This morning\u2019s Bible readings introduced us to two farmers, which is quite fitting for a Harvest service. <\/p>\n
The first of our two farmers is a man called Amos. Now, from what we heard this morning it\u2019s not obvious that Amos was a farmer, but if we go back to the beginning of the book of Amos, to the very first verse of chapter one, we read this,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n
This introduction tells us a few important things, including the fact that Amos was a shepherd, probably from a family of shepherds. He wasn\u2019t from a priestly family, or from a line of court prophets, he was just an ordinary, working man. A shepherd.<\/p>\n
The other thing this verse does is place these messages in their historical context. Following the reigns of the famous Kings David and his son, Solomon, the kingdom had split into two, the southern kingdom of Judah, and the northern kingdom of Israel. God had a message for the northern kingdom, Israel, and Amos was God\u2019s messenger. <\/p>\n
Most of the message is made up of warnings that if they continue in their unfaithfulness to God, and disobedience to God\u2019s commands then bad things will happen. One of the consistent themes is one of social and economic justice. The oppression of the poor by the rich, the concentration of wealth, and the injustice of the socio-economic systems of the society are roundly condemned repeatedly.<\/p>\n
Now, we noticed that Amos wasn\u2019t one of the court prophets \u2013 he was an outsider, and not surprisingly the King and his courtiers didn\u2019t take kindly to this working class shepherd going round condemning the injustice in the land. So, one of the official court prophets, Amaziah, goes to tell him to shut up and to flee. We can read Amos\u2019 reply in Chapter 7:14<\/p>\n
\u201cI am no prophet, nor a prophet\u2019s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, \u201cGo, prophesy to my people Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, we get this idea of Amos being a normal working man, pulled by God our of his comfort zone to share this challenging message. As a side note \u201cdresser of sycamore trees\u201d doesn\u2019t mean putting dresses on trees. It\u2019s likely that he worked in sycamore fig orchards \u2013 pruning and harvesting. I get the idea of a seasonal worker- with the flocks in lambing time and then working in the orchards in that season \u2013 an agricultural labourer getting seasonal work where he could find it. <\/p>\n
What we heard read this morning is like a summary of all the warnings that this working class, northern bloke brings against the ruling classes and merchant princes of Israel. It\u2019s a condemnation of exploiting the poor, weighting the scales, pursuing profit at the expense of everything else. God sees all this, all the back room deals, the stitching up of markets, the collusion of the wealthy, and God will enact justice.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll come back to Amos\u2019 message in a little while, but for now we\u2019re going to have a think about our second farmer, who appears in this strange story that Jesus told. <\/p>\n
We don\u2019t know this farmer\u2019s name, but he was at the other end of the economic scale from Amos. He was rich. We know this because Jesus says so, but also by implication. He could afford to employ a steward to run his estate for him. The amounts that he was owed by the debtors who appear in the story were huge. He was a very wealthy man. <\/p>\n
Now, as background, there a couple of possible explanations for how these debtors ended up owing this man these huge amounts. It seems to me that the most likely explanation is that they were crop share rental agreements. These were tenant farmers who worked the land on the understanding that they paid their rent with a share of the crop of the land. The farmer who rented the olive grove paid with a share of the pressings from the olives, and the farmer who rented the wheat fields paid in a share of the wheat crop. <\/p>\n
Just to get the scale of this, the \u201chundred measures of wheat\u201d is the equivalent of about thirty tons, which seems like quite a lot of wheat to me. <\/p>\n
Now, this farmer had a problem. His steward was skimming some of the profits of the estate for himself. The farmer calls him in for an explanation, which he can\u2019t give, so he\u2019s fired and told to bring the accounts books to the office. While he\u2019s on his way his mind is scheming about how he\u2019s going to turn this situation to his advantage. He\u2019s still got the account books \u2013 the official records, and no-one else knows that he\u2019s about to be fired, so as far as the tenants know, he still has the authority to change the deals. Which is what he does. He changes the terms of the tenancy, reducing the rents due. <\/p>\n
Now we get to the strange part of the story. When the farmer finds out what has happened what does he do? He commends the dishonest steward. How does that go I wonder? When I was thinking about this, I could maybe imagine him giving a wry chuckle, and saying something like, \u201cWell played, son.\u201d You see he couldn\u2019t unwind the changes, or have the steward charged, because then he\u2019d lose face in the community. He\u2019d rather eat the loss than let everyone know that he\u2019d been had. <\/p>\n
On the back of this story, Jesus starts talking about our relationship with money, with possessions, with wealth. He makes it clear that money is something that we are to use, not something that is an end in itself, and which we should be on our guard against it being something we come to serve. As Jesus says in his well known conclusion, \u201cYou cannot serve God and mammon.\u201d<\/p>\n
This carries strong echoes of the message that God had sent through Amos. The wealthy rulers of Amos\u2019 time, the landowners and commercial heavyweights were serving, worshipping, Mammon. Everything was about how much money they could make, they could gather together, they could acquire, no matter who got abused, trampled, cheated in the process. They were very poor stewards of what God had entrusted to them. They proved that they could not be trusted with the \u201clittle\u201d that God had given them \u2013 because compared to the true riches of heaven the paltry riches of money are indeed little, and they were about to have to it all taken away from them.<\/p>\n
So, what about us, what do these accounts of two different farmers have to say to us today as we celebrate harvest?<\/p>\n
Perhaps the first thing is to recognise that God sometimes speaks to us in unexpected ways, and through unexpected people, and sometimes that person is us. Amos didn\u2019t expect to be a prophet, he wasn\u2019t trained for it, or educated in it. He was just obedient to God when the call came. The story that Jesus told is an odd one, there are things about it that don\u2019t seem to make sense. We have to chew over it and puzzle it out. Sometimes that\u2019s the way God shapes us and our thinking, by giving us puzzles to work through.<\/p>\n
The second thing is about our own stewardship, our own attitude and relationship to money and wealth. At this time of harvest we celebrate the work of farmers, of those who produce the food that we eat. We are grateful to God for the relative plenty that we enjoy. We also have an opportunity to reflect on that plenty and to recommit ourselves to sharing that plenty. Over the last few years it\u2019s been great to support the Community Fridge, and we look forward to the time that something like that can be re-established in this area, so that we can support that as well. Please pray for Nick as he is involved in the planning of what shape that might take. As a parish we support other initiatives like the CAP debt centre, that supports people to get free from unmanageable debt. Being involved in these things, with our time, money and prayers, helps us to keep money and wealth in the rightful place, as servants, as tools, rather than serving them and seeing other people as tools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning\u2019s Bible readings introduced us to two farmers, which is quite fitting for a Harvest service. The first of our two farmers is a man called Amos. Now, from what we heard this morning it\u2019s not obvious that Amos was a farmer, but if we go back to the beginning of the book of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[477],"tags":[1396,1240],"class_list":["post-1144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eyton","tag-amos-84-7","tag-luke-161-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}