Listening for the Word of God - As we continue today, on our summer journey on the path with Jesus to Jerusalem, the path of discipleship, I think of paths I’ve walked in the White Mountains. The paths have been expertly planned and diligently maintained for years by groups like the Forest Service and the Appalachian Mountain Club for a couple of good reasons. One is the wellbeing of the hiker amidst the natural environment. The paths lead the hiker over the safest route to get to the top of the mountain, though it may not always be obvious from the hiker’s point of view. The other reason is the wellbeing of the natural environment amidst a yearly onslaught of hikers. The understanding is that we can enjoy God’s creation if we respect it and follow the rules. Hikers are not to leave the path, lest they trample on delicate alpine flowers and ruin the land by causing erosion. There could be a few reasons why hikers leave the path, but it mostly boils down to wanting a faster or more convenient way to the top. And once enough people leave the path in the same place, it creates a new highway made for expedience for some, rather than the wellbeing of all. People get hurt. Flowers get trampled.

 

In today’s Old Testament reading Amos’ audience has abandoned the path laid out by God’s Word in favor of one of their own making, of their own self-interest. Israel had surely had some rough times that were hard on everyone, but Amos is speaking to them at a time of peace, a time when there should have been enough for everyone. And yet there is hoarding and exploitation and deceit. Amos’ message is for those “who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.” Economic justice, or lack thereof, is at the core of Amos’ message. I imagine the economically powerful gloating their clever ways of exploiting the disadvantaged. They even take and sell at exorbitant prices the “sweepings of the wheat,” that part of the harvest that God commanded to be left in the field for the poor to collect. The wealthy already have so much, and they are taking food out of the mouth of poor children so they can funnel more money up to themselves. They have contempt for the Sabath because it keeps them from one more day of profits. But Yahweh is a god of justice and righteousness. The behavior that Amos describes is not just insulting and injurious to the disadvantaged, it is in direct defiance to the commandments of God. To the Word of God.

 

The especially challenging part is that this behavior has gone far beyond a few bad apples. The insatiable hunger for ever more profits has replaced God’s Word as the foundation of the nation of Israel. Exploitation has replaced compassion; greed has replaced equity. The system no longer resembles God’s economy of abundance for all. And the poor are not exempt from internalizing these corrupted values. They are not exempt from equating their own self-worth with what they can produce, from resenting their peers who value themselves regardless of what they produce. God is not happy about it. It is ironic, and maybe it’s meant to be, that the worst punishment God can think of is to deprive the people of God’s Word when they clearly have become deaf to it anyway. Perhaps it goes to show how spiritually impoverished, how morally bankrupt they had already become. It goes to show how destructive an unjust economic system inherently is to everyone, even to those who think they are profiting.

 

While our passage from Amos gives us a wide lens of a whole nation built on prospering off its own poor, our gospel story brings the focus down into the familiarity of a single home. The story of Martha and Mary is a familiar one but, like the parable of the prodigal son, it can kick up feelings of guilt and resentment. Only this time it does so through the added lens of gender. We often approach this story like a personality quiz in a magazine. But it’s not very fun when almost everyone says, “Ugh, I am such a Martha.” As Pastor Benjamin J. Dueholm writes, “I have yet to meet an overworked male who felt implicated in this story, and I have yet to meet a woman who openly identifies with Mary rather than Martha.” Why is that?

 

I think a common response is one fueled by guilt, “I am too much like Martha and I should be more like Mary.” But what if the point is not to identify with the flaws that Martha has, but to identify with the pressures she is under. Jesus does not rebuke Martha like he has done many times to his male disciples, not least of all to Peter. Jesus sees the pain that is the root of her resentment toward Mary. Pastor Crystal DesVignes writes, “Martha is doing what society expects of women, expectations she has internalized. Mary, on the other hand, is doing something that would have been reserved for men. Jesus calls Martha to resist social expectations and to fulfill her role as a worthy disciple.” In the past, my own discomfort peaked with the last line in the story, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her." Based on Jesus’ gentle, caring tone, I believe what is implied here is, “It will not be taken away from you either. You are worthy of a pause to hear the Word, you are worthy of the Sabath, whether you serve a socially acceptable meal or not.”

 

I know I am starving for that Word. Are you? It’s hard to hear right now. Pastor and prison chaplain Cathy H. George sites a New York Times report from earlier this year that is based on a comprehensive study compiled by various scholars, the results of which, sadly, will not surprise you. It found that the US economy surpasses its peer countries. Technically, there is more wealth per person here than in any other country. Yet we also fare less well in almost every other category including health and happiness. George asks the poignant question: “Why have health and happiness become unmoored from economic prosperity?” We also have one of the largest income disparities in the world and that is growing thanks to calculated efforts by the powerful. And the hard part, just like in Amos’ Israel, is that it is a systematic phenomenon that has embedded itself in all of us so that unless we intentionally disrupt it, we will perpetuate it. And how do we disrupt it? By pausing to listen to God’s Word. By pausing to observe the Sabath.

 

That is the Word of God that we are starving to hear along with Martha. That is the Word of God that seems to have vanished from our world, as it did from Amos’. And I want to relay that again today in no uncertain terms: You are more than what you produce, no matter what capitalistic society tells you. Your worthiness is not contingent on your busy-ness, no matter what pressures worldly powers put on you. Keeping Sabath in your soul and your body is a radical statement of faith in the face of a society focused on profits.

 

Part of that work is examining the resentment we may feel toward people who act like Mary. Jesus saw the pain that was the root of Martha’s resentment, and he sees ours too. An oppressive system will encourage us to turn on each other rather than on our oppressors. The poor can participate in economic injustice, women can participate in patriarchy, people of color can participate in white supremacy, all because we are told that trampling on others is how we get to the top. But let’s not. Let’s listen for the Word of God instead of the ways of the world. Let’s strive to see the pain in our neighbors’ resentment and pass on the Good Word like a healing balm. Let’s tread lightly on this Earth and be gentle with one another as we walk this path that God has provided for the wellbeing of all. Let’s resist economic justice by practicing the radical Sabath and let’s encourage others to as well. We are worth it.