I wonder how often you take a day off. Ok, so some of you probably take a day off from work twice a week, perhaps Saturdays and Sundays, right? However, how many of you take a day off from errands, and work, and housework, stress,
paying the bills, shopping whether for need or want? How often do you take a
day off from all of the normal routines in life, how often do you stop for a day or even a few hours and sit back and allow
yourself to be in the presence of God? To find yourself lost in prayer, or taking
a break from all of the thoughts that so often distract us? In other words, how
often do we keep the commandment that tells us to keep the Sabbath holy?
I can hear all of the comments now about how impossible
that is, how there is no way to stop functioning in this day and age, that if you were to stop you would be so far behind,
that God surely intended that commandment for a different time, and hello, I’m here in church doesn’t that count? And that is just to name a few of the possibilities going through all of our minds. But God does want us to take a break from the regular routine of life, to stop and
just be in the presence of God, so that our spirits and our bodies are refreshed and nourished and ready for what is to come
next.
Perhaps we need to be reminded of what the Sabbath
is. Our scripture today is a response to the people, God is responding to how
they have been living their lives. God is pointing out that he is very aware
that the Sabbath has not been kept. He knows that the merchants are carrying
on with business during the Sabbath and not only that, but they are taking advantage of the poor and the oppressed, that because
they are not keeping the Sabbath they are going to be kept from hearing the word of God.
God is letting them know that they are not living as he commanded them. We
have one commandment that is reserved strictly for this notion of keeping the Sabbath and making it holy.
I don’t
know how many of you now, but Rochester, NY was
on the forefront of creating legislation that encouraged the Blue Laws. A group
called the Sabbatarians wanted to ensure that the Sabbath was kept, which meant no drinking, no cooking, no one leaving their
homes, no bugles played in the town square, and many others. These laws were
established to ensure that people kept the Sabbath holy. I am sure many of us
have experienced some of these laws still in effect; I know that in the state of New York, one cannot purchase
alcohol before noon on a Sunday, and many stores remain closed on Sunday’s to this day. I remember stories my mom use to tell me about how she wasn’t allowed to do anything on Sunday afternoons
while she was growing up, she wasn’t allowed to play cards, or to read a book and the conversation was always subdued
to the point of whispers.
Looking back on this time in our nation’s history,
I wonder how much good these laws managed. I can imagine being a child growing
up during this time, and just hating Sundays, you couldn’t go out and play, you had to go and listen to a sermon that
was probably filled with fire and brimstone instead of hearing about the love of God.
I don’t think that this method of forcing a Sabbath really had much of a positive impact. And I don’t think that is what God was calling us to do, that’s not how we were suppose to
keep the Sabbath. I believe that the example of keeping the Sabbath we should
seek is that of Christ. How many times throughout the new testament do the gospel
writers tells us that Jesus went out by himself to pray, that he got up early in the morning to find time alone with God. This is our example of what it means to keep a Sabbath. God wants us to rest, wants us to spend some quality time with him, seeking him, listening as the words
of the Bible wander through our minds, as we take a break from the stuff we do all the time, to take some time out alone with
God.
Keeping the Sabbath doesn’t necessarily mean
devoting your entire Sunday to God, perhaps Sunday isn’t a quiet day for you, perhaps there are more errands to run
on a Sunday, things like taking children to sports games and practices, visiting friends and family in the nursing home or
watching the game. But maybe there is another day of the week that is a little
more open, a day where you might have an hour or a couple of hours where you could do something else, but instead you decide
to make an effort to spend that time in a Sabbath state. It may seem hard to
believe, but God wants us to rest, God wants to spend time with us, and I think many of us, myself included find it easier
to do everything except spend that needed quality time with God.
Our scripture today is a great example of God being
angry, but in a, it’s for your own good kind of way. Amos tells us that
God is angry with those who are taking advantage of the poor. There were many
merchants who were not only working on the Sabbath but who were also trying to rip off the poor. They tried to sell them the stalks of wheat instead of the useful parts of wheat; they used different scales
for when they were selling verses when they were buying. If they were selling
something to someone, they would use a heavier scale to weigh the product, so the buyer would end up with less, and they would
use the lighter scale when they were collecting payment so they would end up with more money having sold fewer products.
In the course of Amos, God delivers 5 visions to Amos,
all warning of the impending destruction to Israel. In this the 4th vision, God
has taken them from an early Spring plague, a summer drought, and now a late summer of ripened fruit, God is telling the people
more than just that their crops will not flourish, but he is letting them know that because of their bad and deceitful deeds,
they themselves will not flourish. For the people a late summer crop would at
least mean that soon it would be time for the fall rain, but what God is telling them is that it will not come, that they
did not heed his warnings and because of that, he will not provide for them.
God wants us to protect the poor and to strengthen
those who need help, but instead of help, the merchants of the day deceived them and stole from them. It seems like a very powerful statement, and a hard example to relate to, for I am sure no one here is
purposefully being deceitful and stealing from the poor, but are we caring for them as we are told to, are we treating our
neighbors the way that we should. Are we showing the love that God has shown
us to other people, are we bringing our faith to work and treating people in every aspect of our lives with the love and respect
that we should? Do we even do the small things like bringing a can of food in
for carpenter’s corner when we are asked to do so, and do we give that can of broccoli soup that we accidentally picked
up instead of the chicken soup we wanted?
You are probably asking yourselves what all of this
has to do with the Sabbath. The last few verses of today’s reading
is a good place to start. The last few verses talk of a famine: “11 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. 12 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.” This sounds
like a harsh statement at first, but taking it in stride, it calms down a bit. God
is explaining through Amos, that these words about plagues, and droughts, and over ripe fruit is not an actual famine, but
that it is a famine from God. God is being overly obvious here; he is saying
that if you aren’t going to take time out from your lives to spend some time alone with him, you won’t know him. I don’t think God is actually saying he won’t be there for them no matter
how much they look for him. Instead God is saying unless you actually want to
find me, you won’t, if you don’t spend the time in prayer and reading the word, you won’t understand it,
you will be distant from God, not because God has gone away, but because you have put even more distance in between you.
What would it be like, to never hear the word of God? But if you aren’t listening are you able to hear? So you have to stop and reflect in order to hear, it isn’t a taking away, it is a realization of
the lack of it already. Seeking the wrong things, seeking wealth and taking your
neighbor for all they are worth, forgetting the point, forgetting to care for them as we would want to be cared for, taking
away their respect and acting as though we are so much more important than they are.
The message that was delivered to the people of Israel is one that we need
to hear from time to time. If we don’t take the Sabbath time, if we don’t
treat it as Holy time, we will drift away from God, not because God drifts away from us, but because we stop seeking God,
we stop striving to grow closer. We need that one on one time with God to be
reminded of how to treat others, because it is out of our love for them that we are able to help them, and the love we have
for our neighbor is a response to the love that God has for us.
So even if it is a couple of hours a week, take that
time as a Sabbath, hold your calls, ask your family for this time, tell them you need it, establish a family Sabbath, maybe
Saturday mornings, instead of running around town frantic take time at home to read the Bible and spend that time with God. It isn’t impossible to find time, what takes effort is keeping it Holy.
