Amos and a Basket of Summer Fruit

Readings: Psalm 52, Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10:38-42, Amos 8:1-12
 Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY July 21st, 2013

A printable PDF file can be found here

How Long, Oh Lord, How Long? How long is this mans sermon going to be? How long do I have to sit here and endure his blah, blah, blah, God this and God that. How long before I get out of here?

How long before I can back into the real world and do the important stuff. There’s money to make, golf balls that need putting in holes, fish to catch, TV programs I need to watch, home decorating tasks to complete, relatives to visit, food to eat. How long oh Lord?

And into the church walks Amos carrying a basket of fruit. “We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land”. Come and taste the fruit of the harvest! So we bite into the fruit. And Amos asks, “Enjoying it”. ‘Uh-huh’ we reply.

“Well you better enjoy it, because it’s the last bit of good fruit you are going to taste. The harvest is over and the time is ripe for getting your life sorted out. I’ve got news for you. You are the people of God and that means God is on your case. God has been watching you. Not from a distance, but up close and personal.

God has witnessed the true intentions of your heart and noticed that you keep shutting Him out. God has seen the dodgy deals, heard the unkind words, watched over your compromises, heard loud and clear your secret thoughts, witnessed your sins, walked through your world and God’s verdict is; ‘What a mess!’.

And even as you take your last bite the tidal wave of God’s judgment is poised and about to come crashing down on you. Splash! But this time it’s not a few ‘Plip plip plop little April Showers’, but a raging flood that is descending, and it will wash away all that is not of God. It’s going to the bad day of bad days, the fat lady is going to be shedding so many tears she won’t be able to sing a note and not a single hair of your head that isn’t rooted in the love of God will survive.” Such is the uncomfortable message that Amos offers!

Amos 8:11-12 “The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from North to East, they shall run to and fro, seeking the Word of the Lord, but they shall not find it”.

Always seeking. Never finding, Wanting God so much, but still failing to make the connection. Moving from this philosophy to that religion, from this way of life to that way of thinking, Dropping in, dropping out, dropping off the edge. Amos sees this kind of behavior as a sign of God’s judgment. And it is something that we see replicated time and time again all around the world.

In this land a variety of voices tell us that there is a huge thirst for spirituality. There is a whole smorgasboard of options to choose from. People try a bit of this and a bit of that and never really make a lasting, long-term commitment to anything, always keeping their options open.

That was how it had become in the nation of Israel under the influence of King Jeroboam and the prophet Amaziah. They had set up altars to other gods than the God of Israel, the One who had told them. “I the Lord your God am a jealous God”, and “I shall be Your God and you shall be my people”.  They were a covenant people, established in a covenant that had the force of marriage. A covenant that lifted up faithfulness. ‘No other gods but me”. A covenant of love and life long commitment.

“If you want to be someone,
And you want to go somewhere,
You better wake up and pay attention.”

How does God wake us up and call us to be His people? The scriptures point us to a number of ways. Not everybody has that Apostle Paul experience of heading totally the wrong way and then God breaking in and sending them immediately in the right direction. Some do. But for most it seems a more gradual process.

It seems for many that as we journey through our lives God offers windows of opportunity where we sense a call to commitment. These can be whilst we are or on a retreat or on a mission trip or at a Conference, or they can come at times when we’re just reading a novel, or taking a hike or working out.

Sometimes these moments strike during a crisis, a pregnancy or a birth, an illness or the death of a loved one, the loss of work or the taking on of a new task.  Sometimes they just come out of nowhere, unanticipated, unsuspected, even unwelcome. A word of warning. Sometimes these moments even happen in Presbyterian churches on a Sunday morning.

Windows of opportunity, what the Irish would call ‘thin places’ where heaven seems for a moment to make contact with the earth. Moments when we catch a glimpse, or sense a word outside of ourselves, or there is just a quiet understanding that is saying “Commit Your way to the Lord Your God and He will guide your path”.

These moments can be fleeting and transitory and if our mind is so much caught up with the things of this world they so easily pass us by. I know I’m not alone in having that experience where we have a mind to do something, or call somebody, or express concern, and then something else comes along, something usually of much less significance, and the moment is lost, that window of opportunity is gone forever.

“If you want to be someone,
And you want to go somewhere,
You better wake up and pay attention.”
Be attentive because it is peculiarly in those moments that God is calling us to commitment. Not calling us to join the club, or sign up to attend a class for a week, or change our long distance provider. Calling us to make a life-long commitment.

Calling us to then and there to say, “Lord God, I will be Yours forever”. “As for me and my house we shall serve the Lord from this point on and for evermore”. A commitment not to a course of action or even a particular place, but to Jesus Christ, who died upon a Cross to free us from our sins, whom God raised from the dead, and whose Holy Spirit can reconstruct our lives.

If we miss that opportunity, if we don’t take that moment, do you know what happens? It’s back to the Smorgasboard. It’s back to running after this and running after that. Remember the story of the prodigal son? The one who went after this and went after the other, who thought he was doing so well and even at his lowest point thought he could still make a deal. “I’ll go and offer to be a slave and work on the family farm”.

The running only stopped when he felt the embrace of the Fathers arms. Then came the security. Then the hope flooded in. Then everything turned around. Then he knew he could stop running, because he was home.

Amos tells Israel that God knew how things really were between Himself and those He had chosen. They may physically be present on the Sabbath, but their heart was somewhere else.  And their hearts weren’t even in a good place. They were just out for themselves and were prepared to take whatever measures they could get away with to get their own way. But a day of reckoning was coming. A day when whatever was not of God in their lives would be put to the test.

None of us lives forever. Scripture teaches us that there will come a day when the curtain closes on our earthly existence and our lives will be up for their evaluation before God. How much of what we now invest our time and our effort in and are orientating our lives towards will stand? What is there that we are doing in our lives that has eternal worth?

This is the challenge that the prophet Amos lays before us. That there comes a day, for all of us, when the opportunity for harvest is over, when the fruit is consumed, when there is no more time left to decide. He points us to the consequences of not making a whole-hearted commitment to God.

That though we may outwardly be living a reasonable life, may even go to church and do and say the right things, if whilst doing all of that whilst our real ambitions have little to do with serving God, then God is not mocked and somewhere down the line, as surely as the harvest produces good fruit, whatever we sow in our lives, will come to fruition. 

He pictures for us a world in which people just keep running from one thing to the next until they find their home and their Center in God. How if they avoid commitment the only option open to them is to keep seeking, but never find, to hear a thousand words, but never acknowledge the one Word that matters, the Word that became flesh and dwelt amongst us, the Word that is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Such a message as this calls us to respond in a number of ways. It calls us to repentance. To say to God, “That person who sits in church but their mind is somewhere else, Lord  that’s me. I’m the one who’s holding back. I’m the one who keeps looking rather than wholeheartedly committing. I’m the one who needs to come home.”

This message calls us to belief. Belief in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins. Belief that only by Grace can we be saved. Belief that God raised Christ from death. Belief that through the Holy Spirit God’s resurrection love can work in and through our lives to transform both ourselves and the world we live in.

Most of all it’s a wake up call. To see the bigger picture. To see where our lives are headed if we choose not to walk God’s way. To make a commitment that the number one priority in our life will be acting and living and loving in a Christ-like way in the midst of an ungodly world.

“If you want to be someone,
And you want to go somewhere,
You better wake up and pay attention.”

May God help us to wake up to our need to commit our lives into His hands. Because until we take that decisive step, we are destined to be seekers who never find, and wanderers who never reach home. And then, at the end of the road, when we stand before God, all we will have to offer is that which will not stand. Our empty promises, our compromises and our failings.

What is offered to us in Jesus Christ is a home in God, hope in the security of His love, forgiveness for our sins and the chance to live every day in the freshness and vitality of the Holy Spirit. Let us make such things our own. Amen.


Rev. Adrian J. Pratt B.D.