Amos 8:1-12

Romans 1:16-17, 2:1-11

Luke 10:25-37

I once saw a sign on a church marquee that read something like, “God is interested in spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.” It might be one of my favorite church sign sayings. 

Our three readings today were from the Old Testament prophet Amos, the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, and Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. As we first heard them read, it might not seem like these stories have much in common. But they do. They are warnings to be on guard for when religion goes bad. They are warnings against becoming a religious nut. Or put positively, they are reminders that the presence of Christ in us bears good spiritual fruit.

We’ll begin with Amos. Amos was an Old Testament prophet. His job was to tell the truth about God and about his society at the time and how far the people had strayed from God’s ways. That made him very unpopular with those in power and those who supported the people in power.

Amos opens his sermon with an image. It’s an image of a basket of ripe summer fruit, much like this basket of peaches. Amos wants us to imagine the sweet aromas of peaches and berries, the way the juice runs down your cheek when you bite into a perfectly ripe peach or strawberry, and how it seems to melt in your mouth. 

But then, Amos shifts our attention. The basket of ripe fruit is an image. The fruit is ripe today, but what happens if you let ripe fruit sit out for much longer? It becomes overripe. It rots. It turns into mush and looks and smells and tastes nasty. Then Amos delivers a zinger of a word from the Lord. That overripe fruit that’s rotting and turning into a smelly, nasty mush – God is saying that is what his people are like.  

Why would God, speaking through Amos, say such an offensive thing? Well, the people of God have been treating one another horribly. This is the word of the Lord from Amos, “Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, 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, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” Put simply, the people were scamming one another. They weren’t honest, they didn’t care about anyone but themselves and their friends, and they were just downright mean.

They are like this peach if it overripes and starts rotting – mushy, smelly, and once all of the peach flesh decays, you’re left with just a peach pit, a nut. They became religious nuts that didn’t bear spiritual fruit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control – you couldn’t find that in them. All that they had was a hard, ridgy nut of a heart.

The Lord says his response to the people’s behavior will be to go quiet. “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. 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.” What happens when the Lord goes quiet and we all can’t hear the Lord’s words to obey the Lord’s ways? Something will fill the void. Nature abhors a vacuum. And all sorts of religious nuts and corrupt religious people will swoop in to fill the void.

That’s Amos. Paul’s message is to a different people, but his message rhymes with Amos’ message. Paul’s message is this: God is kind to you so that it will lead you to repentance. Meaning, the Lord is merciful to us so that we don’t turn into a piece of rotten fruit like what Amos saw among his people. Here are Paul’s words relevant to the message today: “Do you think you will be able to escape the judgment of God? He has been very kind and patient, waiting for you to change, but you think nothing of his kindness. Perhaps you do not understand that God is kind to you so you will change your hearts and lives.”

God’s kindness leads us to repentance. Friends, there are a whole lot of Christians and Christian leaders and Christians politicians out there who are producing bad spiritual fruit. We talk about the spiritual fruits from Galatians – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. But before the spiritual fruits are listed in Galatians, the apostle Paul lists a bunch of rotten fruits that religious people can produce. He says, “The wrong things the sinful self does are clear: being sexually unfaithful, not being pure, taking part in sexual sins, worshiping gods, doing witchcraft, hating, making trouble, being jealous, being angry, being selfish, making people angry with each other, causing divisions among people, feeling envy, being drunk, having wild and wasteful parties, and doing other things like these.”

God’s kindness leads us to repentance. The Lord’s call to you and me and our church is to turn to Christ and to allow the Spirit to work in us to bear good spiritual fruit. The Lord does not want us to be religious nuts. Instead, the Lord wants us to bear spiritual fruit. The Lord is kind to us so that we turn away from those things and those people and those leaders who lead us to bear bad fruit, to hate others, to be mean-spirited, to be selfish and divisive and jealous. The Lord is kind to us in order that we turn to Christ, who is our joy and peace.

Our final reading this morning was from the gospel of Luke. It is the parable of the Good Samaritan. You know the parable. A man is beaten by robbers and left for dead along the side of the road. A priest and a Levite, two religious leaders, step right over him and go out of their way to avoid him because they believe their religion teaches them they can’t come into contact with a dead body. It’s a Samaritan, a foreigner, who comes to the man’s aid and Jesus says it’s this Samaritan, this foreigner, who does the Lord’s will. The priest and the Levite should have known better, but they had become religious nuts. It’s the Samaritan who bears good spiritual fruit. Isn’t it ironic that it’s the non-religious person and not the two religious people who are bearing the kind of fruit the Lord desires?

Friends, the Lord is kind to us. But the Lord is also serious in wanting us to bear good spiritual fruit. Turn away from the religious nuts out there who want to divide people and say we need to be at war with one another over the future of our country, who scare you, lie to you, and stir up trouble, who trample on the poor and those in need, and who demand complete loyalty. Instead turn to Jesus Christ, who is grace and truth and rest for weary souls and life for the dead, who teaches us to love God only and love our neighbors as ourselves. He will help us to bear spiritual fruit that is sweet and joyful.

Amen.