“Do you even know what a plumb line is?” she asked in a surprised tone of voice. “Well of course I know what a plumb line is.”
There was a long pause.
“Well, do you know that it’s a string with a weight at the bottom of it to make sure that a wall is straight?”
“Yeah, that was what I was about to say.”
This was a conversation that Penny and I had early in our marriage when I was telling her about a sermon I was working on based on our Old Testament reading for today. I told her that it was the reading from the prophet Amos where God is standing next to a wall holding a plumb line against it.
I can’t say that I have ever used a plumb line to build anything but I have used my putter as a plumb line when lining up for a putt. Does that count? At least I have the gist of what a plumb line does.
Standing behind your golf ball and holding up the putter in front of you will help you to see if the putt will break to the left or to the right or if it will go straight to the hole. So, I think I understand why God is showing Amos a plumb line. God is showing how far off point the Israelites have been in living out who God had called them to be.
They had lost their fixed point in what it means to be the people of God. God wanted Amos to tell the people of Israel that they needed to get back on point which meant that they needed to stop being so self-indulgent and to starting caring for the needy, the poor, and the weak.
So Amos serves as a human plumb line by sharing this message that he had received from God with Amaziah, a Priest in the northern Kingdom of Israel.
Amaziah ends up telling Amos to essentially take a hike back to his backwoods town of Tekoa. “Who invited you here anyway? You can talk till you’re blue in the face about food insecurity in southeast, Ohio, or how there are more people than you think who can’t find affordable housing or any housing at all, or how half of the population around here has no church affiliation while most churches continue to shrink in numbers, but get real, Amos. At some point, people need to help themselves. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Again, if it was me instead of Amos, I might have said something like, “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.” And leave it at that. But no. Amos just doesn’t know when to stop.
He goes on to tell Amaziah, “Oh, by the way. I might be from a nowhere land, but that didn’t stop the Lord from giving me another message to tell you.”
We as the readers are thinking to ourselves, “Don’t say anything else, Amos. You’ve said enough already. Don’t say what we think you’re going to say next. Don’t do it. Uh, oh. He’s actually going to say it, isn’t he?”
Amos goes on to say, “Oh yeah. There’s one more thing. Because of your disregard for the ways of God, your wife is going to become a prostitute and your sons and daughters are going to die by the sword.”
We cringe and we want to say to Amos, “OK, Amos. Way too much information. But we gotta hand it to you. You stood up to them.”
Can you believe these prophets? The Lord gives them a word of judgment and they don’t back down.
They call Amos one of the 12 Minor Prophets, but there’s nothing minor about this mouthpiece of God.
Prophets by their very nature scare us to a large degree. I was speaking with a member of another church and he was telling me about his involvement on the staff/parish relations committee of his church.
And he said, “Yeah. We had a problem with one of our pastors years ago and we asked for a new minister.” “What did he do,” I asked, not knowing if I really wanted to hear the answer. “He upset a lot of our people because of his anti-war sermons and our congregation is very patriotic.”
I wanted to sarcastically ask if their pastor went by the name of Amos by any chance, because it sure sounded like something Amos would have said.
Now, Amos wasn’t telling Amaziah something that he didn’t already know. He would have known that the God of Israel was a God who cared for the poor, the marginalized, and for those who were seen as outsiders. He would have known that the people of Israel were meant to be a light to the world, and not a light unto themselves.
The truth is – we can know something to be true and yet live in a way that defies that truth about God and ourselves. We can so easily lose our fixed point and get off track with our purpose and mission.
So what Amos is actually doing in his role as prophet, is reminding the people of Israel of who they are called to be. A people who are called to be faithful. A people who are called to change their ways when they fail to be the people God has called them to be.
That’s why we need people like Amos who will get out that plumb line and show us where we have gotten off centered. You know. It’s not easy to stay centered without the help of a plumb line.
This past January, Penny and I decided to watch a recording of the online worship service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. It was the service that was held on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. We thought it would be a nice way to reflect on the meaning of Dr. King’s legacy.
[Dr. Michael Eric Dyson]
This past January, Penny and I decided to watch a recording of the online worship service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. It was the service that was held on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. We thought it would be a nice way to reflect on the meaning of Dr. King’s legacy.
The guest preacher was Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, professor of African American Studies at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Dyson is also an ordained pastor and a powerful preacher. We got more than we bargained for because Dr. Dyson proceeded to tell painful story after painful story of how deeply embedded racism is in our nation.
For some reason, I was thinking that the sermon would be more of a nice little reminder for people to get along with people better, especially with people of a different color, but instead we got hit hard with an Amos type of sermon.
Dr. Dyson held up that plumb line there in that beautiful cathedral, making the people in those church pews squirm as well as Penny and me as we watched the sermon online from our living room couch.
It was one of those sermons that reminded us of the painful reality of racial injustice that continues to permeate our society. What I thought was going to be a nice little sermon that would make me feel better, ended up becoming a major wake-up call, as painful as it was to hear, to do better and to be better. We need these Amos sermons from time to time. We need that plumb line.
A friend of mine sent me an email that shared her frustration over people who call themselves Christian but exhibit hate-filled rhetoric. She asks, “Does their Bible have some extra Gospel of Hate, that isn’t in our bibles? And how do they think that they will draw people to Christ if all they have to offer is hate?”
She then shared this raw emotion – “I have been left feeling that instead of wanting to offer encouragement to these people, I would rather whop them up side of the head with a skillet to knock some sense into them. How do these people claim to be Christian?”
My friend was sounding a lot like Amos who was looking at that plumb line and wondering how people who claim to be people of faith don’t even notice how off point they have become.
And of course the truth is that we are all susceptible in getting off point in our faith. That’s why we all need this plumb line to help us get closer to that fixed point where we are living out a Gospel of Love rather than a Gospel of Hate.
It’s been a little over four years now when we remodeled our sanctuary and the front entrance of our church building. One of my favorite memories from that time is when one of our members entered the front entrance of our church and saw the new look.
As she stood in our front Welcome Center and was looking into our sanctuary, she said to me, “This is my favorite thing about the improvements we made.” I asked her what she meant.
And she said, “From back here, my eyes are more drawn to our large cross up front. It’s the way that the new carpet in the back of the sanctuary starts wide but then narrows and leads your eyes all the way to the front of the sanctuary and then upward to the cross.”
I think about her observation often. She’s right. The cross has become more of the fixed point for whenever we enter this building. It helps to remind us that we have a Gospel of Love, not a Gospel of Hate. It reveals where we have fallen short of who God has called us to be.
Like a plumb line that sways back and forth and finally comes to a stop, the cross is our fixed point leading us to be the people that God has called us to be.
Our Fixed Point
O God, center us on this day of worship. Reorient us so that we will be aligned with your desires and purposes. Renew our focus and set our eyes upon Jesus who is the true plumb line of our faith. We confess that we too often use our own political and personal agendas to establish what is true rather than upon your relentless pursuit of justice, mercy, and goodness for all people. Remind us again and again to always find the truth we are seeking by looking to Jesus who lived, died, and rose again for our sake. Amen.
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