The Fruit Basket of Faith
Amos was clear – you cannot compartmentalize your life.
The prophet Amos is not usually classified as a cheerful prophet. His words are not full of what could be described as good news. If you were not here last Sunday, our reading from Amos 7 ended with, “Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, and your land will be measured and divided up; you yourself will die in an unclean land, and Israel will surely be taken away from its land.”[i]
The prophet has two main jobs, what the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman refers to as the prophetic task: that is to critique dominant thought and structures and in doing so, announce God’s destruction of that which is unjust and oppressive. The second task then is to the “prophetic imagination” to energize and announce the good news of God’s justice and new creation. Building up after tearing down.
Amos does the first one really well. The tearing down and criticizing, the message of doom and gloom.
He doesn’t really do that second part of reimagining a new, hopeful future.
We do not often hear from the prophets. Three weeks into my sixth year at Mount Olivet, I have already preached more from the Hebrew Bible prophets that in the previous five years combined. The prophets challenge us in ways that make us uncomfortable and use imagery that confuses us. I will be honest with you, between last week’s promise of exile, death, and prostitution and this week’s darkened earth, mourning, spiritual famine, and perhaps worst of all baldness, delivering a word of good news, Gospel Good News, seems to be an impossible task.
If you were not here last Sunday and missed Sunday school the week your teachers covered Amos, here is what you need to know.
Amos was an unlikely mouthpiece for the Lord, but isn’t that how the Lord operates?
Moses was – a terrible speaker.
David – flawed king and all-around human.
The first disciples called by Jesus – some uneducated, a cheating tax collector, and one who will betray him.
The person chosen by God to spread the Good News of the gospel to the Gentiles, the Apostle Paul – was at one time the lead persecutor of the followers of Jesus.
God is in the business of calling the unlikely and equipping them for seemingly impossible tasks.
[Image 5 – Amos] Amos was not a descendant of the priestly class. His father and his father’s father were not prophets. Amos was a herdsman, meaning he cared for animals in the field. He was an outsider to the royal court, hailing from the southern kingdom of Judah. Amos traveled north when the northern kingdom was experiencing nation security and material wealth. Israel’s enemies were at bay, and the nation found itself comfortable; security and wealth for a few at the expense of many.
The vision laid before Amos appeared to be great.
First of the season fruit? Who does not love summer fruit? We had a first-of-the-season watermelon two weeks ago and ate that bad boy in less than two days.
There is nothing on the surface to suggest anything wrong with the fruit before Amos. When the Lord said, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again forgive them.”[ii] the tone of the conversation changed. But this is the trajectory Amos and the Lord have been on since chapter one, and since we rarely visit the words of this prophet, it can be easy to miss the buildup the Lord has been working toward.
Amos declared that the superficial religion of many – their Sunday morning best while not caring for the poor, going so far as to make a profit off the backs of the poor – was about to end. Resulting in their destruction. While it may not seem like it, the sending of Amos by God to the northern kingdom was an act of compassion and grace.
God was all out of patience, and the summer fruit represented Israel’s end, looking delicious and inviting on the surface but rotting from the inside out.
Their temple praise – their Sunday morning songs – would turn to wailing and sadness.
Reading like Amos eight makes us, or at least me, uncomfortable because we do not like to think of God being anything but patient, loving, and kind; full of grace, and slow to anger. A critique of me is that, as a preacher, I lean too much into the grace of God at the expense of holiness. I do not like the critique, but it is probably fair.
The problem Israel faced is similar to one we wrestle with daily – trampling on and taking advantage of the poor instead of with the people God sends to us; instead of being the people God has called us to be.
Patient.
Loving.
Kind.
Full of grace.
Slow to anger.
But Amos reveals that when we fail to care for the poor, when we fail to treat the marginalized with respect and care, or when we neglect those who cannot care for themselves, the Lord, the one who has called you and me to be bearers of God’s amazing grace, is angry, disappointed, and will set things right with or without us.
Throughout the pandemic, we heard the phrase, “we’re all in this together.” It was a catchy song in Highschool Musical and made a great sound bite for politicians who need something to say in a dire situation. The phrase is an excellent filler during a press conference and an even better tweet.
On the surface, the phrase sounds great, but like the summer fruit placed before Amos, there is more under the surface.
As we debate (argue?) about masks, vaccines, and anti-virials that are now stockpiled throughout our nation, many worldwide are desperate for the first dose of a Fauci-ouchie.
While we lamented and complained that supply chain disruptions forced us to change our daily eating habits, children worldwide were going to bed hungry because the rich (that would be us) have forgotten them.
We live in a nation that sends over $778 billion per year on national defense, spending more than the following nine nations combined, and seven of those nations are considered allies. Yet, we lament that there is not enough money to make our schools into palaces of education, ensure all people around the world have access to clean water and safe food, or that we cannot commit to caring more intentionally for our fragile planet.
There is something rotten in the basket of summer fruit.
Amos was clear – you cannot compartmentalize your life.
Religion over here. Work there. Family there.
Religion is concerned with your whole life. This is what we mean in the church when we are baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
New life in Christ cannot be compartmentalized.
What we do Sunday afternoon through Saturday night is an extension of the declaration made here on Sunday morning. There is no separation, as there is no separation for us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Decompartmentalizing our lives and seeing the places where we have benefitted off the backs of others is difficult work. It is holy work that can take a lifetime, even generations, to fully grasp and begin to correct.
Friend and mentor, retired United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon likes to say, “One way you can tell the difference between a true and living God and a dead and fake god is that a false god will never tell you anything that will make you angry and uncomfortable.”
As we contemplate our hand and witness all that is happening around the world, as well as in our community: the growing divide between rich and poor, a missing middle, violence among nations and neighbors, nationalism, unequal treatment within our criminal justice system, environmental destruction, idolatrous addiction to weapons of war, an unwillingness to care for the vulnerable – there is a word of hope.”
God is in that city. It will never crumble.
God will help it when morning dawns.
Nations roar; kingdoms crumble.
God utters his voice; the earth melts.
The Lord of heavenly forces is with us!
The God of Jacob is our place of safety.[iii]
God has not abandoned us. God is committed to the work of reconciling the world to God and us to one another. This is the work that Christ began through his life, death, and resurrection.
This work is not easy. But it is not work we do alone.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “All Christian action—whether it is visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or working for a more just and peaceful society—is a manifestation of the human solidarity revealed to us in the house of God. It is not an anxious human effort to create a better world. It is a confident expression of the truth that in Christ, death, evil, and destruction have been overcome. It is not a fearful attempt to restore a broken order. It is a joyful assertion that in Christ all order has already been restored. It is not a nervous effort to bring divided people together, but a celebration of an already established unity. This action is not activism. An activist wants to heal, restore, redeem, and re-create, but those acting within the house of God point through their action to the healing, restoring, redeeming, and re-creating presence of God.” [vi]
This work is not easy. But it is not work we do alone.
Christ told his followers, “I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”[iv]
It would make sense to throw out the bowl of summer fruit, but that is not how our Lord operates.
The Lord is with us. The Lord is setting things right, and we get to be part of that work. We give thanks and praise to God for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God and the righting of the wrongs we have had a hand in or failed to see.
“The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”[v]
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[i] Amos 7:17, CEB
[ii] Amos 8:3, CEB
[iii] Psalm 46:5-7, CEB
[iv] Matthew 28:20, CEB
[v] Psalm 46:7, NRSV
[vi] https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/re-creating-gods-presence/