Amos 9.1-15, Luke 10.38-42
Sometimes novels have alternative
endings. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a good example. It has a happy ending
and an unhappy one. I don't know who first had this idea, but we find it in
Amos chapter 9.
It's not clear just how bad the bad
ending really is. Is it only the shrines at Bethel and Dan which will be
destroyed, or will the destruction extend to the Jerusalem Temple too? The
hilltop shrine at Carmel will offer no refuge, so the destruction he envisages
seems pretty comprehensive.
Even if the worshippers took refuge in
the sea, the sea serpent Leviathan would bite them! They might be tempted to
dig down to the world of the dead, or climb up to heaven, to take refuge, but
they will find no sanctuary and their enemies will take no prisoners. This is
epic stuff, like the Avengers’ movies on steroids.
The story pivots just as it reaches its
most cataclysmic point. God has fixed his eyes on his chosen people, with the
alarming intention of doing them harm, not good, and promises to utterly
destroy their kingdoms. But then, in the very next breath, the prophet tells us
that God will not utterly destroy the nation after all. Instead the
people will be shaken through a sieve - put through the ringer as we might say.
Life won’t be easy for them, but neither will it be the complete disaster that
Amos had foreseen before.
And then comes the happy ending, one
long harvest where the person ploughing for the next harvest will overtake the
person who is still reaping the last one. ‘I will plant my people upon their
land,’ says God, ‘And they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that
I have given them.’
This isn’t just a colourful prophecy
from the past. It’s exactly the sort of rollercoaster ride that we’re actually
living now. If Boris Johnson becomes prime minister we’re going to leave the
European Union on the 31st of October ‘with no ifs, no buts, no maybes.’ Pushed
a little harder in a Talk Radio interview, he said he would ensure Brexit happens
by the new deadline, ‘come what may, do or die, deal or no deal.’
I suppose the scariest version of the
story ends with the question, ‘How ready are any of us to die in a ditch with
Boris?’ as supermarket shelves empty, medicines run out and so on. The hopeful
version ends with what Mr Johnson promises will be a ‘new dynamic’ in the
negotiations with the European Union and ‘goodwill on both sides’.
The singer Cheryl Crow has been living
through the Amos alternative endings too, but in reverse. When a fire broke out
at the Universal Music archive in 2008 the company played down the consequences
at first, claiming that the fire had done very little serious damage and it had
been a lucky escape. Only now do we learn, thanks to some digging by journalists
at the New York Times, that thousands of original music recordings and back-ups
- including demos, alternative versions and unreleased songs - went up in smoke
and flames. Cheryl Crow says it feels apocalyptic. And if the loss of her
back catalogue leaves you less than traumatised, remember that the same thing
happened to all the music of Buddy Holly, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, to
name but a few of the artists affected. This is Amos in reverse, the ending
where everything is utterly destroyed and not even a remnant survives.
Every day life sometimes offers the
same stark choices. The other night I dozed off in front of the television and
when Helen finally managed to wake me, 45 minutes later, I was convinced that
it was already the next morning and I had just over half-an-hour left to get
down to Trinity Church in Wakefield before it would be time to begin the
midweek circuit communion service. She insisted it was still the evening before
and even showed me the date on her phone. I looked at the date on my own phone,
but still wasn’t fully convinced. That was the nightmare ending to the story,
where I would have had to quickly gather my things and jump in the car right
away.
But then I looked at the TV screen and
thought, ‘That boring programme from last night is still going on,’ and a
happier outcome slowly presented itself. I was just confused after waking up
suddenly out of a deep sleep.
On a more serious note, we sometimes go
to the hospital to get the results of tests or to be examined by a consultant.
Is it going to be the nightmare ending, where we have something incurably wrong
with us, or the happy ever after version where we just have to pop an extra
pill?
I came back from an angiogram once.
There were six of us waiting for the diagnosis. One man was told there was
nothing much that could be done, but he should adjust his lifestyle and that
might help. Two others were told that further treatment was available. Then the
consultant had to rush away to deal with someone - an inpatient - who had taken
a turn for the worse after his angiogram. When she returned it was to
tell me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me at all and I was just
unfit. The happy ending - this time - but I felt quite embarrassed to be so
well.
Maybe we can make sense of Amos’s
alternative endings by thinking about it like this. John Leach, a training
officer for the Church of England, suggests that all of us deserve what’s
coming - even the worst of all possible endings. God’s judgement is upon us and
he is minded to smite us and smite us hard. And yet to do so would mean that
his loving purpose for us and our world would have been completely thwarted so,
in the end, he is also inclined to show mercy. He can never quite go nuclear.
But we should never take his graciousness for granted. Because it is entirely
undeserved the only proper response is penitence and humble gratitude.
Jesus rebukes Martha for being ‘worried
and distracted by many things.’ Instead of driving ourselves distracted by
worrying about dying in the last ditch with Boris on Brexit Day we should sit
at the feet of Jesus and focus our attention on his teaching. As the hymn says,
‘his mercy is for ever sure,’ so even when if go over the rapids or down the
waterfall of a full-on Brexit he will be with us.
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