A Basket of Summer Fruit

Scripture Lessons: Colossians 1: 15-28 and Amos 8: 1-12 Sermon Title: A Basket of Summer Fruit Preached on July 21, 2019 A basket of summer fruit. That is the focus of our Second Scripture Lesson from the book of Amos. This image, on the surface, sounds nice. Summer fruit seems nice, but then what is lurking beneath the surface. It’s that way with many things about summer. Summer is nice, but then there’s the heat that comes with it. Summer vacations are nice, but then you have to come home. Have you ever come home from vacation and everyone who was so happy while you were at the beach is now grouchy and exhausted? You pull into the driveway and the grass is two feet tall. Coming back from vacation can be a little sobering. You’re greeted by a pile of yellowed newspapers. Bills are spewing out of the mailbox. You have to pick up the dogs from the kennel, and they have fleas. You’re afraid to open the milk in the refrigerator. The saddest part for me is going out to the garden. We’ve probably spent $200 on garden stuff, like fertilizer, plants, and seeds. We spent hours pulling weeds and terracing this hill so we can plant tomatoes and cucumbers, but when I go out there after we’ve been away the cucumbers are too long and the tomatoes have rotted on the vine. When you add up the cost and the labor, $200 is a big price tag for two rotten tomatoes, but what’s done is done. When you come back from vacation you have to deal with whatever you forgot to do. It’s the time for reaping whatever you’ve sown. You can’t do it over. What’s done is done. In our Second Scripture Lesson, God showed the Prophet Amos “a basket of summer fruit.” This is the second of the Prophet Amos’ metaphors that we’re encountering this summer. It’s a common enough image. Surely you have a place in the kitchen where you keep fresh fruit, but what does this metaphor mean and what does it have to do with our lives? It means that if the summer fruit is in a basket, then the time of planting is over. That time of new beginnings has come and gone. The time of fertilizing is over too. The time of pruning has passed as well. All that’s left is for the fruit to get picked. Even if the summer fruit is a bushel of bad apples, you can’t go back and do anything to change it. Amos is saying that now is the time for the people of Israel to reap what they’ve sown. As we’ve read the rest of the passage, we know that’s not a good thing. Sometimes it’s not, but that doesn’t change the fact that for them it’s too late to do anything different. It’s good to live life knowing that there is a “too late” for somethings. Hopefully living with the knowledge of “too late” in our minds forces us to do the things that must be done while we have the chance to do them. I once heard a folktale about a wild teenager who went into a forbidden forest, too disobedient to listen to everyone who warned him not to go. He was pulling down branches of ancient trees and upsetting the woodland spirits, who then, magically turned him back into a baby. The baby was returned to his mother, with the stern warning, “raise him right this time.” That’s not how it works, typically. Normally, once the summer fruit has made it to the basket, that’s it. Once the car has pulled into the driveway, back from vacation, there’s no point in regretting not having asked the kid up the street to cut the grass. All the neighbors are already talking about you, so live with it. The kids go off to college, and then for some things it’s just too late. My father-in-law told me a story about an Italian mail-carrier. He was lazy and would often put un-delivered mail in his attic. For years, maybe he intended to deliver it, I don’t know, but then one day the ceiled collapsed and fell on him in his sleep. It was too late to do anything about the undelivered mail at that point. The fruit was in the basket. For Israel it was too late too, but we can learn something from Amos, because it’s not too late for us. We can learn something from anyone who has reached this moment of finality, because we can change what we’re doing now based on what Amos wishes, especially the ruling class of Israel, done differently. You’ve heard the old anecdote, that no one lays on their death bead, wishing they had spent more time in the office. I imagine that’s true. If you remember the movie about the Holocaust, Schindler’s List, then you know that as Oscar Schindler leaves this huge group of Jews, 1,100 men and women whom he saved from the Concentration Camps, he looks at his car and the gold pin on his lapel and regrets that he never sold them. That he had the chance to sell these things and could have used the money to save one more life and didn’t. It’s a moment where he can’t do any more. The time for changing anything has passed. The opportunity to do more has come and gone and he knows in this moment, as any decent person would and as the Talmud proclaims: to save one life is to save the whole world. On the other hand, what had the wealthy in Israel saved? The book of Amos describes a world where those who had power did the opposite of Schindler. Not selling their goods to save people, but “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” What is life, but our chance to make a difference and to make this world a better place? Yet in Amos we hear of those who cannot wait for the Sabbath to be over that they might reopen their stores and get back to cheating their customers, as though the point of life were making money. What is it about our society, that we have created so many people who believe that those who die with the most toys win, as though what we have in our bank accounts would somehow make us into bigger and better people? We too must heed this warning: when we reach the end of our days, when we, like summer fruit are picked from the vine, our regret will be not having shown more kindness and generosity while we had the chance. Ours is a world of investments, property acquisitions, mansions, and yachts. Last September, Business Insider, reported that the world’s largest private yacht, which cost more than $600 million to build, and has held the record for being the largest for more than five years, at 590 feet long, has been dethroned by an even bigger yacht. What would you do with a boat that big? Fish? Water ski? The new biggest yacht in the world was built by a Norwegian billionaire who ordered the construction of this new yacht to be 597 feet long, just seven feet longer than the current record holder. Why 597 feet and not just 590 feet? Because so many of us think that means something. So many of us join in the great rat race to have the nicest things. In the hope that wealth will provide happiness and fulfillment, we pursue it relentlessly. Some cut the salaries of coworkers to increase the bottom line, others wager physical health with endless hours, then compromise the wellbeing of their families by providing for their physical needs while disregarding their emotional needs. Only, here’s the problem. It doesn’t work. Money can’t buy happiness. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. It’s true. Think about it like this. Do you remember what happened to Mr. Banks in Merry Poppins? Little Michael Banks wanted to use his tuppence to buy crumbs from the bird lady. “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.” You remember. Mr. Banks wanted him to invest that money instead. So did Mr. Daws Sr., who, played by Dick Van Dyke sang: If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank Safe and sound Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank Will compound And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest As your affluence expands In the hands of the directors Who invest as propriety demands Little Michael can’t decide what to do. He knows what Mr. Daws Sr. wants him to do. He also knows what his father wants him to do, only he naturally seems to know that what will bring him the most joy in this moment is feeding the birds. Watching this movie, we also know that Michael is right, for what does Mr. Banks know about happiness? What does he know about life? He’s the most foolish man, bumbling through his days, blind to everyone around him. Merry Poppins says he can’t see beyond his nose. Interestingly, he only finds joy once he’s been fired from the bank and spends an afternoon flying a kite with his family. Why? Because we choose the pursuit of wealth, but like King Midas, whose touch turns everything to gold, like Ebenezer Scrooge, who sleeps alone in a drafty old house, like those siblings that you know, who tore each other apart at the reading of the will, we have yet to learn that kindness, generosity, and love bring us what an excess of money never will. The tragedy of our Second Scripture Lesson isn’t just that the poor went hungry and the impoverished never pulled themselves out because of an economic system that privileged the rich, it’s that those who were rich died with regrets. They died having chosen money over people. Wealth over love. Greed over generosity. And when people who make such choices have a moment to reflect on the way they’ve lived and the choices that they’ve made, I’ve never heard of one who said, “I sure am glad I’m dying with a lot of money in my bank accounts.” No. Like fruit picked from the vine, when we go to meet our maker, it will be those who gave of themselves who leave this earth having known joy, and who go knowing that their joy will not end. Today is my birthday. Birthdays are always sobering. It’s a moment to realize that whatever I intended to do over the last year will not be done. Another year of my life is gone. Of course, I may have many more. Harry Vaughn also had a birthday this week. He turned 90, and now he is on his way to 100. When will we be picked from the vine, harvested at the end of our days? We don’t know and we can’t tell, but this passage from Amos warns us again to remember that it is coming. Like a thief in the night it comes, and when it does there is no do-over, no second chance. There will be no five-minute warning that we might quickly give away all that we’ve saved or make right what we’ve done wrong. There is no re-set button on life. And why not change now? Why postpone the joy that comes from living out our greatest purpose? We were created by the God who showed us how to live. He, who poured himself out in life, invites us to follow his example, that our joy would be complete. Amen.