A Concord Pastor Comments: Homily for September 22

Artist: Norman Rockwell

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Scriptures for today's Mass

(There was a technical glitch with my recording device
so I regret there's no audio for today's homily.)

Welcome to the third week of a message series for the fall

that we’re calling Lost & Found.

This series is about our experiences of feeling lost in life

and how we can work toward feeling found.

If you stop to think about it,

there are probably times or even seasons all throughout your life

when you have felt lost.

Maybe you’re in one of those seasons now.

Maybe you feel lost in your family.

You find yourself disagreeing with your family more and more

or just drifting away.

Or there’s family drama and you always get stuck in the middle of it all.

Either way: you feel lost.

Maybe you feel lost in a job.

Things are changing in your organization

and you’re not sure you can keep up -or want to keep up-

with the pace of change.

Take my situation. For 25 years I was a pastor - and now I'm not.

For a quarter of a century I was the pastor - and now I have a pastor.

And I thank God he's a great pastor!

But now I have to make my way and find my place in a new situation.

And sometimes, even often, I feel lost…

Maybe you feel lost in a new stage of life. You’re retired and now… what?

Or you finally got that degree but... what’s next?

You’ve drifted into a new phase of your live

where you no longer have your bearings - and you feel lost.

Or maybe it’s not one specific topic or area of your life

where you feel lost.

Maybe it’s just a persistent restlessness you can’t seem to shake,

especially during times of challenge and change and transition,

a restlessness that leaves you feeling uncomfortable and unsettled -

lost…

When we feel lost, we tend to respond in one of a few ways...

Maybe you panic - paralyzed with fear or worry.

Maybe you try to escape -

you look for anything to help you avoid the feeling of being lost.

Maybe you pretend to others - or even to yourself

- that you’re not lost at all!

But the bottom line is: when you’re lost - you don’t want to stay lost.

No one wants to stay lost.

We have a very strong, natural, ingrained human desire

- a desire to be found.

In the first week of this series we said that being lost comes at a cost.

Being lost costs us time, energy, peace of mind,

it can cost us money, relationships, and personal peace.

So we started off by counting the cost of being lost.

And last week, in week 2, we looked at the first thing to do

when you realize you’re lost.

What’s the first step to take?

How do you start down the path toward being found?

Well if you’re physically lost, I bet the first step for most of us

would be taking out our phones and opening Google Maps or Waze!

But when you’re lost about anything else in life

- our first best step is to bring it to God in prayer.

To share with God what we’re feeling lost about.

Even if we’re angry - especially if we’re angry - that’s where we begin.

And, to know that even when it’s our own fault for getting lost

- God isn’t angry with us.

God just wants to help us get un-lost. God wants to help us be found.

This week we’re continuing on this path, the path toward being found.

What are some principles or best practices

that can help us move along the path from lost to found?

To help us with that, we’re looking at the First Reading today,

which is from the Old Testament,

from a book of the Bible called Amos.

Amos was a prophet who lived in the 8 centuries before the time of Jesus!

So if you do the math, that’s thousands of years before our time!

But what’s surprising about Amos' words is that they're still so relevant.

He describes a reality in which we live today.

That’s what’s amazing about the Bible -- it's ancient, so old,

and sometimes may seem inaccessible

but in fact it’s deeply relevant and powerful for us today

-- right here in Belmont in 2019.

We just have to be willing to dig in and drill down

and search out the wisdom God is offering us.

So here’s Amos, he’s a prophet

- and a prophet is someone set apart by God

and sent to speak to people

about how they're living their lives.

Now Amos and the people he's addressing live in a merchant culture,

a culture deeply focused on trade and commerce.

(Remember what I said about these words being relevant?)

So, speaking for God, Amos says:

“Hear this, you who trample upon the needy

and destroy the poor of the land!”

Right away it’s clear

these folks aren’t involved just in trade and commerce.

They’re also involved in fraud and exploitation

and Amos calls them out on this right from the get-go.

He does this because the merchants are asking,

"When will the new moon be over

so that we can sell our grain,

and when will the Sabbath be over

so that we may display the wheat we have for sale?”

They’re engaged in fraud and exploitation,

but they’re still following the letter of the Sabbath law

if not its spirit.

They’re asking when the Sabbath will be over

so they can get back to their cheating and profiteering,

to business as usual.

It’s clear that the Sabbath is getting in the way

of what they really want to do, and they're bold about it:

“We’re going to fix our scales for cheating!

We’ll buy the lowly people for the price of silver,

and the poor for a pair of sandals;

We’ll even sell the grain that’s gone bad!”

It’s all about the bottom line here! It’s all about winning.

It’s all about pushing others aside, trampling them down,

getting ahead for personal gain.

It sounds pretty extreme and obviously bad…

but in many ways, it still rings true in our own times.

We live in a cut-throat world.

So much in our world pushes us, drives us to get ahead.

It’s a zero-sum game.

One person’s gain is another person’s loss.

Maybe not all of us are driven, personally, by a motive for profit,

but most of us know that sense of competition--

that pressure to perform, to compete,

to do better than your peers,

to win that promotion or that scholarship,

to one-up your co-worker, your friend, your classmate,

your neighbor, your sibling.

And we don’t necessarily end up here on purpose.

Often, we just drift to this position

because it’s where life around us is drifting.

We go with the flow...

But here’s the thing: living from this perspective is a big factor

when it comes to how we get lost.

It’s also a big factor in how we stay lost.

But there is an alternative choice we can make,

a choice that helps us to be found.

We can choose to go with the flow of the culture we live in,

and to rely on its commercial wisdom

-OR

we can choose to live by another wisdom, God’s wisdom.

We have choices to make.

We can choose our focus

and we can choose what keeps us faithful to that focus.

It’s clear what Amos’ audience was focused on:

profit, money, getting ahead - at all costs.

In that scenario God may seem to be a road-block on our path to success

and his wisdom not much more than an annoying,

counter-productive distraction.

In their plan, God is in the way

but we can choose another path where God is the way.

When we give more weight to our own interests than to God’s,

this happens for us too -

even us “church people” who are here on Sundays.

We may not think of it this way--consciously--

but when coming to church,

gathering with the community on the weekend to pray for an hour

- when that begins to feel like a burden...

When giving a couple hours in service once or twice a month

seems like an impossible demand on our time…

When we seem to find time and make time for work, for kids' sports,

for work, for the Pats' game, for work (and did I mention work?)

but not enough time for what feeds our spirits and helps keep our focus,

not enough time for praying here at New Roads

with others who are also trying to soak in, to absorb

and to live by God's wisdom,

if we have little or no time for these things - then something’s off…

If finding ways to be nourished by God's wisdom

is near the bottom of our list of priorities -

then, what, then who, is really driving us?

Is God IN my way, in the way of everything else on my schedule?

Or IS God my way to what I truly desire and need in my life?

When something or someone other than God is leading the way for me,

chances are I'm gonna get lost!

And if I continue to choose the ways of self-interest,

and the priorities of commerce, if I choose to “go with the flow”

then there's a good chance I'm gonna stay lost

- or get even more lost than before.

Of course, there's a balance to be struck.

We can’t and we shouldn't pretend

we’re not in this world at all.

This is the world God made and so much of it is beautiful and good

and life-giving!

What we need is to strike the right balance between

living in the world God gave us

and the culture in which we find ourselves.

It's about striking the right balance and finding the path through this life

where God is our companion and guide.

So what should we do? Here’s a suggestion for this week.

The folks Amos first wrote to were tipping the scales in their own favor.

How about if this week you and I take stock of what tips the scales for us

- and in whose favor are our scales weighted? …

How are my scales balanced right now?

Am I more focused on the values of achievement, competition,

personal gain - and taking care of myself?

Or am I more focused on the wisdom of stretching beyond my own needs,

opening up to serving others, giving of myself rather than taking?

Or as Jesus put it in the gospel today,

who do we serve? God or mammon? God or money?

God or own needs? God or the material world?

"No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon."

In short:

what wisdom focuses and guides my steps along life's path:

the wisdom of the world around me

or the wisdom of the One who made the world?

I’m guessing for most of us, even all of us, it's a little bit of both.

So, let's begin the week ahead by asking the question:

where am I with that today?

who or what is charting my course in life?

and how can I weight and tip the scales

more in favor of that wisdom God is always offering me?

If you think about it, who and what we follow,

who and what focuses our vision and our goals