The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (C), July 17, 2016 - Amos 8:1-12 and Luke 10:38-42

Abel Meeropol cited this photograph 

of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, 

August 7, 1930, as inspiring his poem, Strange Fruit.

Strange, Summer Fruit

The summer fruit of which the prophet speaks

Reminds me of a powerful critique

By Billie Holiday, about strange fruit,

With blood on the leaves and blood at the root.

And though it's been now close to eighty years,

The bitter crop of which she sang appears

On Facebook feeds and in this summer's news,

Such that, today, the nation sings the blues.

Scott L. Barton

Amos 8:1-12

This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” says the Lord God; “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!”

Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

Luke 10:38-42

Real Freedom

Oh Martha, oh Martha, you're running around,
Distracted, and worried and tense;
And Mary's no help, and the Lord does not care,
He simply wants grace to dispense.
Yes, that is the thing we find so hard to hear,
There's more to do than there are hours!
We cannot keep up; we resent those who don't;
And wish that we had much more power.
But what Jesus means, when to Martha he speaks,
Is, if his disciple you'd be,
You'll trust him 100 per cent with your life;
Receiving: That's when you are free.

Scott L. Barton

(Also at http://lectionarypoems.blogspot.com/2013/07/ninth-sunday-after-pentecost-july-21.html)

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered 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.”