TAKE A PLUMB LINE, CHRISTIAN! WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Amos was a shepherd in Tekoa, a small village, south of Jerusalem, in the southern kingdom of Judah. He lived in a time of relative peace and things were going well, especially in the northern kingdom of Israel… where many of the people drank the best of wines and lived in big stone houses. They were also a religious people who gathered for their festivals and joyfully presented their offerings to God… but (and this is a big but) they had built their “good life” on the backs of the poor and vulnerable who lived in their midst.

They were filled with a sense of entitlement. They were drunk on their own wine. They had come to believe that God blessings were all designed for them… and they had ignored the justice (mishpat) and righteousness (sedeqah) that God demanded from the very beginning.  Amos was neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet. He was a shepherd, but after he received his call from God, he traveled north to present God’s case against the way in which the poor and marginalized were being treated. He condemned those who had winter homes and summer homes, while others were struggling, and he singled out the entitled women of Bashan, whom he called “fat cows” because they oppressed the poor and crushed the needy.

Speaking for God, he criticized the wealthy for worshiping God on their own terms and for being more filled with self-righteousness than righteousness. “There are those among you,” Amos noted, again speaking for God, “who hate the one who upholds justice and detest the one who tells the truth.” Not only do you avoid both justice and the truth, but you persecute those who try to help and get attention for the poor and disadvantaged. According to Amos,there were those who “levied a straw tax on the poor” and who “oppressed the innocent by taking bribes,” while they build stone mansions for themselves. “I hate, I despise, your festivals.” God said. “I will not listen to your harps”... until justice rolls down like a river and righteousness like a near falling stream. I will not attend your events and I will not listen to your organ music until you practice mishpat and sedeqah in your land and show my love in the way you treat others. “Your beds are adorned with ivory and you drink wine by the bowlful,” but you “do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.”

Israel was a religious people, but they were not faithful. They did not love their neighbors as themselves. They were not their brothers' or sisters' keeper, and they didn’t keep their thumbs off the the scales in the marketplace. Their religion had become part of their self-serving and dismissive lifestyle. SO… God showed a plumb line to Amos… and asked, “What do you see?” What do you see? Are things okay, or are they out of plumb? 

Are things okay or are they out of plumb in our world, our country, our town, our church, our families, in our own lives? Or are they straight and lined up with God’s will, to the best of our ability? What do you see, dear Christian? Are things plumb or have they gone awry? Are there safety nets and helping hands for those who are vulnerable? Are strangers welcomed when they show up at our door? Are the circles of grace and acceptance that we draw… as big and as permeable as God’s? Do we see other people, near and far, the same and different, as bearers of God’s image or as people who can serve us and be of some use? Are we rearing our children in the way of the Lord? Have we tamed our tribal tendencies? Are we doing better at knowing and trusting our neighbors? Have we broken the cycle of violence in our towns and in our homes? Do we leave some of our crops for the poor and the strangers? Are we, as a people, in good shape morally and spiritually? Do we really walk hand in hand? Do we even try? Do people really know us by our love? Do those who have two coats give one to the person who has none? Do we speak for those whose voices have been silenced? Do we speak truth to power, even if it costs us something? Does Abel’s blood cry out to us, for the taking of his life, as it did to God so many years ago? Do we embrace the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable? When we look into the eyes of a person who may be next to us in a line somewhere, or at table with us, who may or may not look like us; who may be, or not be, in agreement with us- do we see a child of God?  Or is our vision blinded by stereotypes and our own self interests?

      Take a plumb line, Christian (you and me) and see if things are plumb… in the world, in the church, in your family, and in your heart? Amen.