What Do You See? Proper 10B

 I See A Plumb Line

I woke up Saturday morning to see that my friend and colleague Armando had posted this: God cares deeply about justice, about righting wrongs, and about defending the powerless. In the end, no one gets away with any act of injustice. Nor does God leave unrewarded our work done in faith for Him. How perfect as we examine the faithful work of the prophets Amos and John.

 

This is what the Lord God showed me, writes Amos: 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.” [Amos 7:7-15]

 

Amaziah, priest of the temple at Bethel in the then northern kingdom of Israel, and the King, Jeroboam II, are not amused. Amos makes clear that he is neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but a shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees, and was chosen by the Lord to deliver this vision. It is some 750 years before the time of John the Baptist. The reign of Jeroboam II was long, peaceful and prosperous. Israel enjoyed territorial expansion and national prosperity never to be seen again. With its military might and security, and its economic affluence, those who were the beneficiaries of this wealth took it as a sign of God’s favor; that they deserved all that they enjoyed, even if others in the kingdom were suffering.

 

Yet, the plumb line does not lie. The wall that is Israel was built on a covenant that God’s people would care for one another; would care for all the people in the land, especially the poor, the needy, widows, orphans and resident aliens.

 

The plumb line reveals a people so wrapped up in their own affluence, that the very structures of the covenant with their God are all about to crumble. Amos announces this in the Bethel temple. Amaziah warns the king that Amos is conspiring against the kingdom. In one of the most unforgettable scenes in Hebrew prophecy, he cries out, “the land is not able to bear all his words.” [v10] Not just the people of the land, but the very land itself trembles at the force of Amos’s declarations! Amos is ordered to leave Israel and return to the southern kingdom of Judah, which he does and spends the rest of his days writing down all that the Lord instructed him to proclaim.

 

His next vision, a basket of fruit, results in the official indictment of all who would ignore the covenant and treat the poor unjustly:

“Hear this, you that trample on the needy,

And bring to ruin the poor of the land,

Saying, ‘When will the new moon be over,

so that we may sell grain;

and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale?

We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,

and practice deceit with false balances,

buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes,

and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’”  [Amos 8:4-6]

 

We are reminded of Imelda Marcos, whose ‘museum’ of thousands of pairs of shoes now rot away; shoes bought at the expense of the poor and the needy of the Philippines. The judgment is as harsh as it is clear: vast wealth often, if not always, depends on others being ground-up in a system of power and access that becomes exclusionary. The very people the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus says are to be cared for and allotted a share in this fabulous wealth of the nation are left-out to rot like Imelda’s shoes. They are the victims of deceitful and unjust sales practices that strip them of their last shekels while those who control the commerce and the economy live in luxury.

 

The ‘wall’ of the covenant is no longer plumb. No number of extravagant sacrifices in the Bethel Temple will overcome the devastation of God’s people. The fabulously affluent want to believe it is God’s favor, not their abhorrent behavior towards those in need, that has made them fabulously wealthy. What if God were to hold the plumb line in the midst of our economy? Or, in that of China? Or, anywhere where military security and fabulous wealth comes at the cost of there being poor and needy people in the land? The brutality of empires to protect the fabulously wealthy is ever thus. We are meant to look at the plumb line and, like Amos, tell God what we see.

 

At least Amos gets to retire and write his memoir, the Biblical book of Amos. John the Baptizer held the plumb line in the midst of Israel seven hundred years later. All of Jerusalem and all of Judea agreed, things were not just. Then he holds a plumb line against the wall of the House of the ruling Herods, where Herod Antipas had taken his brother Philip’s wife Herodias as his own. [ Mark 6:14-29] For holding the plumb line and speaking truth to power, John loses his head. Herod Antipas will later play a role in the crucifixion of Jesus whose entire life held a plumb line for all to see to this day. Both John and Jesus were perceived as prophets and threats to the Empire’s economic control and extraction of resources from Israel. Holding the plumb line is dangerous work.

 

Neither John nor Jesus were allowed to retire and write their memoirs like Amos did. But the faithful of their followers continue to hold the plumb line before nations and even before the Church itself down to this very day.

 

This Seventh Sunday after Pentecost we pray, “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.”

 

The Lord stands by a wall built with the plumb line of our Baptismal Covenant of divine love, peace and justice for all. What do we see?  That we might truly understand what we ought to do, may the Lord God of our ancestors, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit give us the grace and power to see what is out of plumb, so we may act faithfully, now and forever. Amen.