What Are You Looking For? | Amos 5:6–7, 10–15 | Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 10, 2021 | 10:45 a.m.
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Communion will be celebrated during this service. If you plan to visit with us, please read our communion statement.
READINGS
Amos 5:6–7, 10–15
Psalm 90:12–17
Hebrews 3:12–19
Mark 10:17–22
Message presented by Rev. Frank C. Ruffatto
+Points to ponder
- What are some of the ways we wrongly view (and use) people as we pursue what we perceive is fulfilling to us?
- What are some ways that God gives us to seek and to find Him?
- In regard to the First Commandment Dr. Luther said: “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.” What is your answer to his statement?
+Sermon Transcript
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Faithful Lord, whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies never come to an end: grant us the grace to trust You and to receive the gifts of Your love, new every morning, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“What are you looking for?” It’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s Saturday, and you’re at home. You’ve wandered into the kitchen, you’ve opened the pantry door, and you’re staring at the contents. “What are you looking for?” is the question that comes from your spouse or your family member when they find you standing there. And truth be told, you don’t really know what you’re looking for. You know you’re hungry (or maybe bored), but you can’t decide if you’re looking for sweet, or salty, chewy, or crunchy. You have several options before you, and yet there isn’t one that stands out as the answer to your craving.
In light of our texts this morning, this same question, “What are you looking for?” is a question one could appropriately pose to emotionally and spiritually restless and unsettled people.
But what answers might we hear? Maybe the ones on this not necessarily exhaustive but definitely illustrative list: I’m looking for happiness. I’m looking for excitement. I’m looking for love. I’m looking for a place to belong. I’m looking for purpose. I’m looking for a good time. I’m looking for escape.
One way or another, we are looking for something that is satisfying, fulfilling, that makes us come alive. And yet, experience proves that none of the avenues to life just mentioned come through for us for any real length of time. Moreover, we were not created to seek our source of life in any of these things. As Dr. Luther puts it in his Large Catechism: “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.”
God’s people during the time of Amos knew a thing or two about seeking out their source of life apart from God. Amos is writing at a time of relative political stability in both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. His prophecy is addressed primarily to Israel, the Northern Kingdom.
However, the external national stability is masking serious spiritual problems. Generations earlier, King Jeroboam had set up calf idols in the cities of Bethel and Dan, and Israel had followed their kings in practicing idolatry right up to the time of Amos’s writing. The people had also adopted the false gods of the people around them.
Ultimately, the people had adopted the worship of the most ancient (and modern) of false gods: the god of self.
In service to their own appetites, the uber-rich and well-connected people – the elitists of Amos’ day were building beautiful homes and planting luxurious vineyards, and they funded their efforts by oppressing and defrauding the common people.
From our reading we hear of the charges God has against His people: “you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain …” When the complaints of the trampled people arise against these unfair taxes, the Lord addresses the elitists saying, “I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins – you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.”
And more, God sent the prophet with warning of the consequences of their idolatry and their tyranny: “you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.” And these warnings would find their fulfillment in Israel’s destruction by the Assyrians within a generation of Amos’s writing, about 722 BC.
But before we get too smug about the plight of these elitists, we, like the well-connected of Amos’s day, we are not immune to the petty tyranny we can bring to those around us in our search for the good life.
When we seek after comfort, we can find ourselves seeing people as servants of our comfort. When we seek after wealth, we can find ourselves seeing people as merely means of production.
When we seek after pleasure and self-gratification, we can find ourselves seeing people as objects to satisfy our desire. When we seek after power, we can find ourselves seeing people either as allies in our pursuit or as obstacles to be removed.
But God Himself is seeking so much more for us. Amos didn’t simply communicate judgment. Through the prophet, God was pursuing, and was pleading with His people: “Seek Me and live... Seek the Lord and live… Seek good, and not evil, that you may live.”
By nature, we would seek life in a thousand so-called, “good” things. But only one can give real life, abundant life, eternal life.
“Lov[e] the Lord your God ... for He is your life and length of days.”
“And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Beloved, the beautiful, good news is that when we did not seek God, He sought us. The one through whom all things are made and have life came to earth, seeking out His twisted and death-bound creatures. With acts of love and mercy, Jesus bore witness of the life He came to give us.
Even so, His people rejected the author of life, at times walking away sad like the rich young man in our Gospel lesson this morning, and ultimately by giving Him over to death on a cross.
But thanks be to God, Christ, the source of all life, destroyed the power of death and lives forever to be our life. He comes to us today to invite us to seek our life in Him, with the promise that we will find it. We find it through the Absolution, through the message of the Gospel, through the sacrament we receive in which He communicates His real presence and life to us.
Having sought and found our life in God, we then see people rightly, as objects of His love and our love. Justice for and care of our neighbor flow from a life that has been justified for Jesus’ sake. Because we have a source of life in Jesus that does not fail, we seek to bless those around us instead of letting our petty tyrannies come against them.
If we were to read to the end of Amos’s prophecy, we would find that the prophet had words of hope for his wayward countrymen. God would seek his people. God would find his people. God would save his people. And in the end, God would bring them home to a land where they would build homes and dwell in them and where they would plant vineyards and enjoy the wine. For they would dwell in his presence forever, rightly related to Him and to one another. It’s a picture of the new creation, the hope that Jesus has won for us!
WE DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT WE’RE SEEKING, BUT GOD HAS SOUGHT AND FOUND US IN JESUS SO THAT WE MIGHT SEEK AND KNOW HIM.
And in a world full of people who don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, we relish this opportunity to seek the God who sought us and then to seek the good of others, that they, too, might know the love of our seeking and rescuing God through us. This is where true life is found! Amen.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”