Amos 7:7-15; Mark 6:14-29

Last week NBC was broadcasting the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. For the fourth year in a row, Venus and Serena Williams were battling it out for first place recognition. After it was all over, 21-year old Serena retained her crown as the best female tennis player in the world. Now, the sisters have been in the winners’ circle four years in a row, the 2000 & 2001 were Venus’ wins and last year and this the winner was Serena.

Now, I usually don’t follow sports too closely, except for one Midwestern college football team, that is. But, for many reasons I watched parts of this year’s tennis championship. Part of the reason is that I love to see gifted athletes using the skills and talent God has given them. Another is pure amazement. I can remember when the only people of color allowed on a tennis court were the grounds keepers. Now people of all races, colors and creeds are celebrating the freedom to compete as equals. God has taught us a lot over the years about respect, appreciation and inclusiveness.

Our first scripture reading for this morning is a prophecy from Amos. Amos was an insider AND an outsider. That is, he was usually a wealthy rancher with herds of sheep, groves of sycamore trees, a beautiful home, one of the wealthy landowners of the southern kingdom of Judah’s society, 750 years before Christ. In our reading we find him in the courts of the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, in a town called Bethel, and he has dire words to speak. Not only is Amos an outsider in these parts, but he’s also an outsider as far as prophecy goes.

Amos is not a recognized prophet of God. He has not inherited his right to prophesy from his father. Amos has, simply, been chosen by God for God’s purposes and has chosen to honor that call. It’s not an easy thing for him to do! He has to travel a distance from his home, his wealth, his family and his neighbors in order to go tell the neighboring king that God says his kingdom is doomed.

And, who should he meet first but one of the king’s inner circle, the high priest, Amaziah. Amaziah was definitely a member of the inner circle. King Jeroboam of the northern territory enjoyed a 41-year reign. And, I mean he ENJOYED his rights as king. He became so self-absorbed that he forgot all about the god he was supposed to be serving and began to take all God’s glory upon himself. He forgot about the sojourner. He forgot about the poor. He forgot about the widows and orphans. He forgot to honor the Sabbath or retain a 10% tithe to return to the Lord in gratitude for his many blessings.

Amaziah recognized Amos as an outsider in so many ways that he refuses to consider Amos’ warnings as coming from the Almighty Creator. Amos does his best to warn Jeroboam about what the future will hold for him and for his entire kingdom, but Amaziah puts a spin on what Amos has predicted. The High Priest tells the king that AMOS says the king will die by the sword and the people of his kingdom will be exiled. Well, of course, King Amaziah – not knowing Amos as a prophet – dismisses this malarkey as the ranting of some crazy man out to disrespect his leadership.

Amaziah sends Amos away – you can almost hear the contempt in his words – calling him a “seer”, a charlatan, a fraud. Still, Amos doesn’t retire without one parting testimony to his calling: “I’m not a hired prophet. I’m a rancher. But, the Lord sent me to give you a heads-up.” And, in the next couple verses he spells out the entire calamity that’s about to befall his relatives to the north. But, they wouldn’t listen to an outsider. They were on the inside, and to their way of thinking God was on the outside.

No matter how much God wanted the people of the northern kingdom on the inside of a loving embrace, they would have none of it. They were full of their own ideas. They were satisfied with what they had. They were so self-centered, they had no room for listening to God’s will for their lives.

And, in the end, everything Amos had predicted came true. King Jeroboam led his troops into battle against the Assyrians. The king died in battle and the people were taken captive, forced to leave their cushy life in Israel and turned into slaves in the most powerful nation of its time in the Middle East. Now the insiders were the outsiders. And, their situation was fully preventable, if they had remembered to honor God and follow God’s will for their lives.

Our gospel lesson for today gives us another glimpse at insiders and outsiders. Here, in the early chapters of Mark’s telling of the good news, we learn the fate of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer. This is the kind of story teenaged boys read with lots of enthusiasm. It’s all full of entangled relationships, power over life and death and a bloody head on a platter! What adventure lover wouldn’t get a kick out of this story?!?

We know more than our passage for this morning tells us. We know that John was born about 6 months before Jesus, in the foothills of Judea, to Mary’s older cousin Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah. Even before he’s born, we’re told, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. His preaching would call the nation to repentance and announce to them the salvation that God was sending to them.

Evidently, John was doing a pretty good job of proclaiming his message. Although he dressed a bit strangely, wearing camel-hair shirts, and he had a crazy diet of locusts and wild honey, even King Herod Antipas respected him. Herod had John arrested when he heard John saying the king shouldn’t have married his divorced sister-in-law. You can’t be part of the inner circle and have some guy going all around town saying you’re living immorally. Can you? Who knows, maybe Herod put him in prison for his own protection, so his powerful, mean-spirited wife, Herodias wouldn’t send her goons after him in the dark of night out there in the Wilderness!

Anyway, Herod (the grandson of Herod who was king when Jesus was born), heard that Jesus was being labeled as a prophet, like the prophets of old. Some even said maybe Jesus was John the Baptizer raised from the dead. And that brought back Herod’s memory of what he’d done to John. Talk about insiders and outsiders!

It happened at Herod’s birthday bash. Everyone who was Anyone was there, of course! Can’t you see it? A real toga party! The finest food, the best wine, the most talented musicians and exotically beautiful dancers. And among the dancers was Herod’s own daughter with Herodias, Salome. Salome must have been quite some dancer! Or, maybe Herod was just a proud papa. But, when she finished dancing, her daddy promised her anything her little heart desired.

This, of course, pleased her mother immensely. Salome asked Mom for advice about the reward she should claim. And, that’s when Herodias came up with her clever plan to silence the prophet and his demands for repentance forever. Well, we know what happened next. Dear daughter asks doting Daddy for the head of the prophet on a platter. And, so as not to be embarrassed in front of all those insiders at his birthday party, dear ol’ Dad orders his henchman to make it so.

Insiders and outsiders. Jeroboam, Amaziah, and Amos. Herod, his wife Herodius, Salome and John. Some thinking they’re SO inside that they’re actually OUTside. Others so outside that they wonder what’s so great about being inside. And, most of them don’t realize OR refuse to recognize that they are ALL inside God’s loving concern.

Today WE live in a world filled with insiders and outsiders, too. Some of us look at wealth as an indicator of being “on the inside.” Some look to sports trophies or public citations of bravery or ingenuity to determine who’s in and who’s out. In some circles, the ability to break the law and get away with it determines membership. In other circles, lifelong loyalty to a particular neighborhood, career or church is looked at to determine who’s top dog. There are all kinds of criteria used by all kinds of folks. But, the one criteria that really counts is the one used by our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, the one God who loves each and every one of us – inside and out!

The One who created everything and everyone that has ever existed or ever will exist has a message of inclusion, of respect and appreciation to make known in this world. And, God has chosen us to spread that good news wherever we go. God may call us out of our circle of comfort, away from the way we’ve always done things, to take risks in order to follow where God is leading. But, we can trust that call and answer it with excitement and joy. We can listen for God’s will, go where God leads us, and make the circle ever wider to include all those God loves.

Inside and out, we all belong to God through the riches of God’s grace in Christ Jesus our Lord. As we struggle to discern the mystery of God’s will for our own futures, we need to remember whose loving arms embrace us as we venture out. We are always inside the circle of God’s love. Amen.