When The Fruit Is Spoiled
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
When we speak of Amos today, we know that he was one of Israel's great prophets. Yet at the time when Amos spoke, he took pains to remind us that he was just an ordinary migrant worker. What he spoke were the words God had shown him.
God spoke to him through a series of visions that came to Amos when he was in worship. As he participated in these common rituals of worship, which he and others had seen hundreds of times, this time the ritual had a clarity that it had never had before. It is the fourth vision that I want to focus on.
The fourth vision given to Amos was a basket of summer fruit. It was the annual offering of the firstfruits of the harvest. The offering was at the conclusion of the harvest and in anticipation of winter rains that prepared for fresh plantings. People would bring a fresh basket of the finest of their harvest and place it on the altar as a gift of thanksgiving to God.
The offering took place as it did each year, but suddenly something stirred within this particular migrant worker. It was as if God was saying to Amos, "What do you see?"
Amos responded with the obvious, "A basket of summer fruit" (v. 2). And there was silence as the words played over in Amos' mind.
To understand what happened next, you must understand that Hebrews loved to play with words. Punning, rhyming, and word associations were normal for them. The Hebrew word for summer fruit was quayits, and it had a rhyming quality with qets, the word for end.
It would be similar to Amos seeing a party with a band and dancing and God saying, "What do you see?" and Amos responding, "I see revelry" and God would respond, "Perhaps you should see reveille -- the trumpet awakening the people."
For Amos, God was saying the ripe fruit suggested not thanksgiving for harvest and trust for winter rains but an "end" to the relationship with God. What looked so ripe and beautiful was on the verge of being spoiled and rotten. This last basket of summer fruit spoke of the end time. God confirmed this by saying, "The end has come upon my people Israel, I will never again pass them by" (v. 2b).
Amos' message was an angry message and hard to hear. Yet he was angry because he feared for the soul of Israel. He was fearful that God was going to reach the limits of divine patience and give up on the people. Despite the fact that people were actively participating in acts of worship, Amos believed that they were turning their backs on God.
If Amos was to parallel his message to us today, he would be focusing on how our materialistic culture is driving us away from God. Using Amos' images let me take you down that path and see what you conclude.
First Amos sees people becoming over-identified with their work and losing any vital sense that they are reflectors of God in their lives.
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?"
-- Amos 8:4-5
You know that the sabbath and the service of the new moon were religious festivals. Both were times when people were to cease work and refocus on their connection with God in whose image they derived the meaning of their lives. They were doing that, but Amos detected a restlessness as if their bodies were in worship but their minds were already making business plans for when the sabbath was over.
Setting aside for a moment the connection between that attitude and its impact on the poor and the needy, are there signs in our society that commercialism is more important than worship? We can easily make generalizations, but let me provide you with a simple test for yourself.
Let us say that you received two letters in the mail. Letter one said that the company was downsizing and your employment would no longer be necessary. Letter two said that the church had decided that you were not living up to what God asks of you, and therefore you would be barred from worshiping God in the future. Which letter would make you feel the most helpless?
Which would most threaten your sense of identity? Which would make you merely storm off in a rage proclaiming that no one can stop you from doing what you want to? My guess is that we are not nearly as frightened of church decisions about us as we are about secular decisions that affect our future.
We might even think that it is a silly question because we have a responsibility to feed our family and that is more directly affected by our work than our worship. We easily pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," and yet we assume it is our decisions, not God's, that will provide us with the bread we eat.
Now take the next step with Amos. He believed that when we make this disconnect between worship and work, we lose the core of our identity that can easily result in ethical lapses. When our identity is so tied up with our work, the pressure to succeed is so enormous that we push the envelope of what is acceptable. He accused the people of making "the ephah small and the shekel great, and practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat" (vv. 5b-6).
The ephah was the basket in which the wheat was measured and the suggestion was that the merchant had a deceptively small basket. The silver was weighed out with a scale with so much weight making a shekel, only here the weight was made to be extra heavy.
The result was more wheat was paid for with less money, thus shaving the profit in favor of the merchant. The sweepings of the wheat were the leftover wheat on the market floor that was to be left for the poor to gather. To sweep them up for sale was to rob the poor of their food.
When your identity is tied up with your profession or work and success is measured by the margin of profit, the pressure is on to push the ethical boundaries in order to secure more profit. Most communities benefit from the charitable gifts of our local businesses. Yet as the market tightens and mergers occur, the lingering question is whether such community support will continue.
Again a personal test: You are asked to make a recommendation as to an action of your business or company. One way may be ethically fuzzy but the lawyers assure you they can win any legal case brought against the company, and it will in a manner enhance the profits of the company. The other way benefits employees but may cut into quarterly profits, which will cause stock prices to fall and therefore limit cash available to operate. On what basis do you make such decisions?
Is it even fair for Amos, or your pastor, to suggest that such decisions are connected with your worship of God? In fact, if you heard such words enough, might you decide that you wanted to find a church that would proclaim a more pleasant message?
Now comes the real difficulty with Amos' message. "The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord" (v. 11). When we become so focused on our work that we grow restless when we are away from work, worship becomes a burden rather than a joy. Sabbath time becomes an interruption of what is important rather than a taste of heaven.
Another personal test: Which happens more often in your life?
1. You are working on a task at home or at work and suddenly your mind wanders to a moment in worship in which you experienced a sweet moment with God.
2. You are in worship and your mind suddenly wanders to a task at work or at home.
Amos confronts us head on with the question: "Who are you?" Has your life so drifted from the God who gave you birth and fills your life with meaning that your identity depends upon accomplishing tasks that can be taken from you in an instant of corporate decision making or a bad run of health?
I think Amos is right that our souls are in danger. That is not because we are evil people. We are not. It's not even because we don't wish to please God, we do. Rather, it may be because we have been so trapped in this crazy system that we don't know how to get out of it.
In the gospel lesson there is the familiar story of Jesus being in the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha is feeling the burden of responsibilities of being host and complains about Mary who is simply sitting at Jesus' feet and listening. Jesus responds to Martha's complaint by saying, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part ..." (Luke 10:41-42).
My prayer for us is that we will recognize before it is too late to choose the better part. Amen.
God spoke to him through a series of visions that came to Amos when he was in worship. As he participated in these common rituals of worship, which he and others had seen hundreds of times, this time the ritual had a clarity that it had never had before. It is the fourth vision that I want to focus on.
The fourth vision given to Amos was a basket of summer fruit. It was the annual offering of the firstfruits of the harvest. The offering was at the conclusion of the harvest and in anticipation of winter rains that prepared for fresh plantings. People would bring a fresh basket of the finest of their harvest and place it on the altar as a gift of thanksgiving to God.
The offering took place as it did each year, but suddenly something stirred within this particular migrant worker. It was as if God was saying to Amos, "What do you see?"
Amos responded with the obvious, "A basket of summer fruit" (v. 2). And there was silence as the words played over in Amos' mind.
To understand what happened next, you must understand that Hebrews loved to play with words. Punning, rhyming, and word associations were normal for them. The Hebrew word for summer fruit was quayits, and it had a rhyming quality with qets, the word for end.
It would be similar to Amos seeing a party with a band and dancing and God saying, "What do you see?" and Amos responding, "I see revelry" and God would respond, "Perhaps you should see reveille -- the trumpet awakening the people."
For Amos, God was saying the ripe fruit suggested not thanksgiving for harvest and trust for winter rains but an "end" to the relationship with God. What looked so ripe and beautiful was on the verge of being spoiled and rotten. This last basket of summer fruit spoke of the end time. God confirmed this by saying, "The end has come upon my people Israel, I will never again pass them by" (v. 2b).
Amos' message was an angry message and hard to hear. Yet he was angry because he feared for the soul of Israel. He was fearful that God was going to reach the limits of divine patience and give up on the people. Despite the fact that people were actively participating in acts of worship, Amos believed that they were turning their backs on God.
If Amos was to parallel his message to us today, he would be focusing on how our materialistic culture is driving us away from God. Using Amos' images let me take you down that path and see what you conclude.
First Amos sees people becoming over-identified with their work and losing any vital sense that they are reflectors of God in their lives.
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?"
-- Amos 8:4-5
You know that the sabbath and the service of the new moon were religious festivals. Both were times when people were to cease work and refocus on their connection with God in whose image they derived the meaning of their lives. They were doing that, but Amos detected a restlessness as if their bodies were in worship but their minds were already making business plans for when the sabbath was over.
Setting aside for a moment the connection between that attitude and its impact on the poor and the needy, are there signs in our society that commercialism is more important than worship? We can easily make generalizations, but let me provide you with a simple test for yourself.
Let us say that you received two letters in the mail. Letter one said that the company was downsizing and your employment would no longer be necessary. Letter two said that the church had decided that you were not living up to what God asks of you, and therefore you would be barred from worshiping God in the future. Which letter would make you feel the most helpless?
Which would most threaten your sense of identity? Which would make you merely storm off in a rage proclaiming that no one can stop you from doing what you want to? My guess is that we are not nearly as frightened of church decisions about us as we are about secular decisions that affect our future.
We might even think that it is a silly question because we have a responsibility to feed our family and that is more directly affected by our work than our worship. We easily pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," and yet we assume it is our decisions, not God's, that will provide us with the bread we eat.
Now take the next step with Amos. He believed that when we make this disconnect between worship and work, we lose the core of our identity that can easily result in ethical lapses. When our identity is so tied up with our work, the pressure to succeed is so enormous that we push the envelope of what is acceptable. He accused the people of making "the ephah small and the shekel great, and practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat" (vv. 5b-6).
The ephah was the basket in which the wheat was measured and the suggestion was that the merchant had a deceptively small basket. The silver was weighed out with a scale with so much weight making a shekel, only here the weight was made to be extra heavy.
The result was more wheat was paid for with less money, thus shaving the profit in favor of the merchant. The sweepings of the wheat were the leftover wheat on the market floor that was to be left for the poor to gather. To sweep them up for sale was to rob the poor of their food.
When your identity is tied up with your profession or work and success is measured by the margin of profit, the pressure is on to push the ethical boundaries in order to secure more profit. Most communities benefit from the charitable gifts of our local businesses. Yet as the market tightens and mergers occur, the lingering question is whether such community support will continue.
Again a personal test: You are asked to make a recommendation as to an action of your business or company. One way may be ethically fuzzy but the lawyers assure you they can win any legal case brought against the company, and it will in a manner enhance the profits of the company. The other way benefits employees but may cut into quarterly profits, which will cause stock prices to fall and therefore limit cash available to operate. On what basis do you make such decisions?
Is it even fair for Amos, or your pastor, to suggest that such decisions are connected with your worship of God? In fact, if you heard such words enough, might you decide that you wanted to find a church that would proclaim a more pleasant message?
Now comes the real difficulty with Amos' message. "The time is surely coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord" (v. 11). When we become so focused on our work that we grow restless when we are away from work, worship becomes a burden rather than a joy. Sabbath time becomes an interruption of what is important rather than a taste of heaven.
Another personal test: Which happens more often in your life?
1. You are working on a task at home or at work and suddenly your mind wanders to a moment in worship in which you experienced a sweet moment with God.
2. You are in worship and your mind suddenly wanders to a task at work or at home.
Amos confronts us head on with the question: "Who are you?" Has your life so drifted from the God who gave you birth and fills your life with meaning that your identity depends upon accomplishing tasks that can be taken from you in an instant of corporate decision making or a bad run of health?
I think Amos is right that our souls are in danger. That is not because we are evil people. We are not. It's not even because we don't wish to please God, we do. Rather, it may be because we have been so trapped in this crazy system that we don't know how to get out of it.
In the gospel lesson there is the familiar story of Jesus being in the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha is feeling the burden of responsibilities of being host and complains about Mary who is simply sitting at Jesus' feet and listening. Jesus responds to Martha's complaint by saying, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part ..." (Luke 10:41-42).
My prayer for us is that we will recognize before it is too late to choose the better part. Amen.
