Sixth Sunday after Pentecost; 24 July 2022; Proper 11C (RCL); Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42.
The Amos passage is again hard to hear, perhaps even harder than last week. The word play is on “summer fruit” and “end.” The NIV catches the play. God asks Amos what he sees, and he replies, “A basket of ripe fruit.” God replies, “The time is ripe for my people Israel.” God will make an end of Israel. Amos does not provide an image of any hope held out for God’s people. Worst of all is the famine for hearing God’s word — God is no longer found among God’s people. Nothing is left.
The crimes for which Amos blasts Israel can be summed up as forgetting the divine purposes for the activities they are engaged in. Buying and selling grain is about much more than just making money — it’s about keeping the community alive, especially those on the margins. Again and again, the people were commanded not to reap their fields to the edges, to leave gleanings for those who needed them. Now, they are making the ephah (about 10 gallons) small and the shekel (10 grams or so) great, so that the poor have to pay more to get less, and selling even the chaff. And they see religious observances as an inconvenience, getting in the way of their profit-making, rather than a reminder of their own dependence on God.
No one I know likes preaching on the story of Mary and Martha. In order to entertain guests, someone has to wash the dishes. Why is Jesus so harsh on Martha? Jesus tells her that she is worried and distracted by many things, while only one thing is needful. He doesn’t say what that one thing is, but we can assume it is what Mary has chosen.
Is Martha’s mistake just that of Israel in miniature? The merchant engaged in their trade without reference to the horizon of God’s economy, without understanding how the part they played fit into God’s overall purposes. Perhaps it is not that Martha should not be washing dishes, but that she should be doing it with reference to the horizon of Jesus’ presence. Brother Lawrence, in the little booklet, “The practice of the presence of God,” speaks about peeling potatoes with reference to the life of the monastery. Both Mary and Martha are necessary for the functioning of the community, just as are the merchants in the market, but the one needful thing is the awareness that we engage in our tasks, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the community, for the role they play in supporting God’s economy of salvation, which alone keeps us alive.