Amos 8:1-12

This is the second appearance of Amos in the lectionary this year and one of this year's verses is a repeat of Year B. We don't hear much from Amos, probably because it's a short book, and it is not a popular one for preaching. Amos is berating his community for how they treat the poor and disenfrachised, saying the community is the cause of the situation. Poor people already understand this, and rich people don't want to hear it, so most won't preach to this. As Hélder Câmara said,  "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

Amos speaks of "fruit", not the fruit of the spirit we see in the New Testament but the abundance of society. He knows this abundance came from the labors of people that were not fairly compensated. He is speaking to those who "trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land." He mocks what they are saying. They can't wait for the sabbath to be over so they can they get back to it. They talk proudly of their deceitful business practices and how they cheat their poor customers.

Amos then tells us what the punishment is going to be. Besides the terrible acts of nature, God will stop speaking to us. If we continue to act like this, these unworkable ways will be passed on to our children. If we teach them to be profitable business owners and managers, but don't teach them that the economy is built by people doing work then earning wages then buying the goods from those very businesses, then those businesses will fail. The lessons of how to create a prosperous country through a healthy working class will be lost. The ideas of educating your populous and providing a healthy environment will be ridiculed. This is what was happening when the Kingdom of Israel was crumbling. It has happened throughout history.

Luke 10:38-42

As a modern reader, it's easy to get caught up in the language of this passage that seems to be saying housework isn't important. If it was Martha and her brother (instead of sister), this might be the focus of the story. But sister Mary isn't just some lazy sibling stopping by and not helping out. Men and women were segregated for worship in the Temple at this time. Many felt they shouldn't be educated in the Torah at all. This is clearly a statement in favor of women being educated. And don't forget, eduation in the Torah was pretty much it for education, there weren't public schools or universities.

I think the key word here is "distracted". It's not so much who should be doing the housework as what's important. Jesus' words "there is need of only one thing", puts this out of balance, but teaching is his job, so that's how he sees it. We can get caught up in tidying our house and sometimes forget that we do that so we can receive guests, relax, and listen to their wisdom.

Colossians 1:15-28

This is one of the epistles of Paul that began to have its authorship questioned during the 19th century. Historian Richard Carrier looks at passages like this and compares them to a faulty operating system in your computer. Every time you open your computer, you have to rewrite parts of it and send some files off to the delete bin, just to make it work.

Is this about a blood sacrifice, "now reconciled in his fleshly body through death" and "through the blood of his cross", or an awakening to "the mystery that has been hidden"? Are we now "holy and blameless" and did Jesus "reconcile to himself all things" or is there a provision that you "continue securely established and steadfast in the faith"? Paul plants himself firmly in the middle of all of this and says his church is the one that will complete "what is lacking."

You can preach like Richard Carlson who says Paul is not saying Christ's work is incomplete, "Rather such gospel ministry suffering is a demonstration of the gospel’s lasting importance especially in the face of rejection and overt opposition to the gospel." I see that as cutting and pasting some of this text and filing it away to deal with later. I don't see much difference between what Paul says here (or whomever the author of this letter might be) and what Jesus preached against; that, for example, the Sanhedrin were getting too caught up in rituals, rites and rules and forgetting about caring for their community. I don't see any difference between this so-called "new" ministry of Paul and the writers of Deutoronomy who tried to fix the problems caused by the failure of David's Kingdom.