18th Sunday after Pentecost
Amos 6:1a, 4-7, Psalm 146, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31
A lot in the book of Amos is about God’s anger, including this passage. A website named enterthebible.org states, “Without the concept of God's anger, God's love is an empty concept.” What do you think of that? According to this website, God hates oppressors. The concept of God as a hater is a cherished one, paradoxically, as long as WE can decide whom He should hate. Some of the religious people in Jesus’ time felt that Jesus should hate the tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners, as they did. But he didn’t. And that’s the problem. “You’ve got to be taught to hate the world…you’ve got to be carefully taught”—remember that musical?
So back to Amos. Why do we assign an emotion like anger to God? --Because we cannot conceive of a Being who is always loving, who loves everyone, whose very essence is love. That sounds too namby/ pamby, too naïve, too touchy-feely, too IMPOSSIBLE. We are outraged at what people do to other people—just think of the scams and greed and bribes and corruption that have hurt so many. It makes us furious! Open your spam email and count the number of emails that are asking you to wire money somewhere to claim your winnings, and the sheer number of them and the gall of them make you furious that people would use this technology that has such potential for good, to defraud innocent people. Just read about war and the atrocities that seem to accompany war like kissing cousins. They make us all want to don the mantle of prophecy and to throw oracles like lightning bolts against the perpetrators of such evil.
What some preachers say is that God gets angry because he loves us. But when a loved one is truly angry with us, especially when He has the power to disintegrate us, it doesn’t feel much like love. And if we change our behavior because we are scared stiff of eternal damnation, fire, burning flesh and all the other terrible punishments we have been threatened with in our misguided youth, it is VERY difficult to see those as love, and then in middle age—bent over with guilt--to turn around in love toward that person who has threatened us “within an inch of our lives.“ The prodigal son didn’t return, according to scripture, because he feared thunderbolts from on high. He returned because he recognized the beneficence of his father, even toward that father’s hired hands.
What this country needs, say some, is more sermons that tell it like it is and threaten people with the fire and brimstone that would make Amos happy. This “anything goes” culture has got to go, they clamor. I agree. But for me, the way it will be transformed, is not by threats. It COULD happen by consequences. The consequences of selfish and oppressive, dishonest and violent behavior can certainly rain down upon our heads. These are NOT God-caused. These are the results of cheating, defrauding, oppressing. The poor may rise up. The FBI may come with handcuffs and chains. The people may unite in demanding an end to corruption. But anyone experiencing these just consequences for terrible, egotistic acts, can turn to God and KNOW that He loves. He cannot do otherwise. He does not know how to hate because He is positive and hate is negative; He is good and hate is evil; He is light and hate is darkness—you get the idea.
As Richard Rohr writes in The Naked Now, p. 60: “We already know far more than Jesus or Buddha ever knew, but the great difference is that they knew what they did know from a different level and from a different way. The same powerful scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person.”
Psalm 146 reminds us on whose side God is: He sides with the oppressed, the needy, the poor. He sides with those who rely on Him. Again the point seems to be to open ourselves to the experience, the love, of God. The Pauline letter to Timothy states it boldly: set our hopes on God, because to set them on money is to trip on the root of a LOT of evils—all of which lead to unhappiness and an unfulfilled life.
I had a chance recently and passed it up. A waitress in a restaurant I was in dropped a dish and it broke. The manager made a big and loud point of the fact that this expense would be deducted from the young woman’s pay. At first, I thought he was kidding. But then he repeated it and I thought: this woman is being paid close to minimum wage. I make much more than that. Why don’t I go back and offer her the $5 that will be deducted from her pay? After all, it was an accident. She hadn’t thrown the dish against the wall (or at the head of her employer). But I didn’t do it. I walked out. I felt it was none of my business and I might make things worse. But now I regret it. People underestimate, I’ve learned, the happiness that comes from being generous and giving money away. I resolved to go back when there is a next time.
Jesus’ story in Luke 16 about the Rich Man and Lazarus has given me nightmares. Is this how I treat the poor? Yes, I donate to the Cleveland Foodbank and to other charities, but is that enough? Stop. Does this parable make it clear that Jesus could not possibly love ME? --Because I have too much money? –Because I am not generous enough? –Because I have not given enough of it away? I have not travelled to foreign countries to establish schools and clinics and distribution points. I have not risked my life… Stop. The solution for us who are relatively wealthy is to acknowledge its irrelevance to happiness; to become needy in spirit; to cast our material cares on the Lord; to hope—not in our wise investments—but in His presence.
And so I come to the greatest test of my faith, and it is this one test question: “Can God possibly love ME?” Those who know, who are ‘experts’ in prayer, gurus of the spirit say: God cannot NOT love you. He IS love. And so, I imagine he might just see me there, climbed up in my tree with all its branches of fear and guilt and attachments, and he might look up and say: “Come down. I want to eat supper with you.”
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