O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity
This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘See, I am setting a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’
Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, “Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.” ’And Amaziah said to Amos, ‘O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.’
Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees, and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” ‘Now therefore hear the word of the LORD. You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.” Therefore, thus says the LORD: “Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parcelled out by line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.” ’Amos 7. 7-17
Reflections from Reverend Sue Northcott on the reading from Amos
Today, like Alice in Wonderland, I’m taking you down a rabbit hole of facts. I hope that where we arrive in the end will make a bit more sense than Wonderland itself.
Doing my usual lecto divina, reading and re-reading our passages for today, I felt I was being drawn towards the Old Testament for inspiration. At first, I thought it was the plumb-line. I do like a bit of old-school construction kit, and you can’t go far wrong with something heavy on a bit of string. But, no, it wasn’t that.
Amos is a reluctant prophet. He doesn’t feel qualified for the job. He describes himself like this “I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees”. Herdsmen we know of. Like the shepherds at the nativity, they were lowly people, often unable to perform the rituals required to make them acceptable in society. But what on earth is a ‘dresser of sycamore trees’? A tree surgeon? It turns out to be more complicated than that.
We all know what a sycamore tree is, right? Those huge trees with 5 pointed leaves and seed like helicopter blades.
Wrong.
What we know of sycamores are in fact Acer pseudoplatanus, the Sycamore Mapel, which was widely introduced here in the 15th or 16th century. The Latin name means the maple that looks like a plane tree. What Americans know as a sycamore is a sort of plane tree. Neither our Maple or the American Plane is what is being referred to as a sycamore in the Bible.
‘Sycamore’ comes from the Greek ‘Syca-Morus’. ‘Syca’ means Fig and ‘Morus’ Mulberry. The Mulberry Fig. So, Amos looks after fig trees.
At this point in my research, I nearly disappeared down the possible holes of all the different sorts of mulberry and their uses and the differences between the various types of plane and maple trees. But returning to our readings dragged me back to Amos and the fig.
I will quickly mention that the confusion in the names of the maple and fig trees seem to have originated in Greece where ‘sycamore’ is often used for both, probably because the leaves are a bit similar, sometimes. That’s the best explanation I’ve been able to find.
Anyway, back to Amos and his mulberry figs. These are not the sort of figs we can buy today, although they are still widely grown in the Middle East and throughout Africa, and you will find them for sale in local markets. Commercially grown figs are much less labour-intensive, and I’ll tell you why.
They have been selected to do without an intervention that their more ancient cousins require.
No doubt part of Amos’ duties was to prune the trees, but he was more intimately involved in the production of fruit.
Fig fruits develop from a unique structure called a syconium, which is essentially a hollow stem containing numerous tiny flowers. In modern figs these flowers are self-fertile, but the sycamore has separate male and female flowers. These flowers are pollinated by fig wasps, and the fertilized ovaries develop into seeds within the syconium, creating what we recognize as the fig fruit. The fleshy part of the fig is the syconium itself, making it technically an infructescence, or a multiple fruit.
Bearing in mind that figs were part of the main diet for people in the Middle East in Biblical times, it had been discovered that you could achieve a much better yield on your fig trees if you didn’t leave all of the pollination to the wasps. At bit like when farmers called on the ‘bull with the bowler hat’ to artificially inseminate cows, richer people would employ a fig dresser to fertilise their figs.
This process still goes on today in the areas I mentioned. It isn’t that simple.
Here’s a breakdown of the process Amos would have followed:
Identify and collect caprifigs, the male figs containing the pollen.
Extract pollen from the caprifigs. This can be done by splitting and shaking ripe caprifigs.
Insert a needle or sharp instrument carrying the pollen into the side of the female fig until it reaches the cavity.
Observe for success: A successful pollination may result in some pollen leaking out.
Mark pollinated figs: It’s important to mark the pollinated figs to avoid accidentally harvesting them too early.
When you consider that the ripened fruit are about the size of the top joint of my thumb this must have been a fiddly and painstaking task. A right faff.
I wonder if the owners of the trees put any thought into this when they harvested and ate the sweet ripe fruit?
Which brings me onto our New Testament and Gospel readings. Paul writes ‘ You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.’ And ‘asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.’ Spiritual Fruitfulness is not easy, and those who do not engage in the dirty work are really missing the point of Jesus’ message.
The people who passed by in the Gospel story most likely employed someone like Amos to tend their orchards and vineyards. They enjoyed the fruits, but didn’t partake in the labour. Spiritual Fruitfulness comes when, like the Samaritan, we get involved, get our hands dirty, take the time and effort to care about others, without asking if they deserve it. When the world sees us behaving as the good neighbours Jesus calls us to be, it is like Amos injecting the pollen into the sterile fig.
If the love we show, which we have ourselves received as a gift from God, pierces just one more heart, wonderful things will begin to develop and the sweet fruitfulness of the Spirit will continue to spread.
Let us go out and be herdsmen of people and dressers of the sycamores of kindness, that all may share in the sweetness that is found in the love of Christ.
Cwmtawe Churches 