From the Prophet Amos:
Do two walk together unless they have made an appointment?
Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from its den if it has caught nothing?
Does a bird fall into a snare on the earth when there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground when it has taken nothing?
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Amos 3:3-5 (NRSV) – December 3, 2013.)
This series of questions is asked by Amos just before he asks, “Does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it?” (v. 6b) He’s provoking his readers (originally, his listeners) to answer each preliminary question, “Of course not” so that their answer to his capper will also be “Of course not.”
Amos’ question: “Does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it?” Amos’ answer: “Of course not!”
What is Amos saying here? Is Amos promoting that sorry sort of pop theology that says, “Everything happens for a reason” and implies that the reason is the will of God? Is the prophet promoting that equally sorry sort of personal religion that, when some misfortune strikes, asks, “What did I do wrong?” and implies that personal unhappiness, too, is punishment from God for a failure of faith or a paucity of piety?
If so, I reject the notion. I think the prophet is just dead wrong! “Does disaster befall a city unless the Lord has done it?” Sure. Everything does happen for a reason, but not every reason is God’s doing. Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, the reasons have nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the nature of the physical and human reality within which we live.
I used to practice personal injury law litigating cases where misfortune befell people who then sued other people because everything has to be somebody’s fault . . . somebody else’s fault . . . and that somebody should be made to pay damages because of my inconvenience. I reject that notion, too. All too often the cause of injuries and misfortune is pure accident. Nobody did anything wrong. They couldn’t have done anything other than what they did. And yet … well … there’s a bumper sticker that (politely rephrased) reads, “Stuff Happens.”
That’s the nature of reality . . . that sometimes “stuff” just happens. Not because somebody willed it so, not because somebody made a mistake or acted negligently or did anything wrong, and certainly not because God decreed it. It just happens. The great British preacher Leslie Weatherhead once said, “Surely we cannot identify as the will of God something for which a man would be locked up in jail, or put in a criminal lunatic asylum.”
In fact, Weatherhead suggested that to blame catastrophes and other terrible events on “the will of God” is “a greater blasphemy than the denial of the Holy Trinity.” He went on to say, “One of the first things we must do is to dissociate from the phrase ‘the will of God’ all that is evil and unpleasant and unhappy.” Evil, he noted, is never creative of good; I think that was his polite British way to say “stuff happens.” But in every circumstance where calamity and misfortune befalls us, where “stuff happens,” there is opportunity for good to be revealed.
So what does a person of faith do with that? When “stuff” happens, what should a person of faith do? That’s a pretty good Advent question because one thing I know about Christmas celebrations is that, invariably, stuff happens. Things don’t go according to plan. Presents get lost or broken. Special dishes don’t get cooked properly (or at all). There are arguments. Feelings get hurt.
Be prepared for it! And when it happens look for the opportunity to redeem it, to sooth the hurt, to be an instrument of God’s good and creative will to redeem the “stuff.”
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
In the library of my parish church is a pen-and-ink drawing of Jesus laughing. It’s not a picture I particularly like, nor is it particularly well executed. In fact, if someone hadn’t told me that it is supposed to show Jesus laughing, I would have thought he was angry! Whenever I look at it, this verse from the Psalter comes to mind.
Friday was a Holy Day in America! It was a day when all across the nation thousands, if not millions, of people breathed prayers of thanks. It was a day when all across the nation thousands, if not millions, improved the lives of many, many others. It was a day when news organizations from the smallest local radio station to international broadcast and cable conglomerates asked Americans across the nation, “How did you participate?” Yes, Friday was a Holy Day in America!
Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States. A day whose name comes from financial accounting and the ancient practice of recording profits in black ink, losses in red. Supposedly, at one time, this was the day when retail merchants who might have been running “in the red” the whole year would see themselves “in the black” at long last. I don’t know if that is still the case, but the name has stuck. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving Day.
I had to read the first line of this familiar parable three or four times this morning before my eyes (it had to be my eyes; it couldn’t have been my brain) focused well enough to properly read the word landowner. On first reading, I read it as lawnmower. 
Obadiah’s words (on behalf of God) are directed to the Edomites; this short (one-chapter) book is a rather dire prediction of the complete destruction Edom for the way it had dealt with Israel. Apparently it was correct for there seem to be no Edomites, nor any descendants of Edomites identifiable in the modern world.
I will go on record has being not an adherent of the ransom theory of the Atonement, which holds that the death of Christ was a ransom sacrifice in satisfaction for the bondage and debt on the souls of humanity as a result of inherited sin (another theory, “original sin,” with which I have some strong debate). It is unclear to me exactly who is the recipient of the ransom. Depending on who is setting out the argument, the ransom is usually said to have been paid either to Satan, which I think makes the ol’ devil rather bigger than he ought to be, or to God the Father, which makes the Almighty considerably less than we ought to think of God.
Read it carefully, it’s not what you think it is. It’s not what you expect. It’s not a call to make agricultural implements out of the weapons of war . . . it is quite literally the opposite!
This part of Isaiah was written shortly after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, which Cyrus of Persia had allowed in the middle of the 6th Century BCE. Isaiah (on God’s behalf) was promising two things with these images of laborers enjoying the fruits of their own efforts: first, that the people would no longer be (if not slaves) subjugated workers of foreign (or domestic) overlords and, second, that there would be peace. Israel’s and Judah’s history had been one of regular (if not constant) upheaval with invaders coming in and taking control of the vineyards and seizing the people’s lands and homes: the simple planting of vineyards with an expectation of enjoying the crop was a metaphor of peace and security. 
Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Like everyone who was even marginally grown up or conscious on that day, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when it happened. It is one of those moments in time that are surreal in their clarity. 
