Starving for the Word

Amos 8:1-12New International Version (NIV)

A Basket of Ripe Fruit

8 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit.2 “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

3 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing.[a] Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

4 Hear this, you who trample the needy
    and do away with the poor of the land,

5 saying,

“When will the New Moon be over
    that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
    that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
    boosting the price
    and cheating with dishonest scales,
6 buying the poor with silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals,
    selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

7 The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forgetanything they have done.

8 “Will not the land tremble for this,
    and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
    it will be stirred up and then sink
    like the river of Egypt.

9 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

“I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
    and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
    and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.

11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 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.

I realize I have been more political than normal the last several weeks and some of it you may agree with while some of it you may strongly disagree with.  I also realize that people disagreeing in the realm of politics is not something new.  Someone shared with me a couple weeks ago that their family has a pact not to talk politics because of the heated discussions that would ensue.  In the political realm we often find these discussions to be heated because both sides think they are correct.  I often think to myself, “I know this is thee right way, how can anyone think otherwise?”  Can any of you relate?  Even in our scripture for this morning, there are certain aspects of it that we can apply our political leanings to and twist the words so that we could justify our beliefs.  Really, if we try hard enough we can do this with just about any scripture.  While I would love to say God doesn’t care about politics it’s simply not true.  God cares about us, He cares about what we believe, He cares about the direction we are headed as individuals and collectively so to say God doesn’t God would mean that God doesn’t care about us.  We avoid talking politics because of the heated conversations that arise from them so our purpose for today is examine what we can do about this.  We will look into how we can better discuss politics and really the goal is to create an environment where we as a country can begin to unify and heal.

I am almost certainly positive that there are preachers today using this exact scripture to either A) convince us that this is the end of the world, that Jesus is on his way much sooner rather than later.  We need to prepare for the end times by making sure our hearts are in the right place and to quickly convert anyone who will listen to our threats that the end is near.  God is about to turn our singing into weeping and our festival into mourning so turn from your sinful ways and be saved.  Or B) convince us that taking care of the poor and the environment is tied to the freedom of God and this is where we should fall politically.  We need to end economic injustice.  We are using dishonest scales to weigh and measure only leading to the increase of downtrodden and mistreatment of the poor.  Either point may be correct but chances are, if you fall more on one side than the other, then you most likely didn’t agree with the other statement.  My point is that we don’t have to be so set in our ways that we cannot see the validity of the other.  That is the kind of pride that Jesus and Paul spoke against with such disdain.  The people who screamed “Crucify Him!” thought they were doing the right thing.  The people who say only #BlackLivesMatter or only #AllLivesMatter/#BlueLivesMatter think only their side is correct.  They leave no room for conversation.  It is one of the most difficult pills to swallow but it is this kind of pride that creates such division.  We can’t listen to one sentence or read one headline and then either get mad to the point we no longer listen on the one hand or agree without questioning on the other.  Our minds have gotten trained to the point that we either look for something that either offends us or justifies our previously held beliefs in a way that solidifies those beliefs.  

However, I think there is another message that needs to be heard this morning.  Let’s listen again to the words of Amos the prophet:  “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water,  but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. 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.’”  I have been there.  I have wandered and wandered and not found the Word.  I honestly wonder if this is that status of our country right now...  2016 will be the first election year that those who identify as non-religious will be the largest bloc of registered voters.  Those identifying as “no-religion” went from 14 to 21% since 2008.  In those same years, the percentage of people who said that churches and places of worship were important to solving social problems has dropped from 75% to 58%.  And do you know what?  I am not blaming the non-religious.  Something had to make them that way?  Something has made people want to stop coming to church.  I am sure there are any number of statistics that may tell us why.  But I think it is because we are starving for God’s Word.  I don’t mean literally.  I don’t think God took His ball and went home.  I don’t think God is taking the Word from us.  The gospel of John says,”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.”  The Word is of course Jesus.  I believe we are currently suffering from a famine of hearing the Word.  

I received some great advice this week...  Simply stated, “We need to get back to Jesus.”  We have made faith so difficult and polarizing.  I am not so naive to think that we will ever see perfectly eye to eye.  However, I am just crazy enough to think that Jesus wants us to be having these conversations we are refusing to have.  I am just crazy enough to think that the Word, that Jesus, is enough to change the world.  Jesus is the source of change.  If we want change then we need to end the figurative starvation from the Word.  When I read the The Autopsy of a Deceased Church one of the many clues that a church was dying was that it did not resemble the community, that it had gone deaf to the needs of those around the church.  I am not speaking about Fairview but as the Church as a whole, we have totally lost sight of this.  So you are probably sitting there thinking, if this isn’t really an issue at FV why is he wasting our time.  Let me explain, even within the religious backdrop there are churches that get it totally wrong, see Westboro Baptist Church, and to a much lesser extent many other churches also suffer from being so set in their ways that they "refuse to eat." In other words, they refuse the conversations that would enable them to thrive instead of barely holding on.  I realize our voice here at Fairview isn’t the loudest but it has to be one that is willing to listen to both sides.   If we choose not to have these conversations, the world only becomes more divided and broken.  We have to be willing to have a conversation or we will perish due to a figurative starvation from the Word. Amen.