HUNGER AND THIRST
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Texts: Amos 8:11-12; Matthew 5:6; Luke 10:38-42
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6.) So says Matthew’s Jesus to the crowd gathered on the hillside to hear his “Sermon on the Mount.” These familiar words seem to mesh with words of the prophet Amos in one of today’s lectionary texts. This farmer and herdsman from the southern kingdom of Judah has come out of his little village of Tekoa to challenge the immoral comfort of his northern neighbors in Israel. He has stood in the midst of their royal sanctuary and proclaimed God’s anger at their complacent ease and arrogant self-assurance. He has thundered the word of the Lord, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream” (Amos 5:21-24.)
Ironically the terrible prophecy of Amos comes at the time of Israel’s greatest glory. The 40 year reign of Jeroboam II has been marked by territorial expansion and great prosperity, at least for those at the top of the socio-economic heap. Amos comes to a people who have read their own press, who trust in their own power, who believe in their invincibility. These beliefs are likely twisted together with a belief that their success is, nominally, because they are God’s chosen people, but Amos has been sent by God to disabuse them of any such notion.
Chapter 8 of Amos begins with a vision – a basket of ripe summer fruit. It is beautiful to look at, but what is its inevitable end – to be devoured or to rot. The glory of Israel will last for a time but they will be devoured by the Assyrians with the remnant left to rot in the decimated countryside. Again, the prophet speaks God’s terrifying word, “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: ‘Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it…’” Amos 8:4-8a.)
The prophet finishes his rant: “‘The time is surely coming,’ says the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it’” (Amos 8:11-12.) In other words, people will desperately hunger and thirst for the life-giving, life-sustaining word of God, but they will not be able to find it because they have strayed so far from it in their self-satisfied living.
Of course these are texts of terror. We are never comfortable with a God who threatens such destruction, who withdraws love as a form of punishment and reigns down destruction on his own errant people. This is not the God to whom we turn. This is not the God we come to worship Sunday after Sunday. This is not the God of grace and compassion on which we pin our hopes. Nor do I think we need to embrace such a view of God in order to see the truth in the prophecy of Amos. It seems to me that it is actually the failure to hunger and thirst after righteousness, the failure to recognize how essential it is to live by the word of God that leads to destruction. If a people has truly feasted on God’s word, they will not be inclined to read their own press, to glory in their own power, to believe in their invincibility. And beyond the trappings of privilege and prosperity for some, they will not trample the needy, bring ruin on the poor of the land, engage in greedy and unethical business practices and neglect or abuse their neighbors.
To be honest, I could not help but wonder what Amos would say if he stood in the National Cathedral, or St. Patrick’s on 5th Avenue, or even the First Baptist Church of Palo Alto. Do we also live in a land that has become immorally comfortable, too easily complacent, arrogantly self-assured? Is there yet hunger and thirst for righteousness in our land? Is there any desire that justice roll like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream? Are we like a basket of ripe summer fruit ready for devouring while facing the inevitability of decay? I don’t mean to be glib or self-righteous by raising these questions or making these comparisons. Rather they stem from my own hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice, for peace and for abundant living for all God’s creation. How might the world be different if we truly centered our lives in God?
In today’s ancient word we heard the very familiar story of sibling rivalry between two sisters, Mary and Martha, with poor Jesus caught in the middle. How are hunger and thirst for right living manifest in this story? This story is not accidentally paired with the parable of the Good Samaritan. If you remember last week, the scribe asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life only to discover that he knew the answer all along – love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. In the simplest sense, the parable teaches about neighbor love and the Mary-Martha story about love of God.
For Jesus, there is no real division between love of neighbor and love of God, between service and learning, between considerations of kindness and acts of contemplation. There is however a prioritization. True love of neighbor does proceed from true love of God. Commentators over and over agree that good works, acts of service, help for neighbors in need inevitably lead to burn out when one has not found the “quiet center” deep within an ongoing relationship with God. Another wise rabbi once said, “If you do not have some vision of what God is doing to repair the whole creation, you can't get up every day and work in a soup kitchen. It finally beats you down” (Thomas G. Long, “Mary and Martha,” Day 1.org, July 22, 2007.)
Instead of calling these laws of love the great commandments, Marcus Borg refers to them as the two great “relationships” (Quoted in Kate Huey, “Word and Work,” ucc.org., 7/18/2010.) What Jesus lifts up and affirms in these stories is the way in which the centrality of our relationship with the living God is vital for the nature and quality of our relationships with others.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Martha’s intent to provide the best hospitality she can for her guest. Where she misses the point is in placing the trappings of hospitality, along with jealousy of her sister, ahead of the relationship the hospitality is meant to foster. In this scenario, remember that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem where he will be executed. There is an urgency to his enterprise that his companions and those whom he encounters fail to grasp. “What I have to tell you, to show you, this good news of God’s reign, the living word of God, is only here briefly. I am here, now, so you who hunger and thirst, pay attention, listen carefully, learn the message, take it in as deeply and as fully as you can. You need become that word for others.”
In the moment of our story, Mary gets the message and Martha does not. “Martha, Martha, your meals are wonderful but humankind cannot live by bread alone. We need to feed on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Otherwise we’ll never find our way in this world. We’ll never fulfill the purpose of our creation. We’ll never live out our lives as children of God. Come, join Mary and me for some living water that springs up to eternal life, for some of that soul food that fully satisfies.”
Thomas Long tells a story about a church youth group on a mission trip to Jamaica. He says, “On their trip they visited one of the local elementary schools, and they spent some time observing in a classroom seriously overcrowded with children, most of them very poor, all of them needy and wiggly and noisy and unruly. It was a difficult, sometimes even chaotic, learning environment; but the youth group marveled to see that the teacher carried herself with great calm and patience, treating all of the children with love and respect, despite the poverty and the chaos. They decided that the only way she could do this was that she must really love being a teacher. But they were surprised to hear her say, ‘Oh, I don't come here every day mainly because I love teaching. I come here every day because I love Jesus, and I see Jesus in every one of these children.’” Long concludes “I think that teacher had been like Mary, sitting at Jesus' feet. And because she had, she could get up like Martha and teach those children with joy and hope, seeing Jesus in the face of every one of them” (Thomas G. Long, “Mary and Martha,” Day 1.org, July 22, 2007.)
To hunger and thirst for God’s living word, for right living, for justice and peace is life transforming. Mary has chosen the better part because she has gotten her priorities right. Jesus is not saying that devotion can be divided from service or that love of God can ever be separated from love of neighbor. What he is saying is that the living word of God, the righteousness for which the blessed hunger and thirst is essential nourishment for whatever they may accomplish in the world. Any hope we might bring to the world is doomed without the support and sustenance of the living word of God. Blessed, indeed, are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for this right living. They shall be filled and they shall make a difference. Amen.