Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Becoming prophets of inner truth
Rev. Jennifer Masada - St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church - Kapa’au, Hawai'i
July 13, 2025 - Fifth  Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
Amos 7:7-17, Psalm 82, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37
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Opening Prayer: Spirit of Truth: you call us to see what we would rather ignore. You stir us to speak when we would rather keep silent. You invite us into deeper love for ourselves, for others, and for truth itself. Help us listen with courage. Help us change with grace.

There are times when the call to follow Christ feels less like a gentle invitation and more like a jolt — a plumb line dropped in the middle of our hearts, a mirror raised to our inner lives.

This week, we meet two such moments. In Amos, a prophet is sent to deliver words that the people in power would rather not hear. In Luke, Jesus tells a story that confronts not only the lawyer who asks, “Who is my neighbor?” but also challenges each of us to see any gaps between what we say we believe and how we actually live.
These scriptures are not comfort food. These stories are spiritual medicine — perhaps medicine that does not go down easily. But these stories are not meant to shame us— they wake us up. These stories crack us open and help us ask ourselves tough questions so we can heal, grow, deepen our faith, and move toward our calling on this spiritual journey we call life. 

This is what Amos does: he answers God’s call to be a prophet. Amos is not a career prophet. He is a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees. A “dresser of sycamore trees” refers to the job of tending to the fruit of that tree. These are not the sycamore trees we know. Those that Amos tended are a type of fig native to Israel. They bear fruit that grows directly off the trunk. To ripen properly, each fruit must be punctured and harvested three days later, while more figs grow beneath. 

Just as Amos tended his trees with careful, sometimes painful precision, so does the prophetic word pierce what is unripe in human hearts. The call to prophesy is not about power or prestige—it’s about cultivating growth, even when it stings.
Yet when God urges him to see the injustices around him and speak out, he can’t look away, and he cannot remain silent. Amos sees a nation that worships success and “winning” while impeding justice. He sees leaders more concerned with preserving their privilege and power than protecting the vulnerable.

When Amos told the truth, they told him to stop. “Go away,” Amaziah says. “You’re not welcome here with your warnings.” William Willimon notes that Amaziah represents a long line of court preachers—those who cozy up to power by saying what leaders want to hear. It’s a comfortable arrangement, soothing the consciences of the powerful—until the Spirit disrupts it. God calls Amos, a farmer, to speak an unsettling truth, and suddenly the old system must face what it has long ignored.
Perhaps that’s the spiritual job description of a prophet—to disrupt the systems, internal and external, that keep us stuck. To poke holes in what looks complete but is still unripe.

Remember last week's discussion about sharing our peace and love even if we are not welcomed? Amos doesn’t speak because he is welcomed to do so—he speaks because it’s necessary. His words are the puncture that allows the fruit of the people to ripen. This disruption isn’t punishment—it’s preparation for sweetness to come. The same Spirit that called Amos also calls us. Not all of us are public prophets. But every one of us is called to be a prophet to ourselves.

Most of the time, the hardest power to confront isn’t out there—it’s in here. It’s our own fear. Our resistance to change. Our quiet complicity. Our tendency to avoid discomfort by telling ourselves it’s not our job, someone else will do it, or things will get better if we ignore our inner wounds or external problems.

But as my mentor often says: “Do the work.” This inner work—the call to honesty, to holy disruption, to truth—is mirrored in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. 
In this parable, the priest and Levite pass by the wounded man. They may have feared getting involved. They may have told themselves they didn’t have the right tools, or that someone else would come along.

They knew the law—“Love your neighbor as yourself.” But they didn’t act on it. And the one who did—the Samaritan—was the one most likely to be discounted or despised.

Jesus tells this story not to shame us, but to reveal something important: love is not an idea. Love is action. Love is interruption. Love is inconvenient. Love is risk. Love is what we do when fear urges safety and sameness. Love is what we do even when we’d rather leave our inner lives untouched, unexamined, unripe. Today’s stories prompt us to ask:

• Where are we being called to speak truth to ourselves?
• What expectations or fears need to be released?
• What would it look like to stop waiting for the world to get better and tend to our inner work?
• What injustices have we turned away from, not out of cruelty but out of overwhelm?

For me, anxious thoughts from the shockwaves of what’s going on in the world can cause my mind to spin into overdrive. When this happens, I remind myself to listen to my nervous system. It’s imperative to care for ourselves while we do this work. Breathe. Move. Cook something. Draw, sew, paint, write. Play music. Get together with friends. Do things that help us ground and find inner clarity when surrounded by polarizing news about politics and world events.

We are each called to be our own prophets, but we cannot do this alone. To find our way, we need the loving help of family, friends, and community. Sometimes we need a compassionate listener; sometimes we need the sycamore tree dresser - the one who loves us enough to poke a hole that allows us to grow, mature, and ripen into our best selves.

We need God’s loving guidance and judgment. God’s judgment isn’t condemnation—it’s loving discernment. It is a divine invitation to see where growth is possible. But it is up to us to look, to be open to seeing the Spirit’s truth about where we are on our journey. 

In another tumultuous time in this country, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted the Book of Amos in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” He wasn’t just invoking scripture. He was describing a spiritual force, always flowing beneath the surface, ready to rise. It flows through us. Not just through institutions. Not just through history books. Through human hearts. Through prophetic love.

The same waters that fed the prophets flow in us. Let them move us. Let them cleanse us. Let them soothe the painful puncture of Spirit’s truth. Let these waters carry us beyond our comfort zone and into the kind of love that changes the world.

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