escaped Hebrews can be found in Exodus 12:2: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” What this amounted to was a declaration of their deliverance from the Egyptian worship of Ra, the Sun God, with a shift to a lunar calendar. It was also symbolic of their deliverance from darkness to light, as they scanned the night sky for the first glimpse of the crescent moon. The following day, special prayers and sacrifices would be made (see Numbers 28:11), marking the end of the dark of the moon. The New Moon was a festival day in which no one was allowed to fast or mourn, which indicates its importance.
When the people were under persecution, one of the things that happened to them was that they were forbidden to celebrate the New Moon and the sabbath. To be cut off from knowing the times and seasons (Genesis 1:14) established by God was to be cut off from God and their own self-identity. One of the promises of the End Times re-establishment of Israel (see Isaiah 66:23) is that all the world will come to celebrate both the sabbath and the New Moon.
But human nature being what it is, there are always those who chafe at restrictions on their ability to make money. And so these holy days went by the board. The money-hungry set their scales so they were out of balance. As they scooped grain into the containers, they shorted the customers and upped their prices whenever they could. God condemns those who behave this way. Jesus agreed: “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). Part of the meaning of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple was that the sales of sacrificial animals and the tables of the moneychangers were set up in the Court of the Gentiles, so there was no space for the Gentiles to worship in peace. It was more important to make money, so they were cast aside.
God has declared “I will never forget any of their deeds,” says Amos. The very land will tremble because of God’s retribution on those who cheat and sell the poor (presumably sold into servitude to pay their debts, a practice that is heavily restricted in the Law).
The threats in verses 9-10 are reflected in the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus: the sun darkened at noon, and all the songs the disciples had sung the night before in the Upper Room were turned into lamentation. “I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.” These words cannot help but put us in mind of Jesus, the only son of God, who died so that we might be reunited with each other and with God. The wearing of sackcloth and the shaving of the head were symbolic actions for those in deep mourning, either for someone who had died, or for their own sins.
The ultimate threat is that there will be no word of God preached, no prophets to speak for God. To be cut off from the words of God is to be cast adrift. To live in a society that has no regard for the poor, where “greed is good” and the things of God are laughed at; where the rich and powerful seek only to have more for themselves; and even the religious leaders cannot be trusted to care for the people, even the children, for whom they are responsible before the Lord, leaves the people to “run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord.” It is a tragic end for any nation or group.
Colossians 1:15-28
The Letter to the Colossians opens with Paul’s standard greeting. He compliments the church on their faith, and the fact that they are beginning to show the fruits of the Spirit. He tells them that he is praying for them, that they may experience God’s power. His words reflect the prophet Amos’ words when he says in verse 13 that “[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
What follows (vv. 15-23) is likely a hymn of the early church. It focuses on the Christ, the glorified Son of God, and never uses the name Jesus. It is about the nature of the Christ, who existed from the beginning of the creation, in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This is a direct confrontation with those who objected to the idea that God was in any way on the cross with or within Jesus. “How can God die?” the argument went. “Since God cannot die, he either never was in the flesh of Jesus, or he abandoned Jesus just before his death” (this based in part on the words of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in Matthew 27:46).
Paul uses this hymn to present his argument that Christ was the embodiment of God. “[I]n him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and... to reconcile to himself all things... making peace [with] you who were once estranged and hostile in mind.” This argument necessarily leads to the conclusion that God was suffering as Jesus was suffering.
This passage points to a flaw in the popular theology of our day, which maintains that Jesus had to die to assuage God’s anger toward us on account of our sin. This reading of the scripture pits Jesus against God, protecting us from that Old Testament Judge that was such a favorite view of God through the Second Great Awakening and that still runs rampant in American theology.
If, on the other hand, God was in Christ, might it not be that God was reaching out by suffering for us? We know that we need God’s forgiveness, but isn’t it also true that we have grievances against God? What if God was on the cross, suffering, so that we might see how great his love for us is, and so that we might see that God was seeking our forgiveness? How can one see such suffering and not be moved? This is at first a radical notion, but think -- have you never been angry at God? Haven’t we all, at some moment in our lives, wanted to scream at God to explain why something happened, why there was no divine intervention when it might have changed things?
One October night there was a terrible accident on a street not far from the church I was serving. Six teenagers were in the car, which was going at high speed. The driver was killed on impact. Two others died in the hospital. One other passenger was in critical condition and lost a limb. The other two teens were knocked out and could not remember the accident or what was happening just before the crash. The mother of a young man in our congregation came to me and asked me to talk with her son, whose best friend was the driver. “He’s having a really hard time with God’s role in all this,” she said.
“Why didn’t God stop him before he died?” the son asked me. “God can do anything! Why didn’t he interfere?” Mostly I listened, because I’ve had the same questions myself. But I didn’t think that would be too helpful to this young man. Finally, when he had said pretty much everything he wanted to say, I said, “You know, it could be that God was in the back seat of that car, yelling at your friend to slow down, but your friend didn’t listen. What should God do then?” He sat, not lifting his eyes from the floor for several minutes.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I still want an answer from God.” I told him that that was a normal reaction, and that I felt the same way. “You do?” he said. “Yes,” I replied, “there are terrible things happening every day, and sometimes I want God to be held accountable.” He nodded. “Me too.”
Maybe this is the flip side of the crucifixion. He has reached out to us, the estranged children of God, and maybe the whole point is that God knows our anger, and that we need to be able to forgive him. Maybe that is part of the process of “making peace through the blood of his cross” (v. 20).
Luke 10:38-42
Here is one of the most radical sayings of Jesus: women are not to be relegated to the kitchen; they may and should “sit at the Lord’s feet,” listening to the Lord’s teaching. Too bad it didn’t stick.
I have taught lay speaking classes in our conference of the United Methodist Church for many years. One year, a young man in the group just wasn’t “getting it.” We were focusing on the disciples and their work for the Lord, and I had assigned several verses (including today’s story) for the class to read and then write a sermon to be delivered the following week. This young man got up and talked about the Twelve (not noticing that the lists of the names of the disciples are different than each other). He had said nothing about the female disciples, and when he finished and the other students had done their critiques, I asked him, “Xavier [not his real name], what about those women disciples I had you read about? I believe the women in class have mentioned your failure to talk about them, and I agree with them. You did nothing with the names of the women.”
He had nothing to say. He shifted uneasily, and finally said, “I didn’t think you meant that they were actually disciples.” I wondered aloud how he could have decided that I hadn’t meant him to include them in the list of the disciples, especially since they were named in the scriptures I had assigned. Even though he was nervous, it was clear that he really didn’t understand (or believe) that the women around Jesus were serious students.
I summed up our conversation and reminded Xavier that I was a fully ordained woman pastor. And that he needed to re-do his sermon with that thought in mind. He would have a second chance to redeem himself the next week.
Amazingly, he came back with his sermon nearly intact, with one added sentence: “There were, of course, the women disciples, who cooked and cleaned for the group.” There was an audible gasp from the other students, and a couple of women giggled. He looked up from his manuscript for the first time and said, “What?”
“You just flunked the course, Xavier. I will not be certifying you to preach. You didn’t follow the first precept of preaching, which is to look at your audience, not your manuscript. And the second precept, which is to follow the instructions of your teacher. You can sit down now.”
He was completely unable to break free of his social conditioning which told him that women are here to hold church dinners, organize bake and rummage sales, and teach Sunday school. The idea that women could study and lead in the early church had eluded him completely, even knowing that his current teacher was a fully ordained woman pastor!
But of course there are women in the church who also live by the old paradigms. There was a nurse in one of my early churches who made a point of coming and questioning me on my sermons nearly every week. While I enjoyed the conversations (usually), I began to think about what was behind the weekly questioning. The next time she came and started one of these conversations, I said, “You know, it’s too bad we weren’t ordaining women when you were young. You would have made a fine pastor. You’re intelligent and able to ask good questions. I think the church lost out by not having you to preach.”
She blinked several times. Tears came to her eyes, and she said, “You know, at one point I actually thought about becoming a missionary.”
I answered, “I remember telling my pastor when I was in high school that I thought maybe God was calling me to the ministry, and he literally patted me on the head and said, ‘God doesn’t call women to be pastors. Though you could be a missionary.’ Which says a whole lot about how we think of missionaries as well as women.” She laughed, and said, “That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
This story is very contemporary. So many of us today are pressured by the tasks of daily living, specifically because there is constant pressure on us to produce, to succeed -- or lose our jobs. We live in a pressure-cooker culture, where we are required to “multi-task” for long hours away from our families in order to provide for our families; worrying about whether our current job will last, and wondering how we will get along if we lose it. That pressure is leading to terrible emotional issues, headaches, heartburn, and other psychosomatic illnesses, because too many people manage their workers by threat, because they too are afraid that they may not have a job this time next year. It’s that fear that leads many into isolation, anger, and aggression, which ends far too often in violence against oneself or others. Our society would do well to produce more Marys.
Amos 8:1-12
The prophet Amos is speaking to power in this passage. The New Interpreters’ Study Bible says that Amos’ message -- that God is against Israel not because of their foreign policy, but for the way they treat the poor -- is radical for his time and place. Actually, it’s fairly radical in our time and place.
The people of Israel no longer live as God intended. In Exodus 12:8-10 God says: “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work -- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
This law has been largely ignored in our society, so much so that a man in a Disciple class I was leading declared that it was no longer binding on Christians. Paul, of course, told the early Christians in Romans 14:4-6: “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.”
But to read that as banishing the sabbath is a stretch.
Some may point to Jesus saying that “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Jesus was not doing away with the sabbath either, but was responding to the Pharisees’ horror that he and his disciples were plucking heads of wheat to eat, which was forbidden because harvesting wheat was forbidden labor on the sabbath. He was objecting to an overly legalistic reading of the Law, not banishing it.
Very likely the keeping of the sabbath was one of those Jewish beliefs that was in contention in the early church. Must we become Jewish before we can be Christians? Do we have to keep the (Jewish) sabbath? Do we have to be circumcised? It is certainly a fact that many of the Christian converts were slaves, with no right to a day off because they followed some religion or other.
The Feast of the New Moon is more obscure to us, but it was not to the ancient tribes. It was called Rosh Chodesh, meaning “Head of the Month.” And its importance to the Hebrews cannot be overstated. The first law that God gave to the escaped Hebrews can be found in Exodus 12:2: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” What this amounted to was a declaration of their deliverance from the Egyptian worship of Ra, the Sun God, with a shift to a lunar calendar. It was also symbolic of their deliverance from darkness to light, as they scanned the night sky for the first glimpse of the crescent moon. The following day, special prayers and sacrifices would be made (see Numbers 28:11), marking the end of the dark of the moon. The New Moon was a festival day in which no one was allowed to fast or mourn, which indicates its importance.
When the people were under persecution, one of the things that happened to them was that they were forbidden to celebrate the New Moon and the sabbath. To be cut off from knowing the times and seasons (Genesis 1:14) established by God was to be cut off from God and their own self-identity. One of the promises of the End Times re-establishment of Israel (see Isaiah 66:23) is that all the world will come to celebrate both the sabbath and the New Moon.
But human nature being what it is, there are always those who chafe at restrictions on their ability to make money. And so these holy days went by the board. The money-hungry set their scales so they were out of balance. As they scooped grain into the containers, they shorted the customers and upped their prices whenever they could. God condemns those who behave this way. Jesus agreed: “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24). Part of the meaning of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple was that the sales of sacrificial animals and the tables of the moneychangers were set up in the Court of the Gentiles, so there was no space for the Gentiles to worship in peace. It was more important to make money, so they were cast aside.
God has declared “I will never forget any of their deeds,” says Amos. The very land will tremble because of God’s retribution on those who cheat and sell the poor (presumably sold into servitude to pay their debts, a practice that is heavily restricted in the Law).
The threats in verses 9-10 are reflected in the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus: the sun darkened at noon, and all the songs the disciples had sung the night before in the Upper Room were turned into lamentation. “I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.” These words cannot help but put us in mind of Jesus, the only son of God, who died so that we might be reunited with each other and with God. The wearing of sackcloth and the shaving of the head were symbolic actions for those in deep mourning, either for someone who had died, or for their own sins.
The ultimate threat is that there will be no word of God preached, no prophets to speak for God. To be cut off from the words of God is to be cast adrift. To live in a society that has no regard for the poor, where “greed is good” and the things of God are laughed at; where the rich and powerful seek only to have more for themselves; and even the religious leaders cannot be trusted to care for the people, even the children, for whom they are responsible before the Lord, leaves the people to “run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord.” It is a tragic end for any nation or group.
Colossians 1:15-28
The Letter to the Colossians opens with Paul’s standard greeting. He compliments the church on their faith, and the fact that they are beginning to show the fruits of the Spirit. He tells them that he is praying for them, that they may experience God’s power. His words reflect the prophet Amos’ words when he says in verse 13 that “[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
What follows (vv. 15-23) is likely a hymn of the early church. It focuses on the Christ, the glorified Son of God, and never uses the name Jesus. It is about the nature of the Christ, who existed from the beginning of the creation, in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” This is a direct confrontation with those who objected to the idea that God was in any way on the cross with or within Jesus. “How can God die?” the argument went. “Since God cannot die, he either never was in the flesh of Jesus, or he abandoned Jesus just before his death” (this based in part on the words of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in Matthew 27:46).
Paul uses this hymn to present his argument that Christ was the embodiment of God. “[I]n him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and... to reconcile to himself all things... making peace [with] you who were once estranged and hostile in mind.” This argument necessarily leads to the conclusion that God was suffering as Jesus was suffering.
This passage points to a flaw in the popular theology of our day, which maintains that Jesus had to die to assuage God’s anger toward us on account of our sin. This reading of the scripture pits Jesus against God, protecting us from that Old Testament Judge that was such a favorite view of God through the Second Great Awakening and that still runs rampant in American theology.
If, on the other hand, God was in Christ, might it not be that God was reaching out by suffering for us? We know that we need God’s forgiveness, but isn’t it also true that we have grievances against God? What if God was on the cross, suffering, so that we might see how great his love for us is, and so that we might see that God was seeking our forgiveness? How can one see such suffering and not be moved? This is at first a radical notion, but think -- have you never been angry at God? Haven’t we all, at some moment in our lives, wanted to scream at God to explain why something happened, why there was no divine intervention when it might have changed things?
One October night there was a terrible accident on a street not far from the church I was serving. Six teenagers were in the car, which was going at high speed. The driver was killed on impact. Two others died in the hospital. One other passenger was in critical condition and lost a limb. The other two teens were knocked out and could not remember the accident or what was happening just before the crash. The mother of a young man in our congregation came to me and asked me to talk with her son, whose best friend was the driver. “He’s having a really hard time with God’s role in all this,” she said.
“Why didn’t God stop him before he died?” the son asked me. “God can do anything! Why didn’t he interfere?” Mostly I listened, because I’ve had the same questions myself. But I didn’t think that would be too helpful to this young man. Finally, when he had said pretty much everything he wanted to say, I said, “You know, it could be that God was in the back seat of that car, yelling at your friend to slow down, but your friend didn’t listen. What should God do then?” He sat, not lifting his eyes from the floor for several minutes.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I still want an answer from God.” I told him that that was a normal reaction, and that I felt the same way. “You do?” he said. “Yes,” I replied, “there are terrible things happening every day, and sometimes I want God to be held accountable.” He nodded. “Me too.”
Maybe this is the flip side of the crucifixion. He has reached out to us, the estranged children of God, and maybe the whole point is that God knows our anger, and that we need to be able to forgive him. Maybe that is part of the process of “making peace through the blood of his cross” (v. 20).
Luke 10:38-42
Here is one of the most radical sayings of Jesus: women are not to be relegated to the kitchen; they may and should “sit at the Lord’s feet,” listening to the Lord’s teaching. Too bad it didn’t stick.
I have taught lay speaking classes in our conference of the United Methodist Church for many years. One year, a young man in the group just wasn’t “getting it.” We were focusing on the disciples and their work for the Lord, and I had assigned several verses (including today’s story) for the class to read and then write a sermon to be delivered the following week. This young man got up and talked about the Twelve (not noticing that the lists of the names of the disciples are different than each other). He had said nothing about the female disciples, and when he finished and the other students had done their critiques, I asked him, “Xavier [not his real name], what about those women disciples I had you read about? I believe the women in class have mentioned your failure to talk about them, and I agree with them. You did nothing with the names of the women.”
He had nothing to say. He shifted uneasily, and finally said, “I didn’t think you meant that they were actually disciples.” I wondered aloud how he could have decided that I hadn’t meant him to include them in the list of the disciples, especially since they were named in the scriptures I had assigned. Even though he was nervous, it was clear that he really didn’t understand (or believe) that the women around Jesus were serious students.
I summed up our conversation and reminded Xavier that I was a fully ordained woman pastor. And that he needed to re-do his sermon with that thought in mind. He would have a second chance to redeem himself the next week.
Amazingly, he came back with his sermon nearly intact, with one added sentence: “There were, of course, the women disciples, who cooked and cleaned for the group.” There was an audible gasp from the other students, and a couple of women giggled. He looked up from his manuscript for the first time and said, “What?”
“You just flunked the course, Xavier. I will not be certifying you to preach. You didn’t follow the first precept of preaching, which is to look at your audience, not your manuscript. And the second precept, which is to follow the instructions of your teacher. You can sit down now.”
He was completely unable to break free of his social conditioning which told him that women are here to hold church dinners, organize bake and rummage sales, and teach Sunday school. The idea that women could study and lead in the early church had eluded him completely, even knowing that his current teacher was a fully ordained woman pastor!
But of course there are women in the church who also live by the old paradigms. There was a nurse in one of my early churches who made a point of coming and questioning me on my sermons nearly every week. While I enjoyed the conversations (usually), I began to think about what was behind the weekly questioning. The next time she came and started one of these conversations, I said, “You know, it’s too bad we weren’t ordaining women when you were young. You would have made a fine pastor. You’re intelligent and able to ask good questions. I think the church lost out by not having you to preach.”
She blinked several times. Tears came to her eyes, and she said, “You know, at one point I actually thought about becoming a missionary.”
I answered, “I remember telling my pastor when I was in high school that I thought maybe God was calling me to the ministry, and he literally patted me on the head and said, ‘God doesn’t call women to be pastors. Though you could be a missionary.’ Which says a whole lot about how we think of missionaries as well as women.” She laughed, and said, “That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
This story is very contemporary. So many of us today are pressured by the tasks of daily living, specifically because there is constant pressure on us to produce, to succeed -- or lose our jobs. We live in a pressure-cooker culture, where we are required to “multi-task” for long hours away from our families in order to provide for our families; worrying about whether our current job will last, and wondering how we will get along if we lose it. That pressure is leading to terrible emotional issues, headaches, heartburn, and other psychosomatic illnesses, because too many people manage their workers by threat, because they too are afraid that they may not have a job this time next year. It’s that fear that leads many into isolation, anger, and aggression, which ends far too often in violence against oneself or others. Our society would do well to produce more Marys.
