Proper 11, Y C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Proper 11, Yr C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Amos 8:1-12 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Luke 10:38-42
In the name of the one, holy, and loving God:
in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Amen.
As many of you know,
I enjoy gardening,
and if time and my body allowed,
I’d garden all day, every day!
Beginning in early June,
my Summer morning routine
is to grab my cup of coffee and a small bowl
and head to our backyard.
I begin with the raspberries
and walk along the canes and the bees,
looking first for the obvious ripe berries
and then bending over to peak underneath the leaves to see who’s hiding.
Invariably, down low to the ground
I’ll see several berries that have been nibbled on,
so I’ll pluck off the rest and throw it onto the ground for easier access
for our shorter neighbors.
Then I head over to the blueberry bushes.
Out of seven blueberry bushes
I have hardly eaten any!
This year we covered one small bush with some netting,
so I’ll lift the rock off the edge of the netting and pluck a few ripe blueberries.
As I head around the garden path,
I end up at the tomato plants
and add a few ripe tomatoes to the bowl.
At the end of my morning stroll through the garden,
I have an empty coffee cup
but a bowl full of summer fruit!
The bowl is a rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and some hue of purple.
This past Wednesday at the clergy Bible study when we read from Amos,
and Amos responds to God’s question:
“Amos, what do you see?”
with: “A basket of summer fruit”
One of the clergy remarked that this vision of a basket of summer fruit
was a vision of God’s abundance.
And, I understood that.
At the end of my morning walk through the garden,
if I only have one blueberry, three raspberries, and two tomatoes,
I feel overwhelmed with God’s bounty!
And the miracle of life.
In Amos’ day the miracle of life and God’s bounty
are not being well tended by the people of Israel.
And God calls Amos to reveal to them the error of their ways.
They are not tending to the needs of the poor in their midst
but are instead focused on increasing their own bounty at the expense of those in need.
Amos says that the time will come when they will be completely deaf to the word of God.
They shall run to and fro seeking the word of God
but shall not find it.
At first glance it is challenging to see the connection between the reading from Amos
and today’s Gospel,
yet as I thought further,
it seems to me that Mary found the basket of fruit!
Mary experienced God’s abundance
as she sat at the feet of Jesus,
listening to his teaching about love and forgiveness and mercy and new life.
Several things struck me as I sat with this Gospel.
It dawned on me that this was Jesus’ first encounter with Martha and Mary and Lazarus.
This is a family
who becomes Jesus’ “home away from home.”
This is the house and the family to which Jesus returns
right before he enters Jerusalem to begin his journey to the cross…
the journey of the witness to the ultimate way of forgiveness and love.
I think we often hear this story as:
Mary got it right,
and Martha missed the boat.
But, I’m not so sure that’s what Jesus is saying.
Martha is hustling and bustling to provide hospitality to Jesus and his disciples.
She wants to make sure they are welcomed and have enough to eat
and experience a little rest on their journey.
Those are all gifts she has to share…
food, organization, space to share.
But…
she gets irritated that her sister isn’t helping her.
And she complains to Jesus.
Jesus then says to her,
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;
there is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part,
which will not be taken away from her.”
The question is:
What is “the better part?”
Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.
Jesus loves doing that…
saying cryptic things and letting us figure out what he meant…
or maybe letting us figure out what we need to hear to find abundant life!
Mary seems to be perfectly content sitting there listening to Jesus…
she is staring at her basket of summer fruit…
being filled to the brim with abundant life.
While Martha is mumbling and grumbling,
getting more irritated by the minute,
until she blurts out that Jesus should do something!
Martha, Martha, you are distracted by many things.
Jesus doesn’t say that her acts of hospitality are in error
but that she is distracted.
If she were full-on focused on cooking
and setting the table
and arranging the day’s flowers and fluffing the pillows…
seeing that abundance in front of her,
then perhaps she, too, would be filled with the Life right in front of her.
One of the clergy on Wednesday asked this question:
How do we redeem our time?
How do we redeem our time?
That seems to be the question of these texts.
How do we live in such a way that we see God’s abundance right in front of us,
and then how do we share that abundance with others?
As we all know,
providing hospitality…
preparing a meal for others
takes quite a bit of organization, preparation, and work.
As a community we do that through Backpacks,
meals at Clyde Central,
Holy Smoke,
and even Sunday hospitality time after church.
Are we able to engage all of this,
focusing on God’s abundance in our midst?
Focusing on the gifts we have been given and are then able to share with others?
What about the many other ways we experience and share God’s abundance in our lives?
And it can be little things
as well as big things.
As I was writing this sermon,
I glanced out of the window into our backyard.
A quick flicker of brown caught my attention.
I wondered if perhaps a frog or cricket had unsettled a leaf.
And then I saw two brown peaks that mirrored each other in shape and motion,
and I expected to see a butterfly perched on a rock or a flower.
As I sat up a little more straight,
I saw a fuzzy head
and the hunched over back of a bunny nibbling on a blade of grass.
All at once,
I understood who had been nibbling on the tips of my raspberries down near the ground
as a flash of irritation bristled in me
and then melted into gratitude for this little life
that was also enjoying the basket of summer fruit.
How do we redeem our time?
This week I invite us all to slow down,
pay attention to God’s abundance that is right in front of our very eyes,
and then share our gifts with those in need.
Amen.
