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Alternative Endings

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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