“Troubled by Many Things” Sermon for July 21, 2013 By David F. Habicht Begin with reading Amos 8:1-12 • There’s trouble in this text, isn’t there? This isn’t some kind of Bible easy-read like “suffer the little children to come unto me” or, “my yoke is easy and my burden light.” No, here we have what most Christians fear at some level, the angry God of the OT saying, “I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into lamentations.” What’s going on here? Why is God so mad? • It’s worth mentioning that this is a very old story. Amos was early--- around 750 B.C. This was a prosperous time in both the northern nation of Israel and the southern country of Judah. Now, you can tell by the tone of the entire Book of Amos that God is not pleased with the people of this time. So he calls Amos, who is not a professional prophet but rather a farmer, to recall the people to the covenant. That is to say, Amos was to warn the house of Israel to cease and desist in its ungodly lifestyle and return to keeping the commandments. They were to “let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.” (5:24) • Instead, in Chapter 8 we find the people complaining. On holy days like the Sabbath and the Festival of the New Moon, they have to close their businesses. They are impatient for their religious observances to conclude, so they can go back to making money. Now, I know that never happens here. We’re never anxious for church to be over so we can get on with the rest of our weekend. ☺ But the people of Israel wanted to get back to work. And when they did, God accuses . . . they cheated. They “made the ephah (a unit of dry measure) small and the shekel great.” They used false scales. They also are not taking care of the poor, but rather are exploiting them. • And God has had it with this kind of behavior. He says, “I see what you’re doing, and I will not forget it.” God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit. What is it about summer fruit? Summer fruit isn’t like the autumn harvest, which is dried and stored for use over the coming winter. Summer fruit must be consumed before it rots. So God is saying, “The time is ripe for my people Israel.” And he pronounces a curse in the form of a drought. Not a drought of food or of water, but of God’s own word. “They shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” • I don’t take this to mean that God stops speaking. God is always speaking. We have it from Paul that God speaks to us through the majesty of all creation. No, what Amos prophesies is the people’s inability to hear. The people of Israel will be cut off from God because they won’t be able to hear him anymore. About 30 years after this the Assyrians took the northern tribes into captivity, and Israel ceased to function as a sovereign nation. • There are times in my life when I feel like I’m not hearing God. In fact, it happens all the time. Most recently while I was working on this message. I kept steering the sermon in the direction I wanted it to go, and frankly it wasn’t going very well. Now, I don’t hear from God in words like some people do, but I do get these “prompts” that help to show me the direction I need to be moving in. And once I realized that I had been ignoring a series of these prompts in favor of my own, preconceived notions of what this sermon was to be about, the whole thing began to go much more smoothly! • I’m convinced that this happens to most everybody. There are times when we simply are not hearing God. So, what happens then? When we’re not hearing God, we’re not aware of his grace, his love. In the contemporary vernacular, we’re just not feelin’ it! God’s love . . . is perfect. Scripture says perfect love casts out all fear. So, when we’re not feeling God’s love . . . we become fearful. When we are fearful for ourselves, we become anxious and irritable. We lash out, we point fingers and assign blame. When we fight with each other, we are not hearing God. • This speaks to our need for grace. When we get all tied up with our own petty agendas focus only on promoting our individual concerns, we lose the ability to hear God and to experience grace. In Amos, the people were busy serving mammon, cheating each other in order to increase their profits while their neighbors endured poverty. They could not hear God. • Okay, so that’s pretty straightforward. Here’s where it gets tricky. You can be doing good things . . . and still not be hearing God. Because often we do good things . . . for our own purposes. We do good things in order to promote our own interests, to further our own agenda. We all like to be thought of as good people--- good parents, good citizens, good Christians. And what better way to be thought of as a good person . . . than to do good works? What’s wrong with taking pride in being charitable? What’s wrong with being a little competitive in the Lord’s service, doing more work for the church than others? • Spiritually, my friends, this is a trap. And it’s a seductive one. In fact I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get caught in it once in a while. Jesus dismissed this kind of thinking as “the faith of the Pharisees.” In the 23rd chapter of Matthew, Jesus rips into the Pharisees. He says, in effect, “God sees all your piety, all your charity, all your Scripture reading and commandment-keeping. He’s not impressed.” The Pharisees . . . were not hearing God. • Often in the gospels, Jesus grew frustrated with his listeners. This happened when the crowds followed him, and also in smaller, more intimate settings with his friends and disciples. When you read these passages, you can almost picture Jesus slapping his hand to his forehead in frustration, or shaking his head sadly and saying, “You’re not hearing me.” Read Luke 10:38-42 • Now, it’s difficult for us today to fully understand the importance of hospitality in 1st century Palestine. Among the desert people, an ethic of hospitality was crucial for survival. Among the Jews of Jesus’ time, hospitality was a highly esteemed virtue. Now, Luke wrote in Greek, and the word he used was philoxenia. Philo from phileo, meaning to show love or affection, and xenos, meaning stranger. Hospitality, then, is showing love to strangers. • So, here we have poor Martha. There is a certain itinerant rabbi named Jesus who happens to be a personal friend of hers, and he’s in the area healing and preaching and casting out demons. Now the word has gotten around about Jesus, so crowds follow him wherever he goes. And one day, her friend Jesus shows up on Martha’s doorstep . . . with all these people! So, she shows them hospitality. But is she feelin’ the love? No, she is not! She feels anxious. She becomes fearful . . . that she cannot provide enough hospitality. • So Martha becomes angry, and begins to assign blame. (Any of this sound familiar?) She blames her sister Mary for not helping her. She blames Jesus for not making Mary help her. And so Jesus rebukes her . . . very gently. It’s really very beautiful. You can almost hear the affection in his voice as he repeats her name. “Martha, Martha, you are troubled by many things. There is only one thing that is needful.” So, what’s the needful thing? The only thing you need is to hear God speaking, to experience his grace . . . to abide in his love. Jesus could have just as easily said, “Martha, Martha, you’re not hearing me. • The people of Israel to whom god sent Amos were troubled by many things. They were troubled by impiety and avarice and heartlessness. They could not hear God. The Pharisees, whom Jesus upbraided, were troubled by many things. They were troubled by zealotry and legalism and pride. They could not hear God. And often we too, are troubled by many things. • And we’re good people! We attend worship. We volunteer in the community. We are loving to our families and kind to our friends. And yet . . . sometimes we can’t hear God. Why? Well it’s because like Martha, sometimes we get caught up doing the right things . . . for the wrong reasons. And as individuals, we all have different things that trouble us. But it is important to bear in mind that, just as in Amos, groups of people (governments, corporations, church congregations) lose their way and get sidetracked. They become wrongly motivated. Or . . . unmotivated! • Okay, enough generalities. What, specifically, does it look like when we allow ourselves to be “troubled by many things” and we stop hearing God and become spiritually unmotivated or wrongly motivated? I know this is a lot to take in, but I will be as concise as I can. When we are primarily seeking pleasure or individual gratification, pursuing self-interest, we are being spiritually unmotivated. When we are acting out of a desire for achievement or status, seeking praise, or in reaction to our own guilt or fear, we are wrongly motivated. The source of right motivation is Gods grace, love for God and for each other and joy in the Lord’s service. • Being troubled by many things can manifest in being results oriented. That’s when it becomes all about the bottom line. The kingdom of God isn’t about results. It’s about people. We’re not called to be successful, as individuals or as a church. God doesn’t call us to be successful, he calls us to be faithful. When we are troubled by many things and are not hearing God we find ourselves doing things that look good. They look official, they look correct, they look appropriately religious. They look a lot like the way they’ve always looked before. When we are hearing God, we have little concern for appearances. Pleasing God becomes our only motivation. • Because that’s what it’s all about. It is only when we can hear God that he can speak to us and through us. It is only when we rest in God’s love that we can do his work in the world . . . the work of the church. Jesus spoke directly to this issue. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor be afraid.” He said, “My peace . . . I give to you.” My friends, let us abide in that peace. AMEN Loving God, we do not ask that you speak, but rather that we listen, and hear, your will for our lives. Do not let us be troubled by the many things that can come between us and our service to your kingdom. Still our busy minds, and calm our anxious hearts. You don’t need us to help you run the Universe. We don’t need to help you with the details. There is but one needful thing--- that we hear your voice, and find our direction not in our own devices and desires, but rather by the prompting of your Holy Spirit. Speak to us, Lord. Teach us to do the right things for the right reasons. Help us to forgive one another, as you have forgiven us. Show us how to love our neighbors, as you have loved us. Empower us to live for you, as you died for us. We ask it in the saving name of Christ Jesus. AMEN
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 20:27:50 +0000
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