More or Less

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday September 18th:
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Amos
8. 4-7

Hear this, you who 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 measure out less and charge more, and tamper with the scales, 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.”

One of the things I loved most about living in Edinburgh was my neighbourhood — the Old Town. Almost every service I’d want in the run of a week was within a 15-minute walk: fishmonger, grocer, bank, chemist, university, pub. A favourite shop was Greggs, the bakery. Not infrequently, I’d request a dozen jelly doughnuts and, to my delight, receive thirteen treats of deliciousness — the baker’s dozen.

A widely accepted explanation for the baker’s practice of giving customers thirteen baked goods when only twelve were purchased is a lesson in caution. Encyclopedia Britannica reports that, in medieval England, rigid laws governing the price of grain (and, therefore, wheat for bread making) meant that bakers had to be careful to provide value for money. A baker found to have cheated a customer by providing undersized loaves — even inadvertently — could be fined or even whipped. Faced with the challenge of making baked goods that were uniform in size in the absence of a scale to weigh their dough, bakers decided to err on the side of caution by adopting the practice of giving extra: thirteen loaves rather than twelve. 

Contrast this with the grain merchants we encounter in the First Reading for this Sunday. They make it a point to give not extra value but less value. They “measure out less and charge more.” They “tamper with the scales” so that customers are forced to pay more for grain than it is worth. They undervalue their customers’ money, forcing them to add more coins to make up the shortfall. In this way, they make the poor poorer, pushing them closer to the point where they must sell themselves into slavery to pay their debts. And, rather than embracing the Sabbath and “new moon” holy days as times to worship, these grain merchants are impatient to get them over with so that they can resume their trade and make more money. 

This last part of the reading gives me pause, and I ask: how do I approach Sundays and other holy days? To be honest, there are times when I’m working on a project, and I just want to get it done. I may be tempted on Sundays — and other days of rest — to finish painting that room or cleaning those windows. (Of course, there are times when we have to work on Sundays. Hospital workers, bus drivers, all sorts of people are duty-bound to work on Sundays, and there’s not a thing wrong in that.)  

I might see myself as being on better ground than the grain merchants; they are neglecting the Sabbath for greedy, anti-social reasons, whereas I’m being productive and doing “useful” things. But perhaps it’s helpful to think not about what I am doing, but what I’m not. At the core of it, the problem is that, by choosing work over worship, I’m prioritizing something over my relationship with God.

My grandmother often said, you can give one day a week to the Almighty. I try to remember this. God is good to me, and I have so much to be grateful for. Is my life so busy that I cannot set aside labour for one day a week and instead enjoy rest, worship and recreation? Of course, I can, and I should. Rest, worship and recreation are beneficial. I can be disciplined enough to appreciate God’s gift of one day each week in which to enjoy and embrace them — maybe with a nice cup of tea and a jelly doughnut.




Donna Davis

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