What Are You Hungry For

Well, good morning again, my fellow encouragers.

Have you ever woken up already thinking about something you wanted? Before your feet touched the floor, your mind was on it. Perhaps it was something you hoped to buy, a job you needed to finish, or some news you were waiting to hear.

Wanting something isn’t unusual. But what we want can begin to arrange the rest of our lives.

On this 18th Sunday after Trinity, we are invited to reflect. The readings today ask: what do you truly love? What fuels your hunger? Our Lord calls us to love God and our neighbor, while the prophet Amos reveals the consequences when we allow other loves to overshadow that.

Amos was a prophet who spoke God’s word to Israel. In our Old Testament lesson, chapter eight, he addresses merchants who are making their living at the expense of people who can’t defend themselves. Listen to how he begins: “Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail.”

Listen to what those merchants say next. They can hardly wait for the holy day to be over so they can get back to selling. These men are hungry for gain. Their attention and their effort are directed toward the poor man’s purse.

Now let’s put that up next to Psalm 63, which we said this morning. In verse 2, the Psalmist tells God that his soul thirsts for him and his flesh longs after him, in a barren and dry land where no water is.

See the difference? The merchants are eager for gain. The Psalmist longs for God. Both passages ask us to consider what our hearts are reaching for.

Picture two imaginary neighbors. The first, we’ll call Tom, wakes before the alarm on a Sunday morning and can’t lie still. He has the truck keys in his hand before the coffee’s made. He’s thinking of the flea market across the county, where he knows a tool he wants will go for a good price, but he’s got to get there before anyone else.

The second, whom we’ll call Walter, is equally restless, with his shoes already laced. Walter is going to sit in a quiet pew before the early service, because something in him has been dry all week.

Same restlessness. Same early rising. Neither man is lazy, and neither is indifferent. Each wants, with his whole body, to get somewhere before the sun is high.

There’s nothing wrong with buying a good tool at an honest price. The question is whether that good thing has become the thing that rules us.

So, what is it that you wake up wanting? Give yourself a moment to answer.

Nobody here this morning is without desire. God made us to seek him and to receive the good things he gives. But sin bends our desires. What began as a good appetite can become something we will satisfy at another person’s expense.

And the bend is ours. As our Articles of Religion teach, we’re born inclined to evil by our own nature, and that bent is itself our corruption and our guilt. We need God to put our hearts right.

The prophet Amos shows us three places that bent desire goes: the holy day, the market, and the poor.

Start with the holy day. The merchants ask when the new moon will be over so they can sell corn, and when the Sabbath will be done so they can set out their wheat. These were times set apart for God’s people. Yet, the merchants count the hours until trade can resume. Worship has become an interruption to the real business of life.

Then the market. Amos names their methods: making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. An ephah was a measure of grain; a shekel was a weight used in payment. The merchants were cheats. They give less grain than they claim and demand more silver than they should. The scale itself is built to lie.

And then the poor. They buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, and they sell the sweepings off the threshing floor as though it were good wheat. A man’s whole life gets priced like a pair of sandals.

Psalm 62 has a word for people who put their confidence there. Laid upon the weights, the Psalmist says, the children of men are lighter than vanity itself. God has his own scale, and it doesn’t lie. And if riches increase, the same Psalm says, set not your heart upon them. Notice it doesn’t say riches are wicked. It says don’t set your heart there.

Now hold Amos up beside our Gospel, St. Matthew, chapter 22. A teacher of the law asks Jesus which commandment is greatest. We say this most Sundays near the beginning of the service. We call it the Summary of the Law.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Amos is one of those prophets. Read his merchants against those two commandments, and you’ll find they’ve broken both at once. God’s holy day is only a nuisance to them. Their neighbor is only a price. Their desire for gain has taught them to resent God and to use the poor.

And Amos speaks to us too. Article VII of our Church’s Articles of Religion says: “THE Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man.”

The Article goes on to say that “no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.” That includes the two great commandments. Amos’s question reaches our own dealings.

So let me be practical, and ask all of us, myself included. If you set prices, are they honest ones? If you go out to eat and the service is acceptable, do you consider what the person doing the work needs to live? If someone in need comes to you, do you see a neighbor, or only what that person might cost you?

And the holy day. When we’re sitting in the pew, is some part of us already out the door? Are we receiving the time God gives us to hear his word, pray, and rest in him, or only waiting until we can get back to something else?

Some of us have work we cannot choose, people who depend on our care, or worries that will not disappear simply because we have come to church. Amos is exposing a heart that resents God and exploits a neighbor. We can examine our desires and bring our actual burdens to the Lord for help.

This part of Amos is a warning we need to hear. He says a day will come when God sends a famine in the land: a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will wander from sea to sea looking for his word and won’t find it.

Amos’s warning falls on the whole land. These merchants are eager to resume selling; the people will one day long to hear the word of the Lord. See, we can become so occupied with what we want that we stop attending to the word we need.

But how can a heart like ours learn to want God? We can’t straighten it by effort alone.

The cure is a gift, and St. Paul names it in today’s Epistle, his first letter to the Corinthians: “I THANK my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in every thing ye are enriched by him.”

Grace is God’s favor and help, freely given. Paul goes on to speak of Christ confirming them unto the end. Their hope rests in the Lord who gives and sustains them.

Christ bore our sin on the cross and rose again. We come to him for forgiveness, and he gives us grace to love God and our neighbor. We can’t purchase that forgiveness by becoming more generous, or earn it by sitting through a service without distraction. Our hope rests upon his saving work, received by faith.

Before God ever asks us to love him with all our heart, he has already given us Christ.

And who is Christ? That is our Lord’s own question at the end of the Gospel. Whose son is he? The Pharisees answer that he is David’s son, and Jesus shows them that David also calls him Lord.

He is David’s promised descendant and David’s Lord. The one who calls us to love God is himself our Savior. We can bring him the thirst we cannot satisfy and the sin we cannot undo.

So the Psalm can say with confidence, “MY soul truly waiteth still upon God; for of him cometh my salvation.”

That’s why we pray as we do in today’s Collect: “LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

We ask for grace to resist temptation and to follow him. A pure heart learns to receive good things with gratitude, and to love the giver more than the gift.

So let’s begin with something we can actually do. Ask our Lord to show you one desire that has been governing you. Bring it to him plainly in prayer.

If that desire has led you to treat someone unfairly, start to make it right. Correct a dishonest charge. Pay what you owe. Offer an apology without defending yourself. Choose the step that answers the actual wrong.

And if you are worn down or worried about having enough, bring that need too. Ask for help. Let someone pray with you. Receiving care can be part of learning to trust God’s goodness.

Having heard Amos’s warning of famine, we receive God’s word with gratitude. Here at His table, we hear His word and receive the sacrament He has given us. We come because we need the mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Come as the Prayer Book bids us: truly and earnestly repenting, in love and charity with our neighbors, intending to lead a new life. If you’ve wanted the wrong thing this week, confess it, and come. If you’ve treated a neighbor as though he were only a price, repent of it, resolve before God to set it right, and come.

Come hungry. Come thirsty. Come with Walter’s longing for the Lord, and bring Tom’s ordinary desires for God to put in order. Then go from this Table ready to receive God’s gifts with gratitude and to see your neighbor as someone to love. ….. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. …..