There
is a shelf in my office where I keep some of my old children’s sermon props. My
daughters like to come in and play with them from time to time. I have a small
bottle of mustard seeds there, some large sea shells, a head lamp, and a wooden
cross that fits easily in your hand. Far and away the object that produces the
most curiosity is an old plumb bob attached to a long string. It’s a plumb
line. It’s probably the most plain, simplistic item there, but for some reason
the most irresistible to hold and play with. I bought the plumb bob years ago when
I was in a small hardware store looking for something else. With all the
conveniences that modern technology provides, I figured the plumb line was
probably obsolete by now, given all the advances in technology, but there it
was on one of the aisles. It ran me about $4, if I remember correctly.
The
best part about this plumb line, though, was the message contained on its
package, which had been written in three different languages. It read:
“SATISFACTION
GUARANTEED. If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with the
performance or results of this MasterMechanic product, it will be repaired or
replaced free of charge. Simply provide proof of purchase and return the
product and/or unused portion to your nearby place of purchase.”
For
a plumb line?? I realize that this is probably just a pre-printed quality
control message slapped on all of the MasterMechanic products, but it sounds
really silly on a plumb line. It has no moving parts that can break. It doesn’t
run on electricity. It runs, after all, on gravity…that’s it! As long as you’re
using it on earth, it always works! In fact, if you use the plumb line and you’re
not satisfied with the results, guess who’s malfunctioning?
That
was the cold, hard truth that Israel was confronted with in the 8th
century when the prophet Amos was speaking. They were having to come to terms with
how their building process—that is, the building of a righteous and
compassionate kingdom—was malfunctioning. God was going to set a plumb line in
the midst of their society, in the midst of their temple religion, in the midst
of their communities in order to show them just how crooked and out of whack
they’d become. Amos’ words were that plumb line, words that revealed the truth
of God’s righteousness and justice. And when they are held up to the whole
structure of the kingdom of Israel’s being, their lack of integrity will be
unmistakable.
And
the chief priest Amaziah and King Jeroboam probably know that. They are the
ones in power, and as is so often the case in human affairs, the ones who are
in power usually benefit from its misuse. They have a lot to lose from
listening to Amos’ message. The corruption of government and the empty, showy
nothingness of the religion they lead will be clearly revealed if Amos is
allowed to speak too much. His words will reveal how Israel had forgotten to
take care of the poor, how they had turned their worship of God into a worship
of material success. Their minds are filled with the dreams of what they want
to be and become, instead of the compassionate people God had created and
redeemed them to be.
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| "Amos the Prophet" (James Tissot) |
And
so what do Amaziah and Jeroboam do? They blame the plumb line! They actually
try to take up the Master Mechanic product guarantee on its word and send it
back, get a refund. So they send Amos
away. They do with this prophet what we are so often tempted to do with people
who tell a truth we don’t like to hear. They tell Amos to take his message down
to the southern kingdom of Judah and set it instead in the midst of them. See
how your plumb line fares down there, ol’ Amos! They’re bad off!
Of
course, crooked walls fall pretty quickly. Within just a few decades, Jeroboam’s
kingdom of Israel would be so weakened by its corruption and injustice that it
would quickly fall victim to the marauding armies of Assyria and they are wiped
off the map for good.
The
image of Amos’ plumb line only appears once more in Scripture, I believe, but it has always
been an effective tool for people who try to speak out against corruption,
especially of the religious and political kind. The point that Amos drives
home, perhaps more than any other prophet, is that when God applies God’s
standards of justice with compassion to God’s people eventually God’s people
should end up with a society that embodies that justice with compassion. Yet
instead, because of greed and selfishness, God’s people so often end up with
some warped, misshapen version of that justice and compassion, and it
eventually effects everyone, from the poor on up. Amos, as it turns out, has it
good. He just gets ignored and sent away. Look at what happens to John the
Baptist when he tries to hold a plumb line up to Herod and his corruption!
While
the people of God never see this precise vision of God’s plumb line again, God
does eventually set in their midst a living plumb line, a living standard by
which they may judge themselves. Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the
Holy Trinity, becomes flesh among us as a human plumb line, faithfully telling
the truth about who God is and who we are and what we are to be. As the writer
of Ephesians so eloquently describes it in our second lesson today, “with all wisdom and insight he has made known
to us the mystery of his will,
according to his good pleasure that
he set forth in Christ.”
In
Jesus God reveals for us the final and full measure of not only the mystery of
God’s essence but also of God’s goal. And just as a plumb line works on gravity,
Jesus works on grace. Just as a plumb line determines a building’s integrity, so
does the cross of Christ reveal the integrity both our own and God’s own. On
the one hand, it is judgment, exposing that things like racism and human
trafficking and disregard for the poor live among us. But the cross of Christ is
also grace because it reveals that God refuses to let his creatures live this
way. God refuses to give us over to that completely. Because
of the cross of Jesus, we know God stands among us with forgiveness, never-ending love, and
bold humility so that we may be built right again.
I
imagine that members of our youth group, in their journey to Detroit this week,
will experience God standing in the midst of what many believe to be a city
crumbling as a result of its own faulty construction. I remember in 2009 when
the ELCA Youth Gathering was first held in New Orleans, four short years after
it had been leveled by Hurricane Katrina, people wondered why in the world we
were sending youth into such a tumble-down city. The result exceeded everyone’s
imagination. We saw God’s standard of judgment and grace refashioning and
rebuilding a city as it was happening, refashioning our own hearts in the
process. That year our youth group was responsible for organizing and running a
field day for an inner city children’s organization. Every single one of the
400 kids we played games with for five hours in the heat was from a different
racial and economic group than our white, middle class suburban congregation. All
kinds of stereotypes started colliding with each other to give way to a very
peaceful and fun-filled day. Going into that neighborhood and hearing their
stories planted a seed in our youth for the ways in which their own city and
high schools right here might suffer from racial and economic inequalities.
At
one former Youth Gathering I remember hearing from a speaker named Emanuel
Yeboah from the African country of Ghana. Due to a birth defect, Emanuel had
been born with only one leg. In Ghana, as in so many countries, including our
own, people with any handicap or physical limitation are viewed much like the
poor were in Amos’ day: inferior, cast aside and left to fend for themselves. Emanuel,
knowing that was wrong, seeing that the walls of society looked very crooked in
that regard, decided to learn to ride a bike. He practiced and got in shape and
proceeded to bicycle across the entire nation of Ghana with his one leg. He
explained that as he came through the villages, people flocked to him, bringing
their sick and disabled people to see what a person like them could do. Most
importantly, though, he showed the people who had two legs that people like
Emanuel had value. God loves people like Emanuel no less than God loves anyone
else. You could say that Emanuel became a plumb line in the manner of Christ,
telling the truth, the unmistakable truth. Emanuel’s journey was a gift, laying
waste to all the misconceptions about people who are different, lifting up the
weak as instruments in this world.
It
is wonderful to have the opportunity to travel to Detroit or New Orleans to
have these experiences, but let us not forget that God applies his gracious
standard to us here weekly, in this place. Let Dylan’s own story be an example
of that. He came to our congregation through the invitation of some friends in
our Lutheran Campus Ministry program at the University of Richmond. He had
grown up relatively unchurched, but after a lot of wrestling with matters of
faith during those college years, slowly began to open up to the way Christ was
being revealed to him, that God was incorporating him into Jesus’ kingdom,
especially in this place. And today that journey enters the waters of baptism, and
Dylan is built anew.
Each
time we gather at this table, or see someone come through these waters, each
time someone reads from that lectern, we are given the opportunity to see the grace
of that cross in our lives, and the opportunity to be build anew. Each time we
worship God refashions us according to the standard God has set for us. And
then we can turn around and build our relationships with others, in our
communities, in our world…
And
when it comes to our worth in God’s eyes and our sense of integrity as this
kingdom is constructed in and around us, we never have to worry about the
result. With Jesus on the cross, we know God’s satisfaction is…guaranteed.
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| Commissioning the Epiphany Youth for the 2015 ELCA Youth Gathering in Detroit |
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
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