“The Time is Ripe…”

Amos 8:1-12

Let me be the first to say it: this message from Amos 8 is not a very happy passage of scripture! It certainly is not the kind of passage one would choose to share on a Sunday morning when many of us come to church looking for a word of hope, or comfort, or something to make us feel good. And it is certainly not the kind of passage we would expect to encounter on Scholarship Sunday when we celebrate the fine young people whose education we help support.

On a day like today, you would think we’d be drawing upon a passage like that beautiful one from the prophet Isaiah. How does it go? “Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength – they shall mount up with wings as eagles – they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Now that’s the kind of hopeful message we’d like to hear for ourselves this morning, and for the young scholars here today.

But I’m sorry – we don’t get Isaiah 40 today. Nope. We’re stuck with Amos 8. And in verse 13 of Amos 8, which immediately follows the gloomy reading we just read, it gets even gloomier. In fact, this verse paints exactly the opposite picture of Isaiah 40 in which young men and women will run without exhaustion. “In that day,” Amos scowls, “the lovely young women and the strong young men WILL faint because of thirst…”

Where Isaiah sees joy in the future of the people, Amos sees gloom and destruction.

This is a passage of judgment.

What do you suppose had gone wrong in Israel?

I’ll return to that question in a moment, but first I want to tell you about something that happened in the pre-dawn hours of last Tuesday.

Like me, you were probably sound asleep at that dark and quiet time before the sun came up. But up at Park West Hospital – like at all hospitals – not everyone was sleeping. Doctors fought to save lives – nurses ministered to patients – housecleaning crews finished cleaning hallways – cafeteria workers prepared for serving breakfast …

…and in room G-11, on the hospital’s ground floor, an 80-year old friend of ours breathed her last.

Her name was Vivian Goldfine, and many of you know her as a member of our church and as one of our neighbors here in Tellico Village. I suppose it would be correct to say that Vivian’s body simply wore out, and she needed to go home to be with the Lord, and with her husband Milton who’d died in 1996. And so, at 4:45 AM last Tuesday, Vivian left us – in the twinkling of an eye.

Her son Bernie, and his wife Ruth, were with her at the end. She had comforted them by saying that she had seen a vision of heaven, and Jesus, and Milt – and she wanted to go. Still, it came as a shock when the end finally came.

There were some final “goodbyes”, and possessions gathered up, and sometime after 5:00 AM last Tuesday, Bernie and Ruth walked out of room G-11, and stepped outside the hospital into the cool, pre-dawn morning of East Tennessee. The sky was pitch black, but the heavens sparkled like a million points of light. And that’s when Bernie looked up and saw something wonderful. There was the planet Venus, and there was the moon, very close together. Venus, as some of you who follow such things probably know, was in its ascendancy on Tuesday and Wednesday, which means that it was as bright as it gets to our eyes. And the moon was nearly full – the first of two full-moons this month. And seeing the two bright lights together, illuminating his and Ruth’s way through the darkened parking lot, Bernie thought of his parents.

And for good reason. You see, his father – Milton - was a real-life rocket scientist with NASA, working at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Yesterday, at Vivian’s service, our founding Pastor – Carl Burke – told a wonderful story about this rocketman. It seems that Carl was privileged to be with Milt on the golf course shortly after he and Vivian had moved to the Village. Milt, Carl says, shot a 21…ON THE FIRST HOLE! And from that time on, Carl teased Milt about that, wondering aloud how a man who could shoot a rocket all the way to Jupiter could not manage to get a golf ball to go 200-yards to a green at Toqua!

Well, I can’t help with the golf part of that question, but I think I can tell you how you can shoot a rocket all the way to Jupiter. You have to make use of something called “VEEGA”. You see, the spacecraft that Milt and his colleagues sent out to explore the planets often did not hold enough fuel to make it all the way. So these brilliant people at JPL devised a flightpath they nicknamed “VEEGA”, which stands for Venus-Earth-Earth-Gravity-Assist. In other words, they sent some of these spacecraft into orbit around Venus and used it like a slingshot to send it back into orbits around earth, and then – with the assistance of all that gravitational effect, these rockets were slung all the way to places like Jupiter, and Mars, and beyond!!

So much of Milt Goldfine’s work had Venus at its heart!

And when Bernie looked up last Tuesday morning and saw - Venus – at its very brightest – he felt his dad’s presence.

And in the nearly full moon beside Venus, Bernie sensed his mom whose light for 80-years had illuminated the lives of thousands – as a teacher, a coach, a wife, a mother, a community volunteer, a friend, a Lady Vol fan, a neighbor, a Christian…

And in Venus and the Moon shining together last Tuesday morning, Bernie took some comfort. Isn’t God good to give us moments like these? And in that moment, Bernie not only remembered his parents, but what their lives stood for. You see, unlike many people in our world, Milt and Vivian had taken the gifts of their lives - their education, their careers, their faith, their everything – and put them to use not to acquire things for themselves, but to bless others, and to make the world – and the universe – a better place!

What are you using your life for? What will our Scholarship recipients use their education for? What will those of us who are older use our resources and experience for? What will our children use their strength and energy for?

And what had gone wrong in the life of Israel that God proclaimed its doom?

Well, 850 years before Christ, the most blessed and gifted nation the world had ever seen had taken the amazing legacy of the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the wonderful gifts of God’s many blessings, and had simply thrown them away. Although they were the most gifted of all people, called to be a people through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed, they had turned the gifts in upon themselves, consuming them to satisfy their own needs, and neglecting the world God had called them to serve.

So God, through the prophet Amos, identifies their crimes. Did you hear some of them? In their quest for personal success, they trample the needy, and do away with the poor. They can’t wait for the religious festivals to be over so they can re-open the markets and sell their grain and wheat – skimping the measure, boosting the price, using dishonest scales, trapping the poor in debt, and taking the sandals of the needy as collateral. You see, the faith that is all about God’s redeeming the WORLD has become a faith that’s ALL about ME, all about MY LIFE, all about MY NEEDS, all about MY CAREER, all about MY SUCCESS, all about MY FUTURE!

And God, through Amos says, “There will be no future when you live like that!”

So the time is ripe…for God to step in and put an end to it.

Sometimes I wonder why it seems that the Church in our day seems to be falling apart. Are we under a similar judgment? Our voice is becoming less and less strong, our influence almost undetectable in the high places of government. More and more young people are giving mere lip-service to our faith, but fewer and fewer are living it out. The conservative Church has retreated into itself, trying somehow to get us back to the world of the 1950’s, recreating, if they could, a religious kind of Mayberry, RFD. And the liberal Church has abandoned the Christ-centered spirituality of our faith, and taken up instead the religion of ideology and politics and secular humanism. And on both sides of the Church, there is an increasing irrelevance to the people of the world and to the great needs of the day. Just as one example, in sub-Saharan Africa alone, the AIDS pandemic has created a nightmare in which children born in 2002 are not expected to live past 40-years of age.

And the Church of Jesus Christ is silent and powerless to do anything about it.

“The time is ripe…” says the Lord through Amos. The time is ripe for judgment on the people of God.

And so there is plenty of judgment in this passage against those who live to themselves, both in the past, and in the present.

But the time is ripe as well for something besides judgment! Why, just a chapter later, Amos promises the restoration of the people of God!

You see, the time is ripe not only for judgment, but also for renewal. The time is ripe for God’s people to come home to their faith, to the covenant, to the promises. The time is ripe for those who truly trust in God to stand up and be counted as the sons and daughters of the living God. The time is ripe for some to say, “Its NOT all about ME, it is about US together. It is about GOD and GOD’S PURPOSES in REDEEMING THE WORLD! It is about loving your neighbor and not exploiting him, about welcoming the stranger and not excluding him, about lifting the poor and not pushing him down, about making friends rather than making enemies!

Oh, the time is ripe for renewal!

Yesterday, at Vivian Goldfine’s funeral service, her son Bernie said, “In a world where so many live just to acquire things, the greatest gift my parents left me with is the importance of caring for people and the world.”

Those who knew Milt and Vivian know that is how they lived. And we were blessed in their presence.

Maybe, some early morning, you’ll happen to look up into the darkened sky and see Venus and the Moon together. And maybe you’ll remember this story about a couple who, through a living faith that believed God put them here for a reason besides living to themselves, lifted the lives of many, and added to the world - and even to the larger universe – the touch of God’s redeeming grace.

The time is ripe for people like them. The time is ripe for people like you!