Plumb Line 7-14-24
Plumb Line
Ps 85:8-13; Amos 7:7-15
PS 85:8-13
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts. Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.
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 – God of grace and righteousness, we come this morning, only a week after celebrating a national holiday and we hear of the ways that ancient Israel failed to differentiate between church and state, righteousness and corruption. It seems that we have similar struggles today in our world and maybe our passage this morning can bring us back to center, bring us back to where the faith guides the compass. Help us to hear as you intend and follow as you lead – amen.
Amos was a southern sheepherder from a tiny village near Jerusalem called Tekoa. He felt called by the Lord to become a prophet, a “mouthpiece,” the translation of the word, and to go north some few miles to the central sanctuary of Bethel of the kingdom of Israel, a separate nation from Amos’ Judah during his lifetime. We cannot be absolutely certain about the time of Amos’ preaching—a common guess is 750BCE—but we do know that Israel was a mere thirty years or so from its complete destruction by the might of Assyria in 722BCE.
However, when Amos appeared in Bethel to preach, all seemed very well indeed with the comfortable and heedless Israelites. Their king, Jereboam II, was generally well liked since he had brought abundant prosperity to the land, at least to those who already had a fair measure of ease. The archaeology of 8th century BCE Israel tells a rather more mixed story. There were indeed splendid houses surrounding the even more splendid ivory-encrusted palace of the king on the hill of Samaria, the capital city of the northern kingdom, but the valleys below were filled with tiny houses for those less fortunate, those Amos calls the poor and the destitute, playthings of the rich. Those rich “trample the poor and steal from them levies of grain,” the better to build “houses of hewn stone”. The rich “afflict the righteous, take a bribe, shove the needy aside in the gate” (that is the court of law).
Amos is tough and blunt. He says things no one wishes to hear today any more than they did almost 3,000 years ago. He’s enough to make even the boldest 21st century preachers and teachers shy away from both his message and him. In the text the Lectionary appoints for this particular Sunday, God shows Amos a vision of God standing near a wall that had been built straight. There God holds what most modern translations call a “plumb line”. While Amos 7’s hearers may be tempted to go to great length to describe a plumb line, it’s probably enough to simply say it helps to measure a wall’s straightness, or perhaps that which God finds as righteous.
Of course, the Lord is more concerned with moral than physical “straightness.” So God speaks of setting “a plumb line among” God’s “people Israel.” God’s conclusion? Israel is “out of plumb;” she’s morally crooked. She deserves to be knocked down because she has failed to keep her part of God’s covenant with her.
Yet Israel assumes God is still on her side. God even seems to reinforce that by referring to her as “my people.” Yet that relationship between God and God’s people is strained, not by God but by Israel’s actions. God hasn’t rejected Israel. Israel has rejected the Lord. In the Lord’s eyes, Israel is no longer in plumb.
Amos doesn’t explicitly describe how Israel has proven to be God’s unfaithful covenant partner. Amos at least hints at some of Israel’s crookedness. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, one of the northern kingdom’s major shrines, speaks it. Yet while he’s a priest, he makes it clear that he derives his authority not from the living God, but from his king. Amaziah is more interested in Jeroboam’s security than the truth of God’s Word. In fact, the first person to whom the priest speaks in this text is not Amos with whom he so sharply disagrees, but his boss, King Jereboam.
Amaziah claims Amos is trying to undermine both the monarchy and Israel. He lies by claiming the prophet is raising a “conspiracy” against Jereboam. On top of that, Bethel’s priest enigmatically warns his king, “the land cannot bear all his words”. It’s not clear whether he means Amos’ words which may lead Israel to repentance, destruction or something else. It is clear, however, that Bethel’s priest’s first priority is not the living God or God’s Word. While Amaziah recognizes Amos as a “seer”, he does his best to silence the prophet or at least redirect his criticism to other people.
What’s more, Bethel’s priest calls Bethel, one of the northern kingdom’s major shrines, “the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom”. So, to one of Israel’s religious leaders, Bethel is not God’s sanctuary or temple. It’s Jereboam and Israel’s. Amaziah claims what actually belongs to God for his king and country. There appears to be a desire to incorporate church and state into one.
Amos, that crusty 8th century BCE prophet of Israel knew full well that when the state became entangled in the church, when the state became the employer of the church for its own ends, that separation wall needed rebuilding lest the church disappear, becoming merely an arm of the state. And if that were to happen, he reasoned, the Lord he knew would vanish from Israel along with the justice in the land that Lord demanded and assured. All of these crucial ideas are expressed in Amos 7, one of the Bible’s clearest statements of how we should view the relationships between the church and the state. Jefferson quite obviously sat very loose to the traditional tenets of Christianity (witness his astonishingly literal chopping up of the New Testament!), but he breathed the spirit of the old Bible nonetheless and found there full support for his suppositions. Despite the foolish blandishments, and so-called historical analyses of supposed historians like David Barton of Texas, our country was NOT founded as a Christian nation. Quite the contrary! It was founded as a free land where no single religion could ever hold sway and a land where no religion could be proscribed, no matter how fanciful or weird it may appear to a majority of believers.
The rulers of Israel in Amos’s time had used religion to consolidate political power. Jeroboam 1 wanted the same kind of prestige that Jerusalem had as a cultic center, so he built shrines at Bethel and Dan that were idolatrous. Amaziah was his court prophet, speaking on behalf of the regime. But Amaziah was a false prophet, so God enlists Amos to speak on his behalf.
Today, there is a strong movement among some evangelicals who seek to turn America into a so-called “Christian Nation.” They often claim, against all the facts, that the founders and framers were Christian and intended us to be a Christian nation. It is true that many of the founders were Christians of one sort or another, but many of them were Deists and intentionally put in our founding document protections against government interference in religion and religious interference in government, the separation of church and state.
The founders were rightly suspicious of giving any religion a privileged place in American life. You know I recently learned something interesting about Billy Graham. Did you know he was friendly with American presidents from Harry Truman right through Barrack Obama, and served as an informal advisor to them? But did you know the one president who never invited Graham to the White House? Can you guess?
It was Jimmy Carter. And that may seem strange and counterintuitive since both Graham and Carter were Evangelical Christians. But the thing is, Jimmy Carter is a Baptist, and Baptists historically have been very wary of religious entanglement with government. Roger Williams left our theocratic Massachusetts Bay Colony for Rhode Island so that he could have separation of church and state and freedom from governmental interference in religious matters.
So while being a Christian nation may not have been the intent of our founders, being a righteous nation is a good idea. This idea of societal righteousness was important to our Puritan ancestors, and, though it has never been fully realized, it remains in the DNA of American identity, although I fear it is fading fast. For example Dr. King powerfully employed this Biblical notion in his plea to our national conscience during the struggle for civil rights.
And the litmus test, the plumb line if you will, that the prophet’s used is still the right one. This is the question: How does a nation treat its most vulnerable members. And who are the most vulnerable today? Children for one and migrants for another, and if you are unlucky to be both you might be separated from your family and end up in a cage in a warehouse somewhere. I never dreamed I would see that in America.
So, who else is vulnerable in our society? Religious minorities are vulnerable. The FBI has reported a dramatic rise in hate crimes two years in a row. Anti-Semitism and attacks on Muslims have increased. And we are in the midst of a national rethinking about the way our law enforcement officials treat racial minorities. And our income inequality is reminiscent of Amos condemnation of the greedy rich of his day, who could bribe courts in their favor. In our time the super-rich can, and do, buy politicians and elections.
So, I would say we are failing the litmus test for national righteousness. It is true our building was never entirely straight from the beginning. When the Constitution was written we had enslaved human beings who were consider three fifths of a person. Only men could vote. But we have come along way since then, and it looked for a while like the plumb line might eventually find that our house was no longer crooked. But today we are on many fronts moving backwards in justice and righteousness. And the idea of a righteous nation is not limited to one faith. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and secular people of good will can all work toward a society that cares for and protects its most vulnerable members.
But I do think there is a special role for the church, in that this notion of social righteousness is part of our story, as we see in Amos and in the teachings and actions of Jesus. And when we were baptized we all promised to “resist the powers of evil and injustice.” It is my fervent hope and prayer that the church of Jesus Christ can be a community that seeks righteousness, and that we can hold up the plumb line of God’s righteousness to challenge and confront injustice and evil wherever we find it. That may be the most important plumb line we ever use – thanks be to God – amen.