6th Sunday after Pentecost
July 21, 2019
Amos 8:1-12
One of my favorite things about summer is the fresh fruit
and vegetables. Whether you grow it in your own garden or pick it up at the
local farm stand, or even what I get at Food Lion, it is all delicious! It’s no
wonder Larriland’s pick-you-own is always busy whenever you drive by! Summer
fruit is typically high in water content, it’s sweet, and it’s refreshing.
What’s not to love? Most English translation of our Amos passage use the phrase
“summer fruit.” God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit and then asks an
obvious question, “Amos, what do you see?” Amos says, “A basket of summer
fruit.” If he were a teenager he would have added a “duh” on the end. And God
adds what appears to be a non-sequitur, “The end has come upon my people
Israel.” Okay… it’s hard to see the connection there God, but sure, we trust
you. However, this is actually a word play in the original Hebrew. “Summer
fruit” isn’t the literal translation from Hebrew. It’s actually “ripened
fruit.” In Hebrew, the word for “ripened fruit” is a homonym for the word “end,”
as in the two words sound the same but have different meanings, like the number
eight and I ate a banana. That’s how God then creates the wordplay to make the
connection between a basket of ripened fruit and the end for the people of
Israel. Here, we read from the NIV translation, which is one of the few English
translations that tries to recreate the wordplay in English. God asks Amos,
“What do you see?” Amos says, “A basket of ripe fruit.” God replies, “The time
is ripe for my people Israel.” There is a sense of humor in the Bible. It
doesn’t always translate either to modern times or to our language, but it’s
there. What happens to ripe fruit that’s not eaten? It withers, rots, and dies.
So, Amos gets to prophesy God’s judgment to God’ s people. Time’s up. The end
is here. The time is ripe. God will spare you no longer.
Amos isn’t someone you often preach on, he’s considered
one of the minor prophets in the Bible, so let’s start with a little background
about him. Of all the prophetic books in the Bible, both major and minor, his
was written first, in the 8th century BC. Amos was originally a shepherd, taking care
of sheep like some of y’all, and he was from Judah, which was in the south. If
you remember some of your history of Israel, Saul was the very first king, then
David, who wrote the psalms, then David’s son, Solomon. And while Solomon was a
great king in many ways, like he was famous for his wisdom and he built God’s
temple in Jerusalem, he also led God’s people astray in other ways, with his 700
wives and 300 concubines, many of whom worshiped other gods, and so he strayed
from the one, true God. The consequence was that after Solomon died, the
country was split in two, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. So, Amos
is from the south, and he’s sent to the north, to prophesy in Israel. One
commentary I read said that “No other biblical book emphasizes the
destructiveness of God as much as Amos.”[1]
And there does seem to be a lot of that in Amos. Another vision in Amos is that
of a plumb line, so that Israel can see how far they’ve strayed from God. There
are a total of five visions in Amos: locusts, fire, the plumb line, the ripe
fruit, and, finally, the destruction of the altar. These visions all have to do
with coming judgment, with God’s judgment on Israel because they’ve strayed
from God and they keep messing up and they don’t realize or care that they’ve
strayed. They’re not singing, like we do in the hymn “Come, Thou Found of Every
Blessing,” that “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I
love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”[2]
No, the time is definitely ripe for God to do something different.
The
good news I found in my seminary Old Testament notes about Amos was a comment
that Amos is a prophet of repentance, not a prophet of doom. There is a theme of
life throughout his book which already implies the possibility of repentance.[3]
There is still hope for God’s people. They are never without hope. God never leaves us without hope. In Amos
5:14, God says, “Seek good, and not evil, so that you may live, and the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.” Amos is a call to repentance, to
“hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts,” and in the gate.[4]
There is hope, but things can’t keep going how they always have been, same ol’,
same ol’. The time is ripe for change. It’s the end of business as usual.
Why is it the end? Because actions have consequences. Look
at what’s going on in Israel at this time. People are trampling on the needy.
That’s like kicking a dog while he’s down. People are trying to do away with
the poor of the land, whereas Jesus says, “you will always have the poor with
you,”[5]
and he was very concerned with the poor and how we treated them and whether or
not we helped them. There were “merchants who could not wait for the religious
holiday to end so they could get back to fleecing the poor with their high
prices for grain.”[6] I
know Thanksgiving isn’t a religious holiday, but that sounds an awful lot like Black
Friday shopping creeping into Thanksgiving Day. Some retailers can’t stand
having to close on a holiday; some consumers can’t, either. Hello, online
shopping! Not only that, these merchants are using weighted, dishonest scales,
they’re inflating the prices, and they’re shortchanging their customers. What
this means is that “They do not trust God to provide for their well-being and
instead take every opportunity to secure more for themselves, even at the
expense of others.”[7] Do
you trust God, or do you feel like you’ve got to matters into your own hands to
make sure you’re looked out for? And, when you take matters into your own
hands, does it hurt others? Her in Amos, God’s had enough. You were supposed to
take care of the widow and the orphan and the immigrant and the poor and the
needy, that instruction is all throughout Scripture, both Old and New
Testaments. We are called to take care of those less fortunate than ourselves,
not abuse them. There was even an article in the newspaper last week with the
title, “Fines, jail, debt: Court policies can punish poor.”[8]
It’s about low-income people who are imprisoned for not being able to pay a
fine, and then they are charged a fee for being in jail, and so their debt has
just kept increasing while they’ve had no way of being able to pay it. And you
can say they shouldn’t have incurred the fine in the first place, yet even so,
you have to give them a chance to pay it back, not lock them up and keep
charging them more fees, which, again, is like kicking a dog while they’re
down.
You
see, in Amos and elsewhere, there is no separation between ethics and worship.[9] Worship and faith go hand-in-hand with
ethical practice. How you live shows what you actually believe. It’s like that now-dated
saying of looking at your checkbook to see where your priorities are. God says
there are consequences for disregarding the poor and afflicted. When you engage
in unjust practices, it affects your relationship with God. “When we cast our
cares on buildings, programs, and social status, we squander and ignore the
word of God revealed in the biblical text and freshly revealed to us through
Christian discipleship. When we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, when we
deny shelter to the refugee, when we judge the oppressed for their oppression,
when we disregard the one because we are content with the ninety-nine, we have
violated God with our evil. When we are complicit with evil regimes that rend
children from their parents, delight in the destruction of others, and use
people as a means to build wealth and power, we have violated God with our
evil.”[10]
As we sang in our middle hymn, which quotes from the prophet Micah, “We are
called to act with justice, we are called to love tenderly, we are called to
serve one another, to walk humbly with God.”[11]
That rally that happened in North Carolina last week, that was not just or
loving or humble. That was racism and hatred and evil, which we promise in our
baptismal vows to resist. There was
nothing just or loving or humble about it. As God’s people, we are called to
renounce evil and to work for good, we are called to love God and love our
neighbor, whoever our neighbor may be.
And so, if you have found yourself complicit with unjust
systems, then the time is ripe to do something different. And you’re in good
company, because God decided the time was ripe to do a new thing, too. Even
“though God established covenant relationship with Israel, their repeated
unjust behavior prompted God to end the relationship, compelled to do something
new.”[12]
And the question is asked, “What are we doing with the word God has given us
today?”[13]
Are we seeking good and not evil, so that we might live? Are we living into
what God requires of us, “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God”?[14]
I don’t know where you are with the personal side of this, if you’re praying,
if you’re giving, if you’re speaking up and asking God what else you can do.
Here’s
where we are on the communal side of it. At Administrative Board this past week
we updated our mission and vision statements, the descriptions of what we’re
about, our goals, why we do what we do, and what our vision is for the future.
We didn’t get it in this week’s bulletin but it’ll be in next week’s and in the
next newsletter. It had been 20 years since it was updated, it was getting a
little overripe, so coming from the Great Expectations Team we formed when I
started two years ago, and edited by the Administrative Board, here’s what we
wrote:
Our
mission is to make disciples by gathering for worship, growing in faith and in
grace, and serving in love. From our roots in Christ, we nurture our community
by welcoming everyone and reaching
out to all who are in need.
Specifically for 2019-2020, we will focus on ministry to and with children.
Our
vision is to become a thriving congregation, rooted in Christ and nourishing
our community. This includes becoming financially stable, having a high
participation from our congregation, being hands-on, and being noticeably active
in our community.
Our
values that we identified, that already exist here, I’m just naming them, are
Hospitality, Outreach, Community, and Children.
Is
that who we are at Lisbon? Does that resonate with you? Do you agree with what
your leaders have said about us and who we are called to be? If so, what can we
do to continue living into that calling?
If not, what can we do to get there?
The
time is ripe. The fruit is ripe. It’s delicious, but it will go bad soon if
left out. Y’all know that. I’m preaching in a farming community. So what
specifically is the time ripe for you to do? What can you do about the hatred
and vitriol you witness? What can you do about the divisions in our society? What
can we do to help make our community
more just and loving and walking humbly with God? We start with ourselves. We
don’t spread hatred. We call it out when we see it. We work to bridge the
divide. We keep ourselves humble and close to God. We do the loving thing. At
any crossroads, there shouldn’t even be a question of what to do, because the
answer is you show love. We said we welcome everyone, no exceptions. And we
said we want to help all who are in need, with no conditions. Let us start this
morning with prayer.
[2]
UMH 400
[3]
Class notes, Old Testament 12, Dr. Stephen Chapman, Duke Divinity School,
January 22, 2008
[4]
Amos 5:15
[5]
Matthew 26:11
[6] Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3,
p. 246
[7] Preaching God’s Transforming Justice,
Year C, p. 324
[8] By
Travis Loller, AP, printed in The
Baltimore Sun, July 13, 2019
[9]
Class notes, Old Testament 12, Dr. Stephen Chapman, Duke Divinity School,
January 22, 2008
[11]
“We Are Called” by David Haas, in The
Faith We Sing, #2172
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Micah 6:8
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