ARE WE OUT-OF-PLUMB?

It was 762 BC, two years before the massive earthquake, and it seemed like the best of times to the people of Israel. Jeroboam II was king and the people were comfortable, secure, and rich. Assyria had subdued Syria, which allowed Israel, in turn, to expand its borders and protect its trade routes.  Moab had been beaten and Damascus was in Jeroboam’s hands. In addition to territorial expansion, Israel’s wealth grew rapidly. Friendly relations with the Phoenician’s brought rare items of great beauty into Israel, and for the fortunate few, life was great. In our parlance, gated communities began to crop up, people with money had great views… and biggest houses. The rich were getting richer, and the rate of absentee ownership was increasing.  For all the world, it looked like Israel really was God’s favored nation … but there was an ominous and enormous crack in its moral fiber, a crack that would do more damage than any earthquake ever would. Despite her prosperity, Israel had cancer- a spiritual cancer that would be her death unless she repented immediately!

Speaking truth to power is never easy. Telling people what they don’t want to hear is never well-received, and letting people know what God really thinks of them is a daunting task. It takes a prophet… and that brings us to Amos, a herder of sheep and tender of Sycamore trees, who lived in a small town near Jerusalem. Amos who wasn’t even a prophet by occupation, but he was the man God chose for the job. So, he traveled north and told anyone who would listen that Israel was dying- that she was in the grip of two deadly sins. One was idolatry- which is the worship of another god in place of, or in addition to, God. If we worship the God of the Bible on Sunday and the god of Wall Street on Monday, we are committing idolatry. If we turn to alcohol for comfort instead of Christ, we are committing idolatry. If we trust in our own wealth for security, instead of God’s steadfast love, we are committing idolatry. If you want to find a person’s real god, someone said, find out whom they spend time with, look to for support turn to in times of need, or choose to celebrate with when things are good. Check their calendar, or better yet, check their checkbook and see with whom they share their wealth. The Bible is clear: you cannot serve both God and wealth. You cannot worship God when you are in love with the lesser gods of this world… and this was Israel’s first sin.

But it wasn’t her last. Israel was worshiping many gods, no doubt, but its religion had also deteriorated into something that mocked God.  It was self-centered and self-indulgent. As Karl Barth would later say, they worshiped themselves in a loud voice and pretended they were worshiping God. Their worship lacked both heart and integrity, and besides that, they ignored and abused their neighbors systematically.  If we love our neighbor as ourselves, we will fulfill the law (as Jesus would note) because if we love them, we will not covet what they have, lie to them, steal from them, murder them, or commit adultery with them. Proper religion calls us to love God with all of our hearts AND to help our neighbors claim God's promises as well. We worship God by loving Him with every fiber of our being, and we worship God by serving others as if Christ was standing in their stead. The worship that God chooses is to loosen the bonds of injustice, to set the captives free, and to help those in need. However, the rich and powerful in Israel ignored the poor's pleas for assistance, stole what few assets they had, and even sold many of them into slavery.

The record shows that the gap between rich and poor was widening, and of greater concern, the rich were getting richer on the backs of the poor. Land was being taken from the poor and people were being sold “for a pair of shoes.” The rich were driving the poor into debt, and then taking their source of livelihood (equipment, livestock, land) to pay the debt. In Amos’ time, the rich and the important had developed tax structures that strangled the poor, and when that failed, they simply took what they wanted in the courts of law. Amos said that religion was so bad that a rich man would take a poor person’s coat on the way into church and then use the same coat for a seat cushion as he sat in his pew! 

 This sin would not stand- Amos was sure of it- because God is sovereign and as able to judge, as He is to forgive. Israel was going “you-know-where” in a hand-basket and her fate was sealed… unless she repented and put God first! In Amos’ view, God would bless Israel when (and not until) justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. In Amos’ view, wholeness (shalom)- a deep, satisfying contentment- cannot be manufactured, purchased, stolen, or hunted down. Trying to fulfill oneself in these ways is, in fact, the sin… because shalom is a consequence word. It is a state that comes to us… when we love God with all that we have and love our neighbors as ourselves. Well, what does all of this mean to us? Is America out of plumb? I see that we rank 1^st in anxiety disorders, 2^nd in childhood poverty, 5^th in pornography, 5^th in divorce rates, 15^th in literacy, 35^th in math scores, 1^st in numbers in prison, and 7^th in life satisfaction. Does that say anything about us? Also, I see that, in the last 40 years, confidence in religious leaders has fallen from 35% to 25% and that the number of Americans who do not attend religious services at all has risen from 13% to 25% over the last 20 years. Do these statistics say anything? Is SPPC out of plumb? Have we lost our way? Are we serving a variety of gods in the name of SELF? Are we ignoring and even imprisoning those who need justice and mercy? If Amos is right about the cause and effect he cites- that God will not continue to bless a people who no longer put Him first and who treat those who need a hand... as if they were worthless- then these are important questions indeed. Are we rotting from the inside out? ­

The prophet, Micah, cried out, “What does God require? But to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with the Lord.” Wouldn’t it be something, if after all of our efforts to find peace and purpose in ourselves and in the things we buy and create, we discover that all we had to do was do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord? Wouldn’t it be something if… after we’ve struggled to grab happiness and hold on to it…for dear life, we discovered that God will give it to us…when we love Him more than self and serve Him in every person we meet?