Plumb Line 7-11-21
Plumb Line
Ps 82; Amos 7:7-15
Psalm 82
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.” Rise up, O God, judge the earth; for all the nations belong to you!
Amos 7:7-15
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 center 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 sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
Prayer - Gracious God, we gather each week to hear words of life, words of faithfulness. Remind us that you have set a plumb line for who we are and how we are to respond faithfully in a world that offers so many choices and options. Above all, help us to be bold in hearing the truth and living the truth as you give us the truth. In a world where the powerful maintain their power through falsehood and deceit and an age when we love our security and comfort more than we love your sometimes painful truth, help us to be people who tell the truth because we are in service to you, the Lord who is not only the way and the life but also the truth. Amen.
Barbara Brown Taylor is a former Episcopal priest, author and college professor who is considered one of the best preachers in the world. She once began a Lenten sermon by asking, “Have you ever heard anyone tell you the truth – truth so painful, truth you have been avoiding your whole life – that you wanted to kill them? Well, that’s why Jesus was crucified.” Jesus spoke truth to the behavior of the religious authorities, the political powers and it resulted in his bogus trial and crucifixion. The status quo, the elite, likes to keep things just the way they are and prophetic rabble rousers are often dismissed figuratively and literally.
This week’s reading from OT minor prophet Amos relates one of the most dramatic encounters in all of scripture. If the dust-up occurred today, it would go viral on YouTube and the internet in minutes. The actors in the drama come right from central casting. The script should come with warning labels, “not recommended for children,” or “side effects include severe political and spiritual discomfort.”
Amos wrote 2800 years ago, but his prophecy reads like a Twitter alert. He’s a good example of how in the Bible prophecy is more about ‘forth-telling’ the truth about the present than fore-telling events in the future. Amos lived under the renowned king Jeroboam II, who reigned for over 40 years and forged a kingdom characterized by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, authoritarian rule and unprecedented economic prosperity.
Many people back then interpreted their fine times as evidence of God’s special favor. Amos acknowledged that people were intensely and sincerely religious, but saw things differently. Theirs was a privatized religion that ignored the poor, the widow, the alien and the orphan. It was a type of religion that degraded authentic faith to cultural ritual. Worst of all, Israel’s religious leaders sanctioned the political and economic status quo that exploited the weak; these priests pimped religion for Jeroboam’s empire – perhaps not too different than some pastors we see on TV or read about frequently on their blogs today.
Enter Amos. He preached from the pessimistic and unpatriotic fringe. He was blue collar rather than blue-blooded. He admits that he was neither a prophet nor even the son of a prophet in the professional sense of the term. Rather, he was a shepherd, farmer, and a tender of fig trees, a small town boy. The cultured elites of his day pigeon-holed Amos as a redneck. He was an unwelcome outsider, born in the southern kingdom and had no business preaching a prophetic word in the northern kingdom of Israel.
Our passage this morning comes from the third vision in a series of prophetic visions that Amos proclaims. In this 3rd vision, the Lord, a divine builder, stands beside a wall with a plumb line. As this vision leads to the confrontation between Amos and Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, it may well be helpful to understand that a plumb line is an ancient bit of construction technology. The plumb bob is a heavy piece of metal shaped like an inverted teardrop. The point of the plumb bob attached to a piece of heavy string marks a perfect vertical drop between the top of a wall to the ground below. Used by stonemasons and builders for centuries, the plumb bob in concert with the basic force of gravity provides a measure for a perfectly straight wall. From this comes the converse, when something is ‘out of plumb’ it is crooked, imperfect, unsightly and potentially dangerous.
Amos’ vision is of the Lord standing beside a wall that is in plumb. If it is the Lord who has built it, of course it’s in plumb. Amos’ vision is of God using the plumb line as a measure of how plumb God’s people really are. The result of the Lord’s measurement is that Israel is way out of plumb and therefore needs to be torn down. Its high places abandoned, sanctuaries destroyed, and the God will rise against the royal house of Jeroboam with a sword. What is out of plumb by God’s measure will be demolished.
Amos’ fiery rhetoric opposed the powers of his day. With graphic details that make you wince, Amos describes how the 1% crushed the poor. He singled out the affluent with their expensive lotions, elaborate music, and vacation homes with beds of inlaid ivory. He decried the sexual debauchery where a man and his son abused the same woman, and lamented a corrupt legal system that sold justice to the highest bidder. He named predatory lenders who exploited vulnerable families, and religious leaders who aided and abetted all of this in order to maintain their sense of power.
To Amaziah and other priests who defended, legitimized and justified Jereboam’s corrupt reign, Amos broke bad on them as well. Amaziah warned Jereboam that Amos’ preaching was unpatriotic and conspiratorial. He even tried to run Amos out of town on the king’s behalf so as not to bother any further the status quo of the North saying, “Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of his kingdom.” With those words the religious justification of political empire is complete, and faith is reduced to patriotic political cheerleading. Sounds a lot like today in our country.
These images of judgment and destruction in the OT often leave contemporary listeners pondering what kind of word this might be for our time and place. This vision is powerful precisely because it insists that God takes offense at the injustices perpetrated in sacred spaces and will not stand for an expression of religion that does not advance the divine demand for justice and righteousness. This vision may rightly distress or disturb, for it prompts the reflections of faith communities like ours to examine if our own mission and witness is in plumb with God’s vision of justice.
I found it quite interesting to learn as I was preparing for worship today that the Hebrew word ‘anak’ which translates as ‘plumb line’ is used only once in all of scripture and it is right here in Amos’ vision for God’s measurement for justice in Israel. When I think about a plumb line in recent years I think about the WWJD bracelets that were so popular not too long ago. What Would Jesus Do became a popular plumb line to determine right behavior and actions, justice and righteousness in contemporary times? But like many plumb lines that have fallen out of favor over the years, we seem to have set it aside perhaps because we just couldn’t live up to that kind of daily measurement.
Another reality that I think is worth noting is that we seem to have lost our plumb line by allowing whichever political party is currently in power to set the plumb line. Political parties tend to focus on their own skewed visions of what is plumb which results in missed opportunities for justice, missed opportunities because one subgroup is favored over another, missed opportunities because keeping the status quo becomes the plumb line which all is measured. Sadly political plumb lines are never as straight and true as the divine plumb.
So what kind of plumb line do we use in our own lives, in the lives of the church today? Do we even have plumb line to guide our faith journey today? And if we do, what does that plumb line look like – is it skewed to favor our beliefs, our own actions, our own world? Or do we even include a divine plumb line as part of self-reflections as individuals, as a community of faith? How are we living out the divine demand for justice and righteousness as children of God? These are some of the questions that our passage of forth-telling from Amos seem to be asking us this morning and I’m not sure if, or how, I want to answer them to be honest with you.
When I’m faced with tough questions and truth telling like Amos is posing to me, to us, this morning, it invites me to pause, to look in that divine mirror that reflects back.Sometimes I can honestly say that the reflection I see is one of alignment with a plumb line while other times I’m way out of plumb.It is those times when I am most out of alignment that I am most grateful for God’s grace and mercy.I believe that God’s judgment on me, on you, on us, on the church itself, is grounded in God’s grace and mercy, particularly when we are out of plumb.And for that I am, I suspect you are, that we are, grateful that God is compassionate, forgiving and judges us with grace and mercy rather than with total destruction.Thanks be to God for offering us a plumb line while also granting us grace, mercy and peace – amen.