What can we say July 17? 6th after Pentecost

    Amos 8:1-12. Another object lesson, this time a basket of fruit. Wolff thinks they are figs – almost anticipating the way Jesus picked on the poor figs! More bad news in our preaching world where somebody made up the standard of good news! Wailing and corpses are coming.

   It’s yet one more of those texts where God sees the people worshipping, making their sacrifices, observing holy days – and God sees the dissonance, the hypocrisy, and is annoyed by the worship which they presume God enjoys. Amos reaches into the minds of his listeners who seem very devout. And yet they ask themselves, and maybe one another, “When will it be over so we can get back to the market??” “When will this sabbath end?” The mantra I’ve used in preaching is their faith is pasted on the outside of an otherwise unchanged life.

   Interestingly enough, once the worship is done, they want to “buy the poor with silver.” Haunting allusion to enslaving. De Kirkpatrick, in his psychological study of slaveowners, notes how they propped it all up with Bible and piety, not to mention denial, rationalization, even feeling a noble obligation to do what they did for God, and for the blessing of the slaves themselves. They were “psychological acrobats” – but then, aren’t we all?

   Amos asks (v. 8) “Should not everything mourn?” We should begin to mourn now, the kind of mourning that might prompt deep conversion, for if not we will surely be mourning later.

   Colossians 1:15-28 debunks any DaVinci Code nonsense that it took the oppressing church 3 centuries to make up Jesus being divine. Here, a mere 2 decades after his death, with plenty of people walking around who’d seen him, Jesus is regarded as pre-existent, there at Creation, above all and in all and beyond all. It’s poetry – as we need elevated language to speak of such elevated realities; the prosaic won’t do. Scholars debate if this was a hymn or not. Surely they sang or chanted it, and mere words, even poetry, can’t get at the marvel, the transcendent wonder that is Christ. That the early Christians believed this, with no theology books, just blows my mind.

   Christ is the “image” (eikon, like icon!) of God. Accustomed to handling coins with the emperor’s image, pretending to be divine, believers saw Jesus as being fully stamped with God. There is a subversive, even treasonous element in this text, as Christ is what only the emperor was supposed to be.  

   On the image: “Christ, as God’s image, is the knowable and approachable manifestation of God in creation” (Jerry Sumney). This reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s fascinating notion that St Francis did for Jesus what Jesus did for God by being “a splendid and yet a merciful Mirror of Christ. If St. Francis was like Christ, Christ was to that extent like St. Francis. It is really very enlightening to realise that Christ was like St. Francis... St. Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as the moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more visible.  Exactly in the same sense St. Francis is nearer to us, and being a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable.”

   Notice the joy in all this – for God! Verse 19’s verb, eudokeo, can mean “take pleasure in” or “resolve,” prompting Sumney’s thought: “God resolved to dwell in Christ and God took pleasure in residing in Christ.” Also, theologically speaking, Christopher Seitz is spot on: “Paul did not redefine Jewish monotheism. He saw into its heart and grasped its inner logic.”

   Luke 10:38-42 puts Colossians 1 into homey, narrative form, how it’s embodied in one home. 

There’s a funny comment on our text in Amor Towles’s great new novel, The Lincoln Highway. Sally snarkily remarks “If ever you needed proof that the Bible was written by a man, there you have it. I am a good Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ… But I am not willing to believe that Jesus would turn his back on a woman who was taking care of a household. I don’t blame Him. I blame Luke. From a man’s point of view, the one thing needful is that you sit at his feet and listen to what he has to say, no matter how long it takes, or how often he’s said it before. By his figuring, you have plenty of time for sitting and listening because a meal is something that makes itself. Like manna, it falls from heaven. Any woman who’s gone to the trouble of baking an apple pie can tell you that’s how a man sees the world.”

   Poor Martha, although a holy hosts of Christians have taken after her! It’s the Feast of Tabernacles, on which to this day people welcome you into their homes for fabulous meals. I love Sarah Ruden’s rendering: “Martha was bustling about with the extensive work of hospitality.” Imagine Martha’s sighs, cutting stares, raised eyebrows. She doesn’t even speak directly to her sister, but goes at Jesus, not simply with “Tell her to help me,” but asking backhandedly “Lord, don’t you care?” Jesus doesn’t rise to her bait to upbraid Mary for just chilling at his feet. She is illustrating what love for God looks like – as Luke is still explicating Jesus on “love God, love neighbor” after using the Samaritan story to illustrate the latter, now Mary is a witness to the former. And to (we might suggest) how to pray, not “Lord hear our prayer,” but “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

   Jesus’ reply to Martha is gracious, gently firm. Calling her by her name (twice!), he exposes what’s going on inside her, what she knew but couldn’t properly diagnose: “You are anxious.” As are almost all of us! He adds “You are anxious… about many things.” That’s part of anxiety, isn’t it? It’s this, but also that, then the imagined possibility and another dreadful thing, as if a crowd of worries climb on our shoulders. “One thing is needful.” Is the one thing Jesus himself? Listening to his words? Being near him? A focus on love for God and not getting sucked into the vortex of busy-ness?

   David Wilcox has a funny song about the way someone gives you directions and adds, “You can’t miss it” – which he calls “the kiss of death.” Can’t miss it? Just try me. If life really is one thing, if there’s a main thing, the one thing you can’t do without, then it should be a “You can’t miss it” – but we get this nagging feeling that we have in fact missed it, misplaced it, never quite figured it out.

   This is the spiritual life: not God helping with our thicket of endeavors and worries, but a narrowing of our gaze, getting to a singleness of heart that wants one thing and is satisfied with that one thing. It’s being still, quiet, listening, pondering.

   Here’s something fascinating, and funny. Occasionally, in early Greek manuscripts, we find little booboos where the copyist altered a letter or two – or where a different word is inserted perhaps to explain a custom nobody understood any longer. In several semi-early manuscripts, Jesus is reported to have said, not “One thing is needful,” but “A few things are needful.” I can’t know how that happened – but my suspicion is that you had monks living together in a community. Some were so prayerful that they didn’t get their chores done, leaving them (like Mary did) to others (like Martha).

   So the abbot, in pursuit of tranquility and just getting the house in order, crossed out “one” and instead chided his monks with “A few things are needful,” like your prayers but also washing the dishes and picking potatoes. Like that abbot, we have stuff to do. God is patient with us, and grateful we at least know the one thing and strive after it, however ineptly.

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