"By their fruit shall you know them"

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

This week the lesson from Amos is a follow up to last week's lesson. Last week in a vision Amos saw God holding a plumb line. God asked Amos what he saw, Amos said a plumb line and the meaning of the vision unfolded.

This week we focus on the next vision Amos saw. In this one, God is holding a basket of summer fruit and asks Amos what he sees, and Amos says a basket of summer fruit. So much for the obvious. After that the symbolism unfolds.
 
A basket of ripe fruit is a beautiful sight. The colors and textures, the promise of sweet, juicy goodness is wonderful. Before the days of preservatives and importing fruit from around the world, seasonal fruit was a fleeting pleasure to be enjoyed... in season.

In happier days the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, "To everything there is a season and a time for everything under heaven..." In the season of Summer fruit: the promise of luscious, nutritious delight.

What a shame to let it rot. To spoil and go bad, to lose its taste and appearance. The promise unfulfilled. The danger facing any basket of fruit is that if not careful, it can go bad and be of no use to anyone.

In a deeper, spiritual way, the fruit held in the basket by God was the people of Israel. Each one beautiful and perfect in their own way. But this basket of fruit was spoiling and Amos could see it as clearly as the passing fruit in the vision.

What follows the vision in scripture is a list of offenses commonly committed by the people. Venders cheating customers by tampering with the weights by which they measured their money and products. Grumbling over religious holidays in which they could not do business. Placing poor people into indentured servitude when they could not pay their exorbitant bills. Offerings in the temple were supposed to be the finest fruit and strongest animals. What was given was the least and worst that no one wanted anyway.

That is how Amos saw the fruit of Israel spoiling. The consequence was just around the corner, and it hit hard. The horrible predictions of suffering came true in the form of an invading army from Babylon and the destruction of life as the people knew it. From a political science point of view, Israel's location between the two powerful and often warring nations of Assyria and Egypt put them in harm's ways every few generations. Their temperate climate and beautiful landscape made them a desirable place to station occupying armies of one side or the other, depending on who was victorious.

From the religious point of view, God left the people who forsook Him to their own devices. The original covenant between God and Abraham was that if the Israelites, worshiped God as they should, God would protect them. If they didn't, Israel was on its own. Amos favored the religious point of view, as prophets tended to.

In the Gospel lesson, Martha and Mary, sisters to each other and friends of Jesus, have come to represent work and worship. Martha is hard working getting things ready for Jesus and the disciples while Mary listens to his words. Martha complains, and Mary is praised. I have an image of an indignant Martha, untying her apron, rolling it in a ball and throwing it at them and saying "Fine, fix your own dinner!" as she stomps out. Clearly a balance is needed.

There has always been a delicate balance between work and worship, between faith and living in the world. How does faith or your moral and spiritual values inform your work life and decisions. Most people squirm at such questions, even clergy, because like we discussed last week, the answer isn't always as cut and dried as Amos would have us believe. People of good faith and good intent argue passionately about what is the best balance between business and public good. More government, less government; leave businesses alone or regulate them; national versus state authority. The most effective answers usually fall in between the vocal extremes, but the public theater in which politics and legislation lives has a role also.

There is an old expression that says, "Let the buyer beware." Amos would ask, "Why does the buyer need to be aware?" The vendor should be honest and provide service as well as goods. People should be scandalized to think that anyone would try to cheat or misrepresent their business. Honesty should be beyond reproach. This is what it means to be good fruit. Jesus told his followers, "By their fruit shall you know them. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit." I'm tempted to ask what kind of fruit you are, but that might change the tenor of the discussion at hand!

We are challenged daily by the temptation to get ahead by any means necessary, even if those means are questionable to outright dishonest or illegal. The moral compass we claim is the body of scriptures we call holy. They are holy because they contain what we hold as the spiritual truths of love and justice radiating from God, incarnate in Jesus, and circulating among us through the Holy Spirit. These truths, housed in churches in sacraments, are our best hope at living in peace and security within the loving embrace of God.

Regarding the covenant between God and Abraham and Abraham's actual and spiritual descendants, I don't think God ever walks away. I think we do, and God lets us. Fortunately God allows us to come back after we discover that our way is generally not the best way.

Israel in Amos' time was weakened through it's own internal deterioration. In the face of stress they buckled as a nation and fell prey to outside forces. Many of their challenges are our challenges today, nationally, globally, and individually. Like Martha, we do need to work. We need to provide a good environment for ourselves, those we love and those that come after us. But like Mary we need to listen very carefully to the words of Jesus to keep us in line and on track. I believe that fear is at the base of greed and injustice -- fear that there will not be enough or that we will not be protected. That fear and the behavior it engenders creates a self fulfilling prophecy. Faith brings a confidence in God's love to take care of us in ways that may not always fulfill what we want, but will see to what we need. Mary chose the better way, and shows us that we can too. Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

Compassion is the Plumb Line

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

A plumb line is a weight attached to a length of string that a builder uses to determine if a wall is straight up and down, or whether it's leaning dangerously to one side or the other with the possibility of falling. There are instruments in construction today that use lasers for the same purpose, especially on high rise buildings.

One of the jobs I held during my college years was for a construction company as an assistant to a field engineer. It was our job to make sure all the lines were straight, those that went sideways and those that went up and down. You can imagine the dilemma that would arise if foundations were set for walls that didn't quite match up. Window frames, doors, in fact all the facets of building are based on precise measurements, regardless of how big or small the job. We were given the wiggle room of 1/8 of an inch, whether the distance was 30 feet or 300, it could only vary by that much. Anything else would have to be torn up and reset, or seriously redesigned.

But any builder has to use whatever equipment is available to do the job. Apparently when God was talking to Amos, there were no lasers. So a plumb line had to suffice. The metaphor was one of several Amos writes about in which he receives the message that the nation of Israel is in real trouble. To bring the metaphor a little further, if the plumb line is used in time, it can detect the problem and save the wall before it falls over.

Jesus uses a different kind of plumb line in his story of the Good Samaritan. He takes the measure of a person by the kindness he or she shows. It's a familiar story, but some of the details are interesting to reflect on.When the Priest and the Levite saw the man beaten and bleeding, perhaps already dead, they crossed the street. I had always assumed it was because of apathy and not wanting to get involved. That's certainly a possibility and gives plenty of grist for the mill. However, I've come to see it rather as the scrupulous following of the law. The codes of purity are quite clear in the books of the law. If the priest or Levite -- or anyone else for that matter, touches a body in such condition, they become unclean. They break a law. They were actually obliged to cross over and not touch the man.

The Samaritan allowed the law of compassion to override the legal code and is the hero of the story. He is the neighbor to the man, and follows the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

While it's interesting to talk about the role of apathy as a possibility in this story, I like the clash of laws better. It's murkier and both sides can claim to be right. The fact that Jesus weighs in on the side of Samaritan shows his cards, but Jesus was always getting in trouble with the established authorities for turning laws on their head. Healing on the Sabbath, eating meals with sinners -- the very things we praise him for these days were sources of trouble that ultimately got him crucified.

Jesus offered a different lens for his followers to see through. Compassion trumps legalism. The implications for that teaching in our day are far reaching, and disturbing. The conduct of our nation and every nation is based on laws. They are strictly codified, and the equality of their enforcement is debatable, but most reasonable people are agreed that laws are imperative for a society to exist. There are sticky issues we deal with currently with immigration, gay marriage, gun control, accountability for financial or ecological disasters that stretch the laws and seem to go beyond comfortable territory. As God holds the plumb line which I shall call "compassion" based on the Gospel lesson, some will call the wall straight while others won't. It will be argued about until the wall falls over and then it's too late. That's sort of what happened in Israel with the unfortunate demise of King Jereboam and his advisor Amaziah, and the conquering of the nation of Israel. If the wall is seen to be the righteousness of the nation, Amaziah, in effect, kept saying the wall was straight, and Amos said it most certainly was not. And it did fall very hard.

In all the debates about current issues, I hear voices of anger, fear, bigotry, greed, apathy, and denial. I hear very few about compassion and asking the question, "Who is my neighbor?"

Like the priest and the Levite in the Gospel story, it's easy not to challenge what's legal or "always been done this way." It's hard to seek the good of others over the false security of doing business as usual. Whether on the global level or in our everyday lives, it's murky to look at issues that pit compassion over what we've always believed to be right. But if we're going to build the kingdom of God we've got to make sure the building is strong, on a good foundation and won't topple over. Jesus is the foundation and the compassion evidenced in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the plumb line.

Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ