September 18, 2022
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 18, 2022 – Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13
The translation we used to have for that last line was, “You cannot serve both God and money.” The word mammon was in the older, older translation and now they switched back to using mammon again because there is a subtlety there that kind of slips by if you use the word money. Of course, Jesus is referring - the whole context is - use of wealth. But the mammon was some sort of little idol that some people around the area of Israel used to worship. And so, the suggestion is that, somehow or other, money is a god.
In order to understand why the Church presents these readings in this way on this Sunday, we have to go back and take a little closer look at who Amos is. King David did the almost impossible. He united two factions of Jewish people who never got along. The people in the northern part of Israel - Samaria and Galilee, where Jesus was born and raised - and the people down in the southern kingdom - around the capital city of Jerusalem - always contested with each other as to who was in control. And after Solomon, King David’s son, the kingdoms broke part again, and there were two different Kings, one in the north and one in the south.
Now, Amos was born and raised in the south, near the city of Jerusalem, which means that he was raised as a strict observing Jew. The Torah was extremely important to those people and the goal was to try to keep it as perfectly as possible. Not only that, but they claimed Jerusalem was the only place where you could offer sacrifice to the Lord Jehovah and so, there was a very powerful priestly caste centered around Jerusalem. Not only that, but the Pharisees and the Scribes had a line into the secular authority because Herod, although he was a non-observant Jew, was their link between themselves and the Roman Empire - someone who kept them safe. And so, there was this connection between official church and official state.
So, Amos decides with his very proper upbringing as a Jewish lad, he is going to the northern kingdom to preach to them. Why? Because up around the Sea of Galilee is the border of Israelite territory and Pagan territory. And there is a great deal of trading that goes on between Jews and those who are not Jews up in that area. And of course, if you are friendly with people trough trade and commerce, you begin to also wonder if maybe you should be a bit more lax in the way that you practice your religion, or maybe some of the things that they have to say might be right, and so on and so forth. And so, those people are looked upon as sort of irreverent and almost heretical Jews. And Amos goes up there to see if he can fix the problem. He begins telling the people that they and their leaders, they and their King, are on the road to destruction. Needless to say, he wasn’t very welcome. As a matter of fact, as a part of the book of Isaiah, where he’s in confrontation with one of the Prophets who worked in the Court of King Jeroboam, the prophet says, “Look, you go back to the southern kingdom and preach there, but don’t you ever come back here again.” And Amos says, “Hey, unlike you, I wasn’t brought up and raised to be a prophet; not my job.” Amos was a farmer by trade. What does he mean? He means that a large number of the court prophets, in any king’s service, their job was to tell the king what he wanted to hear. Having yes-men around you is traditional in the corridors of power. And Amos is anything but a yes-man, so he is not welcome.
But despite the fact that Amos’ people considered themselves to be superior Jews, the fact is that they relied on the robust commerce in the northern kingdom to support the southern kingdom. And so, there was a little bit of a tradeoff even there. With that as a background, we connect it to the Gospel reading.
One of the problems we face today is things like, for example, critical race theory. Why are people opposed to teaching critical race theory? Some of them, admittedly, are opposed to it because they are bigoted. But the fact is, whenever you look upon anything, but especially history, through one lens, you miss out on context. You don’t get the full picture.
So Jesus, this morning, seems to be looking at all of life through the lens of either/or. Either God or money. And, to a certain extent, maybe he is right.
Friday’s news, the stock market dipped because FedEx announced that, in the last quarter, they delivered far fewer packages worldwide than they had in the quarter before that. And people say, “Oh my God, there’s going to be a recession.” Well, maybe there will be; maybe there won’t be. But the market is so sensitive to every little piece of information that it fluctuates constantly.
Today, in the Times Herald-Record, there’s an article about the salaries paid to the chief executives of three or four of the largest hospital conglomerates - Montefiore, Hopewell North and Columbia Presbyterian. Their salaries are close to twelve million dollars. They got a big bonus by taking the money that the government gave to the hospitals to deal with Covid, and taking it for themselves. Incredible.
But if you watch TV as much as I do, you realize that a great deal of commercials now are trying to tell us that we need to tell our doctors that we want some dangerous drug that could kill us, because the large pharmaceutical companies need to keep making more and more profits in order to pay their executives, as well as in order to finance research in life saving drugs. So there is, in all of our society, a great focus on money. And, if you want to look at it that way, you could say that money is the cause of all power. Money is the cause of all fame. Money is the cause of all sexuality. Or you can take one of the other three things and use that as the lens and say sex is really all about money. Sex is really all about power. Sex is really all about fame. No matter which lens you choose, you are going to block out one of the others.
So how are we to take Jesus’ teaching - either God or money? Well, let’s look at it this way in our personal lives. There are two ways we can live our lives. Either money can run our lives, or we can use our money to take care of our lives. So either money controls us, or we control the use of our money. But we can only do that in our personal lives. Almost all this other stuff that I mentioned about high finance is far beyond your pay grade and mine.
But, that’s why they put the second reading where it is. Notice what the writer of the Letter of St. Paul to Timothy says. He says, “The first thing I want you to do” - the first thing – “when you gather for Eucharist, is to pray for those in authority.” Because power and money are so closely connected. Beyond our own control of our personal lives. We should pray for those in authority, that they understand that money is at the service of the people, not people at the service of money.