Pentecost 6

Pentecost 6 “SETTING A PLUMB LINE” 7/13 & 16/ 06

This week we share a rare reading from the prophet Amos, one of the more colorful personalities in God’s line-up of prophets. He prophesied during the 40 year reign of King Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.), a period of great prosperity for the northern kingdom. The threat of war was nearly non-existent and a cultural, social, and economic revival took place. But, this prosperity, as is so often the case, was accompanied by dramatic social corruption, caused principally by the demoralizing influence of competing and divisive religions. Characteristic of the ritual observances of this religion were drunkenness, violence, gross sexual immorality, and idolatry. The effects of this worship upon Hebrew society were seen in the corruption of justice, in selfish, luxurious living, and in the decay of social unity. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

Into this perilous situation Amos brought a message of stern denunciation! Author Frederick Buechner writes: “When the prophet Amos walked down the main drag, it was like a shoot-out in the Old West. Everybody ran for cover. His special target was The Beautiful People, and shooting from the hip, he never missed his mark. When justice is finally done, Amos says, there will be Hell to pay.” Amos—called by God from working as a sheep and goat herdsman and dresser of sycamore-fig trees--protested vigorously against the corruption of his culture and warned the Israelites that unless they repented and entered a renewed spiritual relationship with God, they would fall victim to the invader from the East. Amos spoke, the people would not listen, and what God prophesied through Amos was, within a few decades, fulfilled as Assyria invaded and took the Israelites captive.

The first 6 chapters of Amos reveal God’s observance of, and anger over, how His people were living! Chapter 7, the context of our reading this week, begins with Amos saying: “This is what the sovereign Lord showed me…” (7:1) God revealed to Amos a devastating swarm of locust and God showed Amos a great and consuming fire, but Amos begged God to relent, and God did. Then, in vs. 7 God is standing by a wall (representing Israel) “that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in His hand.” A “plumb line” is a simple but accurate tool used for determining whether or not something is perfectly vertical…i.e., “upright.” Used since very ancient times, a plumb line consists merely of a line and a weight of some sort, at first a stone, but later a weight made from lead. The Latin word for lead is “plumbum,” hence our word “plumber”, originally a worker of lead, including lead pipes and fittings.

God said to Amos, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.” (7:8) References to the use of a plumb line in Holy Scriptures almost always refer to the Lord’s plumb line…how righteously---literally, “upright”---God’s people live according to God’s Word. Wherever God’s people became “out of line,” He sent in the wreckers to demolish what God determined “condemned.” This condemnation wasn’t just about the Lord’s people back then, for the Lord does not change and God’s plumb line continues to “strike” the same consistent boundaries of “uprightness” today. What God said was wrong 2800 years ago is just as wrong today, as God is the “same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

In our very day, people and organizations endeavor to alter God’s plumb line, pronouncing that we are all entitled to create and maintain our own plumb line and that no one has the right to determine what is right and wrong…in line and out of line…correct or condemned…acceptable or unacceptable. God is certainly patient, but God is no “push-over.” Take a look at 2 Kings 21: 13-15 and Isaiah 28: 16-18, if you’d like. God takes no pleasure in condemning, nor does God take pleasure in corruption! This is not a threatening call for us to be “uptight,” but a timeless call for God’s people to live “upright” by the Word of, and in the eyes of, God! A call that reminds us of what we will soon confess, Jesus will “come again to judge the living and the dead.” God determines right from wrong and God will not forever put up with evil. God has set a plumb line in the midst of his people by which all shall be measured. We have His Word on it. Amen.