Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Our Daily Bread”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Amos 8:1-12; Luke 10:38-42
In our recent Wednesday evening services, we’ve been talking about our daily bread; specifically, identifying those things in our lives that help us just get through the day. So, on a trivial level, your daily bread can be your coffee in the morning, your workout, your blog subscriptions or reading a good book. On a deeper level, your daily bread might be a certain relationship, the fulfillment your job brings you or striving toward personal goals.
What we’ve been reminded of in our Wednesday services, however, is what the Lord says to the Israelites in Deuteronomy, and what Jesus later quotes when dealing with Satan in his temptation in the wilderness: “Man cannot live by bread alone, but also on the word of God.”
You can even say that the Bible is part of your daily bread, but we cannot live by bread alone; so, we have to receive our daily bread of the Bible, but listen for God’s instructions in everyday life for the Bible to hold any weight. Just an example. With that in mind, let us open our hearts to how God is speaking to us in this scripture…
Amos 8:1-12
After so many years of attending, planning, leading and observing retreats, I’ve come to appreciate unplanned moments. You can plan a retreat into the ground, and to a certain extent, lots of planning is very good. But the best moments that come out of those retreats are the unplanned moments. The well-planned retreat and all of its activities are daily bread—manna in the wilderness—but the unplanned moments that happen on those retreats can be the word of God speaking. And we do not live by bread alone after all.
I’ve been sharing with you that I helped lead a youth camp at Slumber Falls a few weeks ago: Teen Camp for grades 6-9. I’d never been to Slumber Falls and hadn’t done anything that immersed in youth ministry in a couple of years, so I was more observant than I was determined on this retreat.
I observed the daily schedule and how the teenagers responded to the order of activities. I observed the worship experiences and what the kids related to in those services. I observed the way the campers responded to instructions. And I observed Michael.
Michael was one of the younger kids. He’d just finished the 6th grade and was now being thrown into a retreat setting with some kids who were three years older than him and a lifetime beyond him in terms of social and physical development. Michael didn’t respond well to this environment.
When it was time to clean our cabins every morning, Michael was the first to be finished, regardless of how much the counselors insisted that his area was still a mess. In some group situations, Michael would yell over the other campers, making it impossible to hear anything except him. I noticed Michael being reprimanded by counselors on multiple occasions, and his response to these reprimands was a look that exuded a mixture of embarrassment and indifference.
I would sometimes carry my video camera around to get footage of the kids throughout the day, and Michael would come up to me and want to play with the camera. He would never ask, he’d just reach for it and try to pry the camera from my hands while insisting, “Let me see it, man! Let me see it.”
To sum it up, my observation of Michael made it hard for me to be patient with him, and I found myself becoming more and more intolerant of his behavior on this retreat.
Why couldn’t Michael just follow the rules? Why couldn’t he go with the flow? Why couldn’t he do as the other Romans were doing? We had all this great daily bread planned out, but Michael wasn’t taking a bite.
So, one day during free time, I was sitting in my room with the door open. I was editing some of that camera footage on my laptop and looking up every now and then to wave at campers walking to the pool. I was minding my own business and enjoying the time that I had carved out, and then Michael appeared in my doorway.
He said, “What’s up?” I said, “Nothing much.” And then I told him what I was doing on the computer. So, Michael sat down right next to me and started looking over my shoulder at what I was doing.
He said, “I love that stuff. I want to do stuff like that: make movies and mess with computer stuff. My mom is talking about getting me a computer with some of that software, but she’s got to get another job first.”
I asked him more about his mom, and Michael told me that his mother had recently lost her job, and that they were going through some tough times. I asked him if it was just him and his mother. And he said, “Yeah.” And after a long silence when all we could hear was the shuffle of gravel under the feet of swimming pool-bound campers, Michael said, “My dad died when I was three.”
This was a voice from Michael that I hadn’t heard before; not because of what he was telling me, but because of how he talking—how he was expressing himself. Then Michael told me about what brought him to camp. He said, “My mom is trying really hard to keep me out of trouble. That’s why I’m here. She says if I can stay out of trouble, things will be good for us, and maybe I’ll do better in school and stuff.”
And just to keep the conversation going, I said, “Yeah, I used to get in trouble a lot, too.” And Michael said, “No, not you!” I said, “Oh, yeah. When my parents tell my teachers from when I was a kid that I’m a pastor of a church now, they can't believe it.”
But Michael said, “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean that you didn’t get in that much trouble.” It was clear that Michael didn’t want to hear me reminisce about my deviant days of youth. He wanted to tell me about his present reality, his life, his world, his daily bread. Michael said, “You never got in trouble with the cops.” I said, “No. No, I didn’t.”
Michael and I talked all afternoon. This was an unplanned moment, and in this unplanned moment I heard the voice of God, and my heart was broken. I had been so focused on the planned blueprint of that week of camp and how Michael was adjusting to fitting in to that blueprint that I left very little room in my heart for tolerance, let alone understanding.
I needed to change my outlook for Michael’s sake and, consequently, for God’s sake. That unplanned moment illumined the words of Proverbs 27:19: “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.”
God’s people weren’t paying much attention to God’s instructions, so the Prophet Amos had to intervene with some news from the Lord. The people were exploiting the poor and only looking out for their own well-being: trampling the needy and doing away with the poor, the text says. Well, the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is a God of justice, a God who looks after the orphan and the widow, and a God who provides for God’s people, keeping covenant with them, so long as they keep covenant with God.
But that covenant was breaking. The people were just looking out for their own daily bread: my food, my gain, my riches. There was no room for the poor, no room for one’s neighbor, and no room for God’s covenant. So God threatens a laundry list of tragic things he’s going to impose on the people. The Day of the New Moon will never end. The Day of the New Moon is a religious festival that was even more important in those times than the Sabbath, and during the Day of the New Moon, all trade was suspended.
God even threatens baldness. Now, we need to understand what kind of baldness the Lord is threatening here. God’s not threatening to create some physical eyesore. I mean, God can’t boast that God loves everyone, unless their bald. And, of course, bald is beautiful. God is threatening a time of mourning. The New International Version of this text says that God will shave their heads. This baldness is a social expression of mourning. Ripping one’s shirt as a sign of anger. Taking off one’s sandals as a sign of respect. Shaving one’s head bald as a sign of mourning.
These threats from God paint a scary picture, but the scariest thing mentioned is that people will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. If we cannot live on bread alone but also on the word of God, how can we live at all when God’s word falls silent?
There is hope, however. It’s in the first part of this story. The Sovereign Lord holds out a basket of summer fruit to Amos and says to him, “What do you see there, Amos?” And Amos says, “Well, God, it’s a basket of summer fruit.” The Hebrew word for summer fruit, kaitz, means ‘end,’ so the symbolism is that Israel is ripe for destruction. But the hope is in the fact that God speaks to Amos.
God holds out an offering to Amos—tells him a secret. “Let me let you in on something, Amos. What do you see there?” God speaks to Amos the same way God speaks to you and me. Some times we have to be prophets. We have to share God’s hopes for our world with others, but we can’t do that if our hearts are not in tune with God’s words, God’s instructions, God’s guidance. God sees the atrocities of the Israelites, and he says to Amos, “Hey, Amos, do you see that there?” Well, when was the last time you heard God speaking to you, “Hey (call out names), do you see that there? Do you see what I see?”
In his latest book, The Measure of a Man, Sydney Portier suggests that the more civilized a society is, the more keenly aware it becomes of its atrocities. So, a civilized society is more equipped to recognize its flaws—it’s injustices. Well, what seizes our society’s attention the most these days?
I’d argue that it’s the war; the war over there. And the war being fought over there in Iraq is one being fought in a society that our American eyes, glued to the news-drenched TV screen, perceive as uncivilized. We see that place over there as uncivilized, because all we hear about is violence, civil war, terrorist insurgency and a rising body count of American soldiers, Iraqi military and countless innocent women, men and children. So uncivilized, right?
I’m not suggesting that it’s not, but when our outlook on what’s happening over there becomes an intolerant view of an uncivilized culture and an uncivilized war, then our hearts become hardened. Our hearts turn to stone, and we are indifferent to the violence over there, because we are quick to think, “Well, that’s just so uncivilized.” And in the tragic silence of our indifference, God’s booming voice of frustration is reduced to a forgotten whisper that cries out to us all, “Hey, you, do you see that over there? Do you see what I see?”
I agree with Mr. Portier that a civilized society is more capable of recognizing its own flaws and injustices, but we’re not doing so well at that, so let’s examine our civilized culture for a moment, shall we?
Last week, we discovered fleas in our house, so we started cleaning everything and doing heaps and heaps of laundry. All of our free time was spent folding clean blankets, sheets, towels and clothes. In this process, I wanted some brain dead TV to make the laundry process not seem so overwhelming. So I stumbled upon a reality TV show called Rock of Love.
When I was in the 7th grade, a glam rock band called Poison was fresh on the scene, and I thought the big hair and spandex pants of C.C. Deville, Ricky Rocket, Bobby Doll and Brett Michaels were extremely relevant at the time. Well, now Poison is on a comeback, and their singer, Brett Michaels, is the star of this new reality TV show, Rock of Love. So, out of nostalgia I decided to give this show a chance while I folded all of Mac’s tiny clothes.
The premise of the show is that Brett Michaels is now looking for true love. He’s tired of fooling around and wants to find that certain someone to share his life with. So, 25 women give themselves to this TV show, and at the end of every episode, Brett Michaels selects a handful of them to leave so that he can get to know the remaining women better.
Now, I still stand by songs like “Nothing but a Good Time,” and, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” but as I watched this show, my jaw hit the floor. There was no “getting to know the women on this show,” there was just an aging rocker surrounded by screaming women who filled this hour of TV with champagne explosions, censor bleeps over curse words, and cat fights. When I turned off the TV, I have to tell you, I felt gross. I felt that feeling that I used to get in childhood when I saw a dog who’d been hit by a car on the side of the road. It was unsettling.
But what was even more unsettling was my realization that here was a show being played on a major network in a prominent time slot. That means that a lot of people are tuning into this show and loving it. Our culture loves this stuff.
This is just one example of what seizes the attention of our culture that we think is so civilized. Now, I don’t want to wag a preacher’s finger at all the social impurities of our culture. I certainly have my fair share of guilty pleasures (Following the Spice Girls reunion with great interest, for example). So, this sermon isn’t trying to raise some moral crusade over the impurities of our culture, but we should observe that many a mega-church has thrived on preaching a gospel of moral values.
And isn’t that what God is calling on Amos to remind the Israelites about: moral choices? Isn’t that what Jesus is saying Mary is blessed for when he tells Martha that Mary has made the right choice in sitting at Jesus’ feet to learn—the right moral choice?
We celebrate being people of faith in this diverse Christian community this morning, so let’s not be afraid of practicing our faith for the sake of our morals being transformed by God’s word and Christ’s teachings.
I think the reason we are so timid about embracing talk of moral values in our faith practice is because of all those huge congregations that proclaim moral values in the name of Jesus. But their focus is on subjects like gay marriage being intolerable and women in the work place being an incorrect model for families. In short, it’s a gospel of moral values that has everything to do with what you’re doing wrong and nothing to do with what the accuser is doing wrong.
So here is our reality check this morning. Here is God’s summer fruit for us to share today. If we would embrace moral values, we might just get back to being a civilized society that listens to one another and notices the injustices of today. God loves justice and looks out for the poor, the widow and the orphan. And God’s son, our Christ Jesus, champions inclusion, empathy, and love.
So, as people of faith, let’s make moral choices based on our faith:
And when we start to champion those moral values in the name of Christ who championed an unconditional love of all of our neighbors, then we’ll turn around to find a civilized society that can clearly hear God saying to the world, “My children, do you see what I see? Do you see that? That is good!”
I had to leave the camp at Slumber Falls a day early so that I could head out to the United Church of Christ’s general Synod, so I preached a sermon on that last night I had with the kids that I hoped would reach them. I prayed that I could leave it all on the field and say something relevant for those young people. And I prayed that in time they might craft their lives around making these same moral decisions that we’re talking about today in the name of Christ.
I offered an ‘amen,’ I thanked them for letting me share worship with them all week and I headed to my car to hit the road. And on my way to leave, Michael started walking on the gravel path with me. He was shorter than me, but he reached up and put his arm around me and kept walking. And he said, “I don’t want you to go.” So, I said, “Michael, I hope you have a great time at the rest of this camp. I’m going to keep your mother and you in my prayers that she might find a good job really soon, and that you can stay out of trouble, as you put it.”
And in that final moment of the retreat, that final unplanned moment, I felt my heart burning in my chest like the two disciples’ hearts might have felt on the Emmaus Road when the realized that they were walking with Jesus. I had been preaching all week long, but God used Michael to preach to me. Michael is one of those people in my life who act as Amos acted on God’s behalf for the Israelites. Michael is one of those people that helped God say to me, “Hey, do you see that? Do you see what I see? Good. Now make some choices that will help the world see it and help bring justice to it.”
Friends, do you see the world the way Jesus sees it? Do you see what God sees?