Amos 7:7-17 (Luke 10:25-37)
Plumb Lines, Measuring Sticks, and Idolatry
James Sledge July
10, 2016
I
recently stumbled upon the website of an innovative, urban, Presbyterian Church
in another city. Its homepage said simply, “Recess. Closed for Sunday Worship:
July 3 & 10,” with a link where you could “Learn More.” There it spoke of “an active pause… essentially, a sabbath for
the system.”[1]
There were online liturgies available, but no church.
I
was intrigued, and so I showed it to a group of colleagues at a pastor lunch a
few weeks ago. One pastor, who shall remain nameless, immediately said, “O how
wonderful to be closed on July 3rd and not to have to worry about worshipping
the flag.”
The
connection to July Fourth had escaped me, perhaps because I’ve never been part
of a church where people in uniform march the flag around during worship. I’m thankful
to live in this country and happy to share my thanks in worship, but hopefully
we never forget that we gather to worship God, that our ultimate allegiance is
to our Lord, Jesus Christ.
I
hope that, but letting other things get between us and God seems to be a
chronic human problem. We don’t usually construct altars or golden calves, but
we have all manner of things we honor, serve, or give loyalty to other than
God. It is not unusual for them to be well ahead of God on our priority lists.
And by definition, whatever sits at the top of the list is our god.
These
gods may be security, wealth, power, nation, family, our political views, or simply
self-indulgence. Regardless of the god, people will try to enlist their religion
for support. People who worship money may say, “God wants you to be rich.”
Racists, homophobes, and Islamophobes imagine a god who hates those they hate. More
subtly, those of us who worship at the altar of consumerism may think of faith
or spirituality as one more item for our shopping carts. Jesus is not our Lord,
our God, but an element of our actual faith, one which promises us happiness
and fulfillment if we have enough of all the right things.
The
theological term for all this is idolatry,
and Presbyterian tradition has long spoken of it as a fundamental human
problem. The Presbyterian Book of Order
includes this line in its list of the key themes of our theology: “The
recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people
of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living
in obedience to the Word of God.”[2] People
sometimes imagine that faith is a private, personal thing, but our tradition
never has.
Jesus
didn’t either. After all, Jesus said he came to proclaim the Kingdom of God,
and there’s nothing private or “spiritual” about that. The ways of this kingdom
were a stark contrast to the kingdom of Caesar, and so it’s no surprise that
Jesus eventually drew the ire of Roman authorities.
In
our scripture today, the prophet Amos draws the ire of Israel’s authorities. He
says nasty things about Israel’s rulers right there in the national cathedral. It’s
not like the National Cathedral in DC. It’s more like Westminster Abbey in
England, a place where kings were crowned, a place built by a king. The high
priest is clearly on the payroll, and he orders Amos out, telling him, “Never
again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of
the kingdom."
The
priest’s faux pas, his idolatry, is too obvious. The king’s sanctuary? The
kingdom’s temple? Really? Isn’t it God’s?
Of
course when we pastors get together for lunch, we sometimes ask one another,
“How are things going in your
congregation?” Church members sometimes praise their congregation for doing things they like and criticize them for doing things they don’t like. Very often, neither criticism nor praise are
measured by the sort plumb line the prophet uses. It’s not about whether God
would approve or disapprove. It is about whether or not they liked it, because, after all, it is their church.
And
so we have liberal churches and conservative churches, Republican churches and
Democratic churches, black churches, white churches, and Latino churches, churches
that celebrate same-sex marriage and churches that condemn gays to hell.
They’re our churches, after all; they
should fit us, make us feel good and not make us too uncomfortable.
But the prophet Amos insists otherwise.
Even though it is a time of peace and the kingdom of Israel is doing well
financially, with lots of people getting rich, Amos insists it is all about to
end. The leaders, the wealthy, those who run the country, have not shared God’s
concern for those on the edges, on the margins. They’ve looked to their own
interests, and they’ve expected their
religion, their God, to bless them. Israel’s
high priest may be happy to oblige, but God speaks through a prophet, Amos, an
outsider from the southern kingdom of Judah, and a non-ordained prophet at
that. Things are out of plumb, out of whack, shouts Amos, but no one wants to
listen.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Things
are clearly out of whack in our world, and it shouldn’t take a week like this
past one to tell us that, to tell us that too often, black lives don’t matter
as much, that our society is awash in guns, and it is brimming with hate.
African
Americans have good reason to be frightened when they are stopped for a traffic
offense or arrested for a petty crime. Very often their skin color does mean
they are treated differently and are in danger.
Police
officers have good reason to be worried as they do difficult work in the midst
of a divided and angry society that demonizes the other, not to mention a society where killers have easy access to
military grade weapons.
And
right now, that “human tendency to idolatry and tyranny “ mentioned in the Book of Order is being stoked by
politicians who use hatred as a campaign rallying cry. Old hatreds that had seemed
gone, or at least out of public view, are being spoken aloud again. Things were
more out of plumb, more out of whack than we realized. Though if we had really
looked, if we had really held up a plumb line, a measuring stick…
God’s
law is the plumb line that shows Amos how out of whack Israel is despite the apparent
prosperity and wealth of that time. God’s law has a special concern for the
weak, the poor, and the alien, although the wealthy in ancient Israel, and an
amazing number of Christians, seem unaware of this.
Thankfully
Jesus gives us something of a Cliffs Notes version. Sometimes referred to as
the “summary of the Law,” it quotes two passages from the Old Testament. You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind… and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus even adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.”
In
today’s gospel, Jesus expands a bit on loving your neighbor. Asked who counts
as a neighbor, Jesus tells the well-known parable about a Samaritan who comes
to the aid of a man robbed and left for dead. Samaritans were a widely despised
other in Jesus day, a group
politicians would ban from the country or blame for crime sprees. But Jesus makes
him the hero of the story, and then he turns the question of, “Who is my
neighbor?” back on the questioner, asking him who was a neighbor to the man who
was robbed. The answer is obvious.
“Go and do likewise,” commands Jesus.
To the question “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers, “Be a neighbor.”
_______________________________________________________________________________
I
don’t have any good and pat answers to the events of this past week. I take
some solace in the certainty that God is most often found in the midst of
weakness, vulnerability, and suffering, that Jesus is a light in the darkness,
that God can bring hope and life out of death itself. And I draw some hope from
God’s promise to someday set things right. Jesus has showed us what a world set
right looks like, something he called the kingdom. And it starts with loving
God above all, and loving neighbor as self. It starts with turning from that
tendency to idolatry and tyranny and being neighbors to all in need, which
means working to transform society by seeking justice. It means being a
neighbor to all who could use one.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Things are out of plumb in our world. And
both Amos and Jesus have some pretty clear thoughts on why, and on what it
takes to get straight again.
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