Sunday Sermons

July 8, 2007 — Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Rev. Alice M.C. Ling, Senior Pastor
Amos 8:1-12, Luke 10:38-42

“This is what the LORD God showed me – a basket of summer fruit. He said, ‘…what do you see?’”

And I said, bright red raspberries. Just begging me to make raspberry crisp, or raspberry pie, or those wonderful lemon raspberry muffins, or sprinkle some on ice cream, or maybe use up that extra packet of Certo that’s left over from the strawberry jam to make a batch of raspberry jam. This time of summer, J&F gets them in every other day, so I have to figure out which day is which, what time of day is accurately wedged in between the arrival of the berries and their disappearance at the hands of other shoppers. And yes, as much as it pains me, some days I have to contemplate whether or not it’s realistic to buy any. What do we have in the fridge that we need to clean up? Are we eating at home tonight? Then again, they freeze. Why not stock pile a few for a cold winter’s day?

Okay, so maybe you’ve never heard me go on like this about raspberries, but I had such a good gorging on strawberries a few weeks ago, that I’m ready to move on to one of my other favorite fruits. I could have easily gone off about a perfectly ripe peach, the kind you need to eat outside or over the sink because of the way it dribbles down and off your chin. And given that I made both blueberry coffee cake and blueberry crisp yesterday (and passed up raspberries at J&F, I’ll have you know!), they would also seem to rank right up there. And then of course, on those days when I can’t make a decision and choose between the options, why not just cut up a delicious variety and swoon into ecstasy over a fruit salad. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Before I get too much more carried away, perhaps I should wander my way back to Amos and see if I’m anywhere near the track of the vision that God offered him. I’m not sure I am, but then again, it’s a strange enough vision, that I’m not quite sure what God was trying to say. Amos identified correctly that the vision he’d been granted was a basket of summer fruit, and then God stepped in to say, The end has come upon my people Israel. I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple shall become wailing in that day. So what does that have to do with raspberries, blueberries or super ripe and juicy peaches?

Commentators tell me that there is a pun in the Hebrew that is next to impossible to translate accurately into English. It seems to revolve around the words ripe and end, and is more accurately translated in the Revised Standard Version with the words:

“What is it that you are looking at, Amos” (God) said. I answered. “A basket of ripe summer fruit.” Then LORD said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel. Never again shall I pardon them."

God seems to be saying, time’s up. That fruit is ripe, which is probably much more in the category of a ripe, meaning black, banana that I have to force myself to eat, than a perfectly sweet and juicy ripe summer peach. The fruit is ripe. And the time is ripe. The season’s over. You don’t have another chance to make this right. What would normally point to the end of the harvest season now points to the end of everything. And the joyful songs that normally accompany the time of harvest will become more like funeral dirges.

I want to stick with the fruit imagery for another couple of minutes and tell you that when I came into my office one morning this week, I found a little plastic bowl on my desk that was about ¾ full of blueberries. There was a note in top of it that said, For Alice, from Dena. That’s enough to make a person pause and catch their breath! I asked Shea if she’d seen someone go in and leave them off, and she said no, no one had been in my office. Now, I don’t think they were carried in by Dena’s ghost, but I don’t know who did leave them – though I have a couple of guesses. I assume that someone was picking blueberries around her house and brought me a few. What I need to tell you is that that piece of paper made that bowl of berries more special than any others I’ve had in a very long time. I won’t promise anything, but I’d like to think that with any old normal blueberries, I would have offered some to Shea. I know I’ve shared with her tomatoes and zucchini and other vegetables that people have brought in. But not these. These I carefully carried into the refrigerator in the kitchen, leaving the note of course, so people would know they were mine and not for general snacking! And then I carefully took them home. You’ll be pleased to know I did share them with Ben and our daughter-in-law Kim in that coffee cake yesterday morning, but it was clear to me, and perhaps to Shea, that I wasn’t interested in sharing in the office the morning the berries arrived.

That story begins to take us closer to the point of the lesson from Amos – God’s concerns about the ways in which the people don’t share, don’t watch out for one another, don’t tend the poor, don’t care for the needy, and don’t even participate in the observance of the Sabbath or the worship of God without wondering when it will be over so they can get back to making money. The words of this text suggest that both the king and the nation of Israel had a domestic policy that didn’t consist of justice or righteousness, but rather one of greed and deceit. Merchants couldn’t wait for the religious observances to be over so that could go back to making more money. And apparently, it was good business then as now to get away with as much as possible. The bottom line was making money, not caring for people. Or as Mary Pipher writes,

Our most organized religion is capitalism… capitalism favors what’s called the survival of the fittest, but really it’s survival of the greediest, most driven and most ruthless. We have cared more about selling things to our neighbors than we’ve cared for our neighbors. The deck is stacked all wrong and ultimately we will all lose. (The Shelter of Each other: Rebuilding Our Families, quoted in The Lectionary Commentary: The First Readings: The Old Testament and Acts, page 482).

I struggle with this lesson in large part because it feels so on target. I think there is much about this culture that is far more about selling things to our neighbors than caring for them, about protecting and raising our profit margin long before we take in the teachings of the prophets. I’m aware of how often and how quickly, when we have these conversations, we point fingers at others – not unfairly most of the time. Corporate executives are way too often padding their wallets and stock portfolios at the expense of the laborers who do the work of the corporation. But I think if we’re going to be honest and fair to the text, we have to look at ourselves. At the ways we hoard the special delicacies and delights for ourselves, at the times we are so busy sheltering our bottom line and comfort margins that without having seen what we were doing, we close the door in the face of the poor, the homeless, the single mother who has to choose between working three jobs in order to make ends meet or spending evenings at home, helping her children with their homework, being there to put them to bed. In the midst of shooing everyone else away, we just may end up sending God away as well, until eventually we end up in a famine for the word of God. To go back to Mary Pipher again, she asserts that we are “thirsty in the rain” and that “we hunger for values, community and something greater than ourselves to dedicate our lives to.” (page 483) The places that connect us to other people may precisely be the word of the Lord that Amos was talking about – the recognition of God’s sovereign claim upon our lives that leads to the fulfillment of God’s purposes of caring for each other rather than simply selling stuff to each other.

Another reason I struggle with this lesson is because it is so harsh and hopeless. Commentators I was reading identify it as one of the harshest in the Old Testament, way beyond a call for repentance. Time’s up; the fruit is ripe; the end has come. I can’t stop with that, so instead I want to tell you a story of exactly the opposite of these words about greed and self-interest and corruption. It’s a story we heard from Kim yesterday, who had just come from a fundraising event for the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth. The office she works in sponsored a sailing regatta on Lake Sunapee, and all of it revolved around two 38-foot sandbagger sailboats. These boats are replicas of an old form of boat that used to move oysters around Long Island. And these boats have been built by a man who made his fortune in the stock market, and from that context, he has named the boats Bull and Bear. He has heavily endowed the boats, and dedicated them to promoting and encouraging youth sailing, while teaching their sailing history in the workplace and on the racecourse. They also race to benefit charitable organizations.

I was struggling to remember some of the details that Kim told us, so I went to the internet, first to her office’s website, where I found information about the regatta, but not the man’s name. After some wandering, I found a website for the Bull and Bear sandbagger sailboats, but still no name. And yet, this man spends $50,000 moving the boats around to do charitable work. He had them in Sunapee Harbor for 10 days, and yesterday they headed to Champlain for two weeks. And while there, teams of youth learn to sail and charitable organizations are supported. Kim told us that they had everything set for their event except a sponsor for fireworks, when this man called and asked if they needed anything. They said fireworks; he asked what they needed and they said $5,000. To which he said, I want really good fireworks, and sent them $10,000. They had a dinner Friday night, and he wanted to bring 18 people. They said because he’d given so much, the meal was taken care of for all of those people, but he insisted on paying for the meal for everyone who ate.

It’s not just the rich who know how to be generous, and we hear far too many stories about the rich who are far from generous. On the other side of the spectrum are stories from Zimbabwe that move me even more. We recently spent an evening with our friend who had just returned from 6 weeks in Zimbabwe, and Rev. Mhruru, one of the leaders of their church. She commented on her hesitance to go there and eat any of their food when they have so little to feed themselves. He then told us about a teaching he had learned from his parents, a teaching that says a guest will never finish the food. They believe there will always be enough to welcome a guest, and some left over. One of the things they did this time when the travelers from New Hampshire arrived was to share responsibility to feeding them. As a community they worked together to welcome and serve and feed.

Whether we have a little or we have more than we could ever know what to do with, God calls us to care for one another. To open our doors, our hearts, our hands, our wallets. And we don’t have forever to figure out how to do it. The fruit is ripening, and it only keeps for so long. Now is the time to share it. Now is the time to place the teachings of the prophets above the margin of our profit. Now is the time to welcome one another in, to dedicate ourselves to community and things greater than ourselves. Now is the time to hear the word of God. Now is the time to share our sailboats, our cornmeal and yes, even our berries.

Amen.