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And to think that it all began with an innocent basket of fruit. Still life, if you will. No branches or vines of life attached to this summer fruit…all in the basket must be eaten quickly if it is to avoid rotting. A simple basket of summer fruit sounds delicious, doesn’t it? But when God showed the basket of fruit to Amos, surprisingly Amos did not dig in. He barely had time to identify the oranges and lemons, the bananas and strawberries and grapes, the pineapples and blueberries and pears and kiwi. OK, perhaps the basket of fruit in Amos’ land was not as overflowing or as opulent as our fruit basket would be here in sunny southern
California
. Perhaps it contained only a small selection of prized fruit, a sampling of delicious, delicate food that was unavailable to the prophet and his people any other time of the year. That fruit, accompanied by God’s immediate interpretation, quickly became a symbol that the time was ripe for
Israel
’s indictment.
Like the fruit, the chosen ones were cut off from their source. Like the fruit,
Israel
would soon be bruised. Like the fruit, they were becoming rotten before the prophet’s very eyes, and, in the process of decaying, they were stinking up the nostrils of their Creator God.
What was the source of
Israel
’s rottenness? In case Amos had his head stuck in the sand for the past several decades, God gets specific.
Israel
has trampled on the needy. The poor were no longer safe in their country. Merchants were impatient for the sacred days to be over so that they could resume their fraudulent business. The wealthy people were making loans of grain to the poor, cheating as they did so…effectively turning the poor into slaves who would never be able to break the vicious cycle of indebtedness. With increasing consistency those in power in the land were enmeshed in what I call stealthy wealth…quietly, insidiously, becoming richer and richer on the backs of the poor who were getting poorer and poorer.
I am reminded of Barbara Ehrenreich’s book of a few years ago, entitled, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. In order to see how the “other half” lived, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism, and assumed the demeanor of a poor person trying to find a job. She wanted to experience how the working-poor tried to survive on the wages of the unskilled—$6 to $7 an hour, seeking jobs that would pay rent and food and expenses in a number of cities across the
United States
.
What she found was astonishing to those of us with secure lives and better-paying jobs. No place she called “home” was able to provide her with enough compensation to make ends meet. In every job—including work at Wal-Mart, in health care, as a house cleaner, and a waitress—and no matter how many hours she labored—there was always more month left at the end of her money. Beset by transportation costs and high rents, Ehrenreich learned the tricks of survival from her co-workers, some of whom slept in their cars, and many of whom worked when they were vexed by arthritis, back pain or worse; yet still managed small gestures of kindness.
Reviewer Lesley Reed notes, “Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, Ehrenreich has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still she almost winds up in a shelter…Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise…Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit…Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit—where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty.”
Like the prophet Amos of old, we, too, live in a world whose social structure depends on a clear-cut class system, with the poor at the bottom and the wealthy at the top. A recent study, conducted by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, conducted in 2006, concluded that the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth…turns out that the so-called “other half” is really 98% of the world’s people, who must find a way to live on the remaining 50% of the wealth.
In this particular study, the term “wealth” means net worth: the value of physical and financial assets less debts. This study is the first of its kind to cover all the world’s countries and all major components of household wealth, including financial assets and debts, land, buildings and other tangible property.
Lest we think the term “wealth” applies only to billionaires, think again. The research found that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which — with 37 million members worldwide — is far from an exclusive club.
To no one’s surprise, the study revealed that wealth is heavily concentrated in
North America
,
Europe
, and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these areas collectively hold almost 90% of total world wealth. By ourselves, we here in
North America
have only 6% of the world’s adult population, yet we account for 34% of household wealth.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s research coupled with this most disturbing study on world wealth distribution assures us that we, too, are among the world’s wealthy. As did our ancestors in ancient
Israel
, we too, run the risk of stepping on the poor as we garner riches for ourselves and our families. We, too, hold that symbolic basket of abundant, ripe summer fruit, and wonder…what shall we do with it? Is the time ripe for our indictment as it was for
Israel
’s?
Yet, look again at the version set down by Amos, and we see also that the time was ripe for
Israel
’s repentance. The fruit basket could be either hoarded or shared freely. And so can our wealth. As an example, we need not look further than the household wealth of Mary and Martha in the gospel story we heard this morning.
Typically, this familiar gospel story is viewed as a story in contrasts: the manual labor of Martha is seen as over against the more cerebral sitting-at-the-feet-of-Jesus that Mary chooses. Jesus’ words, “Mary has chosen the better part…” are usually interpreted as brow-beating to those stuck in the kitchen and as ego-building for those who managed to get out of serving duty. I prefer for us to turn this little story on its head and see it a bit differently today. Let us move beyond the easy descriptions of work vs. thought, of doing vs. being, and see this first-century household more holistically. Perhaps, just perhaps, Martha and Mary are both offering important, even necessary, gifts to assure that the visit of Jesus to their home will be a hospitable one. For without prepared food, the feast would be barren, and without stimulating conversation, the evening with Jesus wasted. Mary and Martha each offer the best of who they are; each one lives in the present moment with as much integrity as she can muster. Martha does it with an apron, Mary at the feet of the Savior.
Martha’s meticulous work is compromised by her anxiety, not by the work itself, but by her worrying about many things. Martha is easily distracted, forgetting her purpose in this encounter which may be to lovingly plan the meal just as Mary lovingly listens to Jesus. Jesus seems to be calling both Mary and Martha to experience God’s vision for this moment – a feast that joins faith and food, listening and doing, working and being.
Many years ago, Brother Lawrence urged his readers to “practice the presence of God” moment by moment. Such a practice—whether in the kitchen, outside in the garden, in a cubicle or classroom or coffee shop—leads to peace, abundance, and reconciliation. Such a practice of the presence of God moment by moment has the potential of transforming the basket of summer fruit from indictment to blessing, of leading we who are wealthy to face the unjust economics of our world.
But what do we do as we face these vastly divergent and unjust economic realities? As people of faith, and as faithful people, how do we respond? We can choose, like the ancient Israelites against whom God is railing, to stealthily hoard and engorge our own accounts at the expense of others. Like Amos the prophet, we can angrily indict others, and even ourselves, for the double-edged sin of callousness and greed. Like the household of Jesus’ friends: Mary and Martha, we can choose to be healthy with our wealth: offering it in abundance to the weary traveler and the itinerant teacher; giving more than expected to local charities and global ministries; keeping our ears tuned to the presence of God in our daily lives, who often comes to us clothed in need and parched from thirst. Wealth, you see, does not have to be the final nail in our coffin. In fact, of all the people I’ve shepherded through that portal we call death, not a one has gone with a wallet or a purse. Our wealth is a tool and no more. A tool, according to scripture, that can lift the poor and provide food and drink for the hungry and thirsty. Our wealth is a tool to be used by us to bring life or to destroy hope.
In speaking of the immense power we wield through our wealth, Mother Teresa once said, “We can cultivate a holy awareness of God in all of God’s ‘distressing disguises…Accordingly, we can not only experience ‘something beautiful for God,’ we can also ‘do something beautiful for God…’” as we bring compassion to the community and a bit of God’s beauty to the world.
I would add that perhaps that beauty will include offering a piece of ripe fruit to your neighbor, or, if you dare, a whole basket of abundant, delicious fruit to your enemy…
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