Mmmm-summer fruit! We’ve all enjoyed the strawberries, red raspberries, Marion berries, and now the blueberries will be ripe. But, what on Earth does this summer fruit have to do with the rest of this Amos reading? Israel is ripe for the picking? They have enjoyed their bounty and become selfish-abusing the poor and disadvantaged?
Amos is calling out his people for cheating in business and stealing from the poor by sweeping up the last bit of grain from the threshing floor to sell instead of leaving it for the poor to glean. God is not happy so when danger comes, when enemies come - he won’t provide an out by “passing them by”- God will send them off into exile instead of delivering them from a foreign land. And the worse part is that they will no longer hear the Word of God. The Logos will abandon them.
In the Luke reading here are two sisters-one is excited about The Logos-sitting at Jesus’s feet to absorb every bit of God’s wisdom she can. And Martha is rightly concerned about hospitality for their guests-she wants Mary to help her. She is concerned that the basket of fruit hasn’t been set before the guests and she’s trying to bake some bread and make some soup or stew-and more people might arrive who are hungry. And, Mary sits there. (I suspect she was the youngest of the 3 siblings-we youngest are accustomed to receiving care more than providing it.) We don’t know what Jesus was saying-we don’t know what Martha was serving and I have no idea the significance of the basket of fruit. Jesus was there to teach his disciples as much as he could-if they could munch on grains of wheat plucked from a field, I guess Jesus was happy with a simple basket of fruit, even dried fruit, if he could teach his followers and supporters about his vision of the Kingdom of God and how they could all work to bring it to the present. Jesus knew his time was short-he was out of his normal element as Paul reminds the church at Colossus. Jesus-the Logos-is the image of God-he was there at creation. He holds together all that is including the Kingdom of God. He couldn’t stay in Palestine for long-he needed to go home.
Martha had an urgent need to feed her guests and she wanted help. Jesus had an urgent need to teach his principles, to remind his followers how to live in the world because he needed their help. And, Mary was all ears so he wanted to teach her.
The world, with the Roman occupation, had become too concerned with making money and less concerned with taking care of ones neighbors. The people had become too concerned with appeasing the Romans-maybe even dodging their taxes-to recognize their ill-use of the poor, the dirty, and the suffering. The foreigner in their midst that they were told to treat just like their own family, was an occupier-they just wanted them gone.
When folks are under stress: either because they want to take care of their guests, or because they are worried they will be arrested or killed by the oppressor-they will often pull the wagons into a circle and see everyone on the outside as the enemy. I need those sweepings from the threshing floor so I can sell them for every last dime I can get for them! I will give you a pair of old shoes but you owe me because I might need those shoes if I lose everything. Maybe I should just keep them! I’ll give something but when I need something people better step up!
Jesus was trying to pull people back to benevolence, to God. His vision was a world where everyone was family, where all had what they needed. No one was storing things up for the future because the needs of all including me, would be met. He was echoing Amos’s message-stop cheating folks in business and stop abusing the poor.
And, Jesus was offering them love-the idea that God loved them and they were worthy of that love no matter their status in the world. He needed them to understand his vision of God’s Kingdom so they could be that kingdom when he was gone-so they could share what they had learned with others. Whether there was a basket of figs or not.