“Existing for Others” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on July 20, 2025. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 36:35.
--
Scripture
text:
Amos 8:1-12
--
I begin
with a quote I came across online that has been echoing in my heart all week; words
from a Christian pastor and theologian who practiced what he preached even when
it cost him everything. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was German pastor during the rise
of Nazi Germany when the church was under tremendous pressure to conform to
injustice. Bonhoeffer opposed the tyranny and violence, and because of that, he
was imprisoned and eventually killed.
From his
prison cell, Bonhoeffer wrote:
“The
Church is the Church only when it exists for others… not dominating, but
helping and serving. It must tell [humans] of every calling what it means to
live in Christ, to exist for others.”
Bonhoeffer
reminds us that the very heart of a church, a community of faith, has to do
with what we do with our faith when we gather and worship God, and when we leave
this place and act as disciples of Christ in this world. It is not our calling
to dominate or to accumulate power or status or to even see ourselves above
another, because our calling is to help and to serve.
The
prophet Amos was speaking to a people who had forgotten what it means to be
God’s people for others. They were busy with religion with ritual and routine,
but their faith was missing.
But before
we dive into the unsettling words of the prophet, I think it’s worth getting to
know Amos a little better. Amos isn’t someone who would have felt comfortable
at a pulpit, let alone in a palace or temple. He wasn’t born into a priestly
family. He didn’t come from a line of prophets or scholars. Amos tells us
himself that he was a shepherd and a “dresser of sycamore fig trees.” In other
words, he was a farmer. He lived in the little village of Tekoa, down in the
southern kingdom of Judah.
Yet it
was Amos whom God called to speak an uncomfortable truth and not to his
neighbors in Judah, but to the powerful, wealthy northern kingdom of Israel.
The
people of Israel at this time were doing well, at least on the surface. Their
economy was booming. There was peace and prosperity. The religious life of the
nation seemed vibrant, with festivals and sacrifices happening just as they
should. But beneath this, there was a widening gap between the rich and the poor.
The powerful found ways to make themselves even more wealthy, often at the
expense of the most vulnerable. It was a society that looked good from the
outside but was beginning to rot from within. That’s the kingdom Amos was
called into, even though he was an outsider in every sense.
Our
passage for today begins with Amos’ vision from God.
“1 This
is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit. 2 He 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 spare them no longer.’” (Amos 8:1-2)
The first
part of it sounds pleasant enough. We might imagine something fresh and sweet,
the kind of gift you’d bring to a neighbor or friend. Who doesn’t love a good
fruit basket?! But in the language of Amos’s day, this vision is a wordplay
that would have sounded ominous to his listeners. The Hebrew word for “summer
fruit” is qayits, and the Hebrew word for “end” is qets. The
prophet uses similar-sounding words to give a warning.
Just as
ripe fruit will ultimately spoil and come to an end, the kingdom of Israel is
at its end. The time of judgment has arrived. To be clear, the end imagined
here is not the end of the world. It’s the end of the kingdom of Israel, and it’s
the people’s ignorance to the injustice around them that is leading to the
kingdom’s fall.
After
showing us the basket of fruit, Amos turns his attention to the ways people are
being exploited. Listen to his words:
“‘4
Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the
land, 5 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, 6
buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the
sweepings of the wheat.’”
(Amos 8:4-6)
Amos is
addressing the merchants and business owners who can’t wait for the Sabbath to
end so they can get back to making money. He describes those who rig the
scales, who shortchange their customers, who sell even the sweepings from the
grain (every last crumb!) for a profit. And he exposes the reality: people are
being treated as objects bought and sold, their lives devalued for the sake of
someone else’s gain.
This
isn’t just about ancient history. The warning Amos gives feels just as timely
now. We see economic systems that benefit a few while leaving many behind. We
see wages that don’t keep up with the cost of living, communities priced out of
homes, families struggling to put food on the table while corporate profits
soar, and more.
Right
here in the Lehigh Valley, the crisis is real and growing. According to Family
Promise, one of our church’s mission partners, over five hundred households in
our community are experiencing homelessness right now. More than one thousand
school-aged children in Lehigh County have been identified as homeless this
past year. These are families and children living among us, attending school,
working jobs, trying to survive, and keep hope alive through it all.
And yet,
so much of this suffering is hidden from view. Many families, carrying the
heavy weight of stigma, do all they can to hide their struggles. Some live out
of their cars or share crowded motel rooms. Others move from one relative’s
home to another, never letting on just how unstable things have become. There’s
a deep reluctance to ask for help, often because they fear being judged or
shamed.
And somewhere
along the way, we’ve allowed ourselves as a society to accept this suffering as
normal.
This is
exactly what the late Walter Brueggemann, a prophetic voice in the Reformed
tradition who died just last month and whose memorial service was yesterday,
spoke about so often. He insisted that God’s call to compassion is a radical
challenge. He wrote in his book The Prophetic Imagination, “Compassion
constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to
be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural
but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”
What
Brueggemann means: true compassion refuses to accept another person’s suffering
as “just the way things are.” It interrupts our comfort and demands that we pay
attention. It tells us that a family living in their car, or a child showing up
at school without a place to sleep, is not simply unfortunate, it’s
unacceptable. We, collectively as God’s beloved people, have failed to be there
for that family. It’s unacceptable for humanness.
God’s
anger in Amos is not the anger of a tyrant, but the grief of a parent who sees
their children hurting each other and can’t look away. God’s heart breaks.
The
consequences of such injustice go deeper still, reaching into the life of the
entire community, as Amos describes in the next part of his prophecy. He
proclaims:
“7
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of
their deeds... 11 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. 12 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.”
(Amos 8:7, 11-12)
When we
persist in ignoring the cries of the vulnerable and when we allow rituals &
routines to cover up injustice instead of confronting it, we risk losing touch
with God’s voice altogether. We can fill our lives with worship and praise, but
if we turn a blind eye to suffering, even our prayers begin to ring hollow.
When a
society decides the pain of its people doesn’t matter, it loses more than its
sense of justice. It loses its connection to God.
But
here’s the good news: God sends prophets, again and again, not to shame us, but
to call us back. Amos’ warning of summer fruit is an invitation to take hurt
seriously and to listen for God’s voice not just in worship but in the cries of
the those hurting. We come here to worship not just for comfort and inspiration,
but so that our hearts are tuned to God’s grace.
Authentic
worship always leads us outward. We are sent from this place to notice the
systems that are unfair, to challenge practices that harm the vulnerable, and
to use our voices and resources so that others might flourish too. We are
called to stand with those who are denied dignity, whether it’s in the
headlines across the country or right here in Lehigh Valley.
This
brings us back to the quote we started with, echoing Bonhoeffer’s words and
pointing us toward the true calling of the church.
“The
Church is the Church only when it exists for others… not dominating, but
helping and serving. It must tell [humans] of every calling what it means to
live in Christ, to exist for others.”
Bonhoeffer
believed this so deeply he staked his life on it. The Church, at its best,
is not an institution for itself but a community of people called to serve, to
lift up, to advocate, and to love. We do because God has claimed us, called us,
and shown us through prophets and through Jesus Christ himself that the heart
of true faith is always for the sake of the neighbor.
This is
what Amos was crying out for: that worship without justice is empty, and ritual
without compassion misses the mark. The “basket of summer fruit” is a sign that
faith which only looks good on the outside, but ignores those in need, cannot
be the faith God desires. The prophet insists, and our own community’s reality
reminds us, that real faith is measured by how aware we are of the suffering
around us, and how far we will walk with someone through that suffering.
We must remember
what it means to be the Church in the world God loves: To exist for others. To
serve and not dominate. To build a community where compassion is not the exception
but the gift freely given.
In the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
--
Decamps, Alexandre-Gabriel, 1803-1860. Young Beggars, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=50303 [retrieved July 21, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexandre_Gabriel_Decamps_-_Young_Beggars_-_23.508_-_Museum_of_Fine_Arts.jpg.
