Summer Fruit: First Lesson Sermons for Pentecost Middle Third, Cycle C

... even as he singles out some of us, Amos is talking to all of us whose stomachs are full, whose bank accounts are full, whose calendars are full, but whose lives are often empty. They look full, says Amos, but they're like "... a basket of summer fruit."
-- from the Proper 11 sermon

Richard L. Sheffield writes that the prophets regularly call us, like the people of Israel, to account for our assumption that what is, is what should be. They hold up in front of us what will be when God's will is done.

The prophets are usually read (and often misread) as those who foresee the future; those who tell it like it will be. They are really those who clearly discern how it is, which is how it will be if things don't change.

The ten sermons in the book are based on First Lesson texts. Many of the texts are from Jeremiah. The sermons follow the Revised Common Lectionary.

Richard L. Sheffield is senior pastor of Market Street Presbyterian Church, Lima, Ohio. He holds a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.