Scriptures:
Amos 8:1-12
Luke 10:38-42
Today I begin with a quote I came across online that has been echoing in my heart all week; words from a Christian pastor and theologian who practiced what he preached even when it cost him everything. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was German pastor during the rise of Nazi Germany when the church was under tremendous pressure to conform to injustice. Bonhoeffer opposed the tyranny and violence, and because of that, he was imprisoned and eventually killed.
From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer wrote:
“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others… not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell [humans] of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bonhoeffer reminds us that the very heart of a church, a community of faith, has to do with what we do with our faith when we gather and worship God, and when we leave this place and act as disciples of Christ in this world. It is not our calling to dominate or to accumulate power or status or to even see ourselves above another, because our calling is to help and to serve.
The prophet Amos was speaking to a people who had forgotten what it means to be God’s people for others. They were busy with religion with ritual and routine, but their faith was missing.
But before we dive into the unsettling words of the prophet, I think it’s worth getting to know Amos a little better. Amos isn’t someone who would have felt comfortable at a pulpit, let alone in a palace or temple. He wasn’t born into a priestly family. He didn’t come from a line of prophets or scholars. Amos tells us himself that he was a shepherd and a “dresser of sycamore fig trees.” In other words, he was a farmer. He lived in the little village of Tekoa, down in the southern kingdom of Judah.
Yet it was Amos whom God called to speak an uncomfortable truth and not to his neighbors in Judah, but to the powerful, wealthy northern kingdom of Israel.
The people of Israel at this time were doing well, at least on the surface. Their economy was booming. There was peace and prosperity. The religious life of the nation seemed vibrant, with festivals and sacrifices happening just as they should. But beneath this, there was a widening gap between the rich and the poor. The powerful found ways to make themselves even more wealthy, often at the expense of the most vulnerable. It was a society that looked good from the outside but was beginning to rot from within. That’s the kingdom Amos was called into, even though he was an outsider in every sense.
Our passage for today begins with Amos’ vision from God.
“1 This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. 2 He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.’” (Amos 8:1-2)
The first part of it sounds pleasant enough. We might imagine something fresh and sweet, the kind of gift you’d bring to a neighbor or friend. Who doesn’t love a good fruit basket?! But in the language of Amos’s day, this vision is a wordplay that would have sounded ominous to his listeners. The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” is qayits, and the Hebrew word for “end” is qets. The prophet uses similar-sounding words to give a warning.
Just as ripe fruit will ultimately spoil and come to an end, the kingdom of Israel is at its end. The time of judgment has arrived. To be clear, the end imagined here is not the end of the world. It’s the end of the kingdom of Israel, and it’s the people’s ignorance to the injustice around them that is leading to the kingdom’s fall.
After showing us the basket of fruit, Amos turns his attention to the ways people are being exploited. Listen to his words:
“‘4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, 5 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? We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier and practice deceit with false balances, 6 buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’” (Amos 8:4-6)
Amos is addressing the merchants and business owners who can’t wait for the Sabbath to end so they can get back to making money. He describes those who rig the scales, who shortchange their customers, who sell even the sweepings from the grain (every last crumb!) for a profit. And he exposes the reality: people are being treated as objects bought and sold, their lives devalued for the sake of someone else’s gain.
This isn’t just about ancient history. The warning Amos gives feels just as timely now. We see economic systems that benefit a few while leaving many behind. We see wages that don’t keep up with the cost of living, communities priced out of homes, families struggling to put food on the table while corporate profits soar, and more.
Right here in the Lehigh Valley, the crisis is real and growing. According to Family Promise, one of our church’s mission partners, over five hundred households in our community are experiencing homelessness right now. More than one thousand school-aged children in Lehigh County have been identified as homeless this past year. These are families and children living among us, attending school, working jobs, trying to survive, and keep hope alive through it all.
And yet, so much of this suffering is hidden from view. Many families, carrying the heavy weight of stigma, do all they can to hide their struggles. Some live out of their cars or share crowded motel rooms. Others move from one relative’s home to another, never letting on just how unstable things have become. There’s a deep reluctance to ask for help, often because they fear being judged or shamed.
And somewhere along the way, we’ve allowed ourselves as a society to accept this suffering as normal.
This is exactly what the late Walter Brueggemann, a prophetic voice in the Reformed tradition who died just last month and whose memorial service was yesterday, spoke about so often. He insisted that God’s call to compassion is a radical challenge. He wrote in his book The Prophetic Imagination, “Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”
What Brueggemann means: true compassion refuses to accept another person’s suffering as “just the way things are.” It interrupts our comfort and demands that we pay attention. It tells us that a family living in their car, or a child showing up at school without a place to sleep, is not simply unfortunate, it’s unacceptable. We, collectively as God’s beloved people, have failed to be there for that family. It’s unacceptable for humanness.
God’s anger in Amos is not the anger of a tyrant, but the grief of a parent who sees their children hurting each other and can’t look away. God’s heart breaks.
The consequences of such injustice go deeper still, reaching into the life of the entire community, as Amos describes in the next part of his prophecy. He proclaims:
“7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds… 11 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. 12 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.” (Amos 8:7, 11-12)
When we persist in ignoring the cries of the vulnerable and when we allow rituals & routines to cover up injustice instead of confronting it, we risk losing touch with God’s voice altogether. We can fill our lives with worship and praise, but if we turn a blind eye to suffering, even our prayers begin to ring hollow.
When a society decides the pain of its people doesn’t matter, it loses more than its sense of justice. It loses its connection to God.
But here’s the good news: God sends prophets, again and again, not to shame us, but to call us back. Amos’ warning of summer fruit is an invitation to take hurt seriously and to listen for God’s voice not just in worship but in the cries of the those hurting. We come here to worship not just for comfort and inspiration, but so that our hearts are tuned to God’s grace.
Authentic worship always leads us outward. We are sent from this place to notice the systems that are unfair, to challenge practices that harm the vulnerable, and to use our voices and resources so that others might flourish too. We are called to stand with those who are denied dignity, whether it’s in the headlines across the country or right here in Lehigh Valley.
This brings us back to the quote we started with, echoing Bonhoeffer’s words and pointing us toward the true calling of the church.
“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others… not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell [humans] of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.”
Bonhoeffer believed this so deeply he staked his life on it. The Church, at its best, is not an institution for itself but a community of people called to serve, to lift up, to advocate, and to love. We do because God has claimed us, called us, and shown us through prophets and through Jesus Christ himself that the heart of true faith is always for the sake of the neighbor.
This is what Amos was crying out for: that worship without justice is empty, and ritual without compassion misses the mark. The “basket of summer fruit” is a sign that faith which only looks good on the outside, but ignores those in need, cannot be the faith God desires. The prophet insists, and our own community’s reality reminds us, that real faith is measured by how aware we are of the suffering around us, and how far we will walk with someone through that suffering.
We must remember what it means to be the Church in the world God loves: To exist for others. To serve and not dominate. To build a community where compassion is not the exception but the gift freely given.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
