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.
No comments:
Post a Comment