Amos 8:1-12

8This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. ²He 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 never again pass them by. ³The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” says the Lord God; “the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!”

⁴Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, ⁵saying, “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 small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, ⁶buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” ⁷The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. ⁸Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? ⁹On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. ¹⁰I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

¹¹The 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. ¹²They 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.

Sermon: Something like Karma

“In an op-ed piece in the November 30, 2012 issue of The New York Times, entitled ‘The Monster of Monticello,’ Paul Finkelman writes about Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisy on race. When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson affirmed the ‘self-evident truth’ that all men are ‘created equal.’

Yet even as he wrote that, he owned 175 slaves. On top of that, while many of Jefferson’s contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the Revolutionary War, Jefferson did not. He remained what Finkelman calls ‘the master of Monticello, and a buyer and seller of human beings.’

1820’s heated arguments over slavery during the debate over the Missouri Compromise shocked Jefferson. He believed that by opposing the spread of slavery in the West, the children of the revolution were about to ‘perpetrate’ an ‘act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world.’

Yet Finkelman concludes, ‘If there was ‘treason against the hopes of the world,’ it was perpetrated by the founding generation, which failed to place the nation on the road to liberty for all” (Doug Bratt, Old Testament Lectionary, Center for Excellence in Preaching, www.calvinseminary.edu).

I am often amazed at how we, as human beings, are able to compartmentalize so well.  Many of us proclaim words that look attractive, but deep down, we often lack real integration of word and practice or integration of symbol of substance.  Curiously, while Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence and proclaimed that all men are created equal, he continued to own slaves—and the African American people, and other previous-enslaved ethnic groups, continue to suffer from the awful legacy of slavery; the legacy lasts for generations and spawns costly social ills lasting long into the future in slavery’s aftermath.

This opening sermon illustration about Thomas Jefferson gets to the heart of Amos’ message in Chapter 8.  Chapter 8 records Amos’ fourth of five prophetic visions.  In this vision, Amos indicts Israel even as the nation’s outside, its surface looks as good as a ripe bowl of summer fruit.  Amos indicts Israel, namely for its fraudulent business practices highlighted in chapter 8, which hurt the poor and reap long-term implications for all of the society.  Amos proclaims God’s judgement upon Israel—judgements which are actually the fleshing out of those implications.  But today, we are going to look very closely at what God’s judgement means in our lives, because it may not be what you think it is.  In fact, I posit that God’s judgement during our earthly lives ends up looking something like karma, which is a concept found in eastern religions. 

You all know what karma is?  Probably so: What goes around comes around.  I’ve heard it argued that karma is not a Christian concept because for the Christian, karma is superseded by grace, and ultimately, eternally that is true.  But as we live our lives, the universal principal of cause and long-lasting effect is taught throughout our Judeo-Christian scriptures.  In life, we reap what we sow in our daily lives, and sin’s legacy can stretch far into the future.

Let’s look at what was going on in Amos’ time, specifically in chapter 8.  Amos’ fourth vision begins with what seems like a lovely basket of ripe fruit.  Now the symbolism of this fruit runs deep.  In the original Hebrew language, there is a pun.  The term for “summer fruit” is qayits, while the term for “end” is qets.  In the Norther Kingdom’s dialect, the two words would have sounded quite similar; hence the pun, they play on words.  Amos is juxtaposing a pleasant image of fruit with and ending of unspeakable disaster.  A fruit basket is an attractive image; no wonder bowls of fruit are frequently the subject of still-life paintings.  But the meaning of this image is superficial only.  While the current milieu in the North Kingdom looks good on the outside, the heart of the matter is anything but: Amos warns of upcoming disaster.  Now why did things look good on Israel’s outside?

Modern-day archaeology confirms that Jeroboam II’s reign was the most prosperous that Israel had ever known.  “By the late 8^th century BC, the territory of Israel was the most densely settled in the entire Levant, with a population of about 350,000.  This prosperity was built on trade in olive oil, wine, and possibly horses, with Egypt and especially Assyria providing the markets.  According to Amos, the triumphs of the king had engendered a haughty spirit of boastful overconfidence at home.  Oppression and exploitation of the poor by the mighty, luxury in palaces of unheard-of-splendor, and a craving for amusement were some of the internal fruits of these external triumphs” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeroboam_II).  Amos rails against the materialism and selfishness of the Israelite elite of the day and says, “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land…”  And then he proclaims upcoming disaster.      We learned last week that Israel was worshipping God alright.  They were attending temple, giving their offerings, making their sacrifices on the Sabbath.  They were wholeheartedly singing the songs at temple like we sing them at church.  Yet something was rotten like a past-ripe banana.  Outward looks, you know, can be deceiving.  While they looked like they were worshipping at the temple, they were thinking about how to make money.  (Oh, yes, how our minds often wander in church!  What are we thinking about right now?  I remember times in my teens when my body was raging with hormones—shameful thoughts during church!)  And Amos says that the worshippers were saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain?  And when will the sabbath be over so that we may offer wheat for sale?”  See, the merchants were impatient for the holy days to pass so they could resume their fraudulent business and make themselves richer.  And how did they make themselves richer?  On the backs of the poor.  Amos writes, they “practice deceit with false balances buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and sell the sweepings of the wheat,” which were empty hulls.  It’s like in my twenties when I used to go shopping at the Italian Market in Philly.  There were beautiful grapes there displayed, and I would ask for a pound.  The merchant would fill a paper bag in the back with un-displayed grapes, but all were rotten except one bunch on the top.  Empty hulls!  I had been swindled!  I wondered if the merchant was a church-going man, shiny as a ripe apple one the outside but rotten to the core even as he went through all the religious motions.  The biblical canon condemns such hypocrisy.   

Amos proclaims a time of what seems like God’s retribution when the people did not measure up to God’s plumb line, that measure of morality we talked about last week.  Amos warns, “The dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place…Shall not the land tremble on this account and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt…”  And God says, “On that day, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.  I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation…I will send a famine on the land…”

I hope you can connect this ancient text to the issues of today.  Huge profits continue to be made through “economic and environmental exploitation. Corporate fraud, exploitation of the poor, and ecological disruption are all consequences of the drive to maximize profit at any cost.  [And what is worst of all is that p]eople who live on the margins often suffer disproportionately from environmental abuse” (Blake Couey, Commentary on Amos 8:1-12, www.workingpreacher.org).  And all we have to do is think of the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the elevated levels of lead in that water.  Families there, families that are minorities, are suffering medical ailments all because it was cheaper to pump in water from the polluted Flint River rather than Lake Huron.  I wonder how adequately insured these families are, and if they are being treated.  Ultimately the costs of treatment and reparation come back to society anyway, and the cost—both monetary and to human life and health—becomes greater later than doing the right thing in the first place, even if the right thing costs more initially.  We all pay for our abuses in some way; there is cause and effect, and that’s something like karma.

We reap, what to Amos looked like God’s judgement, when we make a quick buck off mother earth.  Consider these current issues:  The EPA has recently rolled back Obama-era coal plant regulations which by some estimations (including the EPA’s own) will result in the deaths of an extra 300-1500 people each year by 2030, because of the increase in air pollution.  Not only that, but pollution in the environment causes mercury accumulation in the food chain—not just lung ailments.  Sure, the rollbacks improve the short-term economy for some, but look at the long-term effects.  Mercury in high concentrations is a powerful neurotoxin that can lead to lower IQ and impaired motor skills in children.  Why is our current government not consistently encouraging investment in clean technologies like wind?  If fossil-fuel burning continues as it does not, CO2 levels will rise to a level that could not return to pre-industrial levels even tens of thousands of years into the future.  There have never been CO2 levels this high in our atmosphere since measurements began.    Wildfires rage in Alaska, where it has hit 90 degrees for the first time. There indeed are devastating, karmic consequences for systemic sin, and the prophets warn us about this. One thing I want to underscore before I finish today is that as you read Amos and other passages in the Bible, you may come away with the notion that God is punitive and that God’s justice is retributive.  I would remind you that human beings wrote the Bible—human beings with dualistic minds, and who only know justice as retributive, punitive, or getting even.  Instead, know that there is a trajectory in the Bible.  In many OT passages, God indeed looks punitive and retributive, because we often see in God what we see in ourselves, but the in the big picture, if you stay within the biblical cannon through the Gospels and through Paul, you will come to understand that God’s justice is more about restoration—about setting people back on the course God had intended for them from the beginning.  God’s primary interest is getting all of us back to the unspoiled Garden of Eden.  That’s what the Jesus story is all about—restoration.  Richard Rohr says that we “gradually let God ‘grow up.’  God does not change as much as human knowledge of God evolves” (Richard Rohr’s Meditations, Justice in the Scriptures, Sunday, July 7, 2019).  Yes, the prophets tell us that bad things happen—that Israel will experience God’s devastating judgements—when people don’t address the root of the problem—greed and oppression of the ones in the margins.  Slavery, we find, has long-lasting social implications; making a quick buck with cheap energy will poison us in the long run; disrespecting the planet will make us sick and die, and the first to suffer will be the poor, the ones on the margins, the ones God cares preferentially for, the ones who can’t afford a home in a cooler place with better drinking water.  Sometimes things look good as a bowl of ripe summer fruit on the surface, but rottenness festers just below, and that rottenness spreads and ultimately becomes costly for all of society.  It’s something like karma.

I want to end today by telling you a story of St. Roseline, whose picture in on the front of today’s bulletin.  I took this picture of her statue when we were in Gassin’s little church.  Gassin is a little beautiful village in the mountains above San Tropez, France.  Our guide told us Roseline was born in 1263 and is the special saint of that region.  A local winery that produces the area’s iconic Rose wine even bears her name.  According to local legend, Roseline would take food from her family’s larder and hide it in her basket, and then distribute it to the village’s peasants, who were poor and hungry during a time of famine.  She was caught by her father, a Marquis, the Lord of Les Arcs, who sternly disapproved of her doing that.  One day, he demanded to know what she had in her basket.  She dutifully and no doubt nervously opened her basket for him to see, and it was full of roses—not food.  Legend says that angels transformed the food into flowers to protect her from her father’s anger.  Now to become a Catholic saint, an individual must not only be full of good works but also to have miracles associated with his or her life.  This was not the only good work and miracle with which she was associated—she was known for her piety, charitable works, and other miracles, including casting out demons.  She became a nun and went on to become prioress of her abbey.  And what this legend tells me is that God is so very concerned with the poor that God will underscore this at critical junctures oppressed and cheated at the hands of the elite.  God so desperately wants all of humanity restored to the people God created us to be.  God wants hearts in us like the heart that was in St. Roseline.  God wants right living and for us to make good choices.  The future is malleable—it is not set, prophecies don’t all come true because we can make godly choices to live in love, and to treat the poor with justice—both in our individual lives and in our shaping of larger systems.  And that love and justice will return to in time, and work miracles to protect the ones caring for them.  No wonder so much of our Old Testament is written by prophets like Amos who shake up the status quo and warn what will happen if the poor are us; the generations will bear this out; and that is something like karma.  Amen.