Plumb Lines, Prophets, Sinners, and Saints

Two weeks ago, it was Easter Lillies, victory for God, and a risen savior on the loose; last week some of you dressed up funny and celebrated Holy Humor Sunday and now…now the question for us is so what?  What does it all mean for us in the nitty, gritty of our daily lives?  The key players here are Amos, a prophet with the day job of being a herdsman; Amaziah, who is the head honcho at the local temple; and King Jeroboam, the king of Israel.  Amaziah and Jeroboam aren't too fond of Amos by the end of our reading.  Listen now to God's word to us this day,       

Amos 7: 7-15

            7 This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.  8 And the Lord said to me, "Amos, what do you see?"  And I said, "A plumb line."  Then the Lord said,

 "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel;

 I will never again pass them by;

9 the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel

            shall be laid waste,

  and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."

            10 Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.  11 For thus Amos has said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.'"

12 And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there; 13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom."

            14 Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, 15 and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel.'

This is the word of the Lord. 

Admittedly, if this text was used just one, two, or three years ago, it would have struck a sharper chord with many of us.  During Amos' day, the Israelite economy was roaring ahead, prosperity was unlike anything they had seen before, and many Israelites attributed their success to God's favor upon them because of their support of the church.  That's the same message you hear on early Sunday morning t.v., I've learned.  I heard several t.v preachers preaching this message of prosperity and God's favor for support of the church just this morning.  You've heard it before: the self-proclaimed bishop in the nicely tailored suit and slick hair stands up and says, "God wants you to be the best you that you can be, and this means having lots of money, and power, and even health."  And then there's the phone number of the ministry or even their address at the bottom of the screen as the camera pans the stadium, and you get the brief blip about how their ministry relies on your support, and they'll even send you a free book in exchange for your donation.  I've never seen these clips include the multimillion dollar mansions that these preachers live in as they're asking for money.  And I've never seen any of them preach from Amos.  You see, Amos, actually like most of scripture, is a problem for that line of thinking—that money or power or health or even numbers filling the arena are equivalent to God's favor.

Amos is a problem to that line of thinking now, and he was a problem to that line of thinking way back in the 8^th century B.C.  He is chosen by God to prophecy, and like most of our heroes of faith, he's an unlikely candidate to be chosen by God.  He's a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees, and doing just fine, thank you, and he doesn't want this new task of prophesying against the powers that be of his day.  In this case, doing God's work means going against the King, and the head priest of the synagogue at Bethel, and really all the comfortable people who are sure God has blessed them so financially and powerfully because of their shallow faithfulness.  Amos tells them that God is going to tear down the synagogue and all that is dear to them, and this vision that Amos has includes God holding a plumb line to make sure what God will rebuild will be straight and well-constructed.  It's easier to just start over than repair what's there things have gotten so far away from what the faith was intended to be.

So perhaps 2 or 3 years ago this passage would have taken on different meaning for us as our home values soared, our jobs were safe, and our financial accounts provided adequate returns.  Maybe Amos' words would have come as indictment to us, as in: don't you dare think that you're any better than anyone else just because you have more; God doesn't favor you any more than anyone else so don't stick your nose so far in the air that you don't notice those around you that need help.  It would have read much like Heathcliffe Huxtable's words to son Theo in the Cosby Show, "Boy, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."  In other words, don't forget that none of it is really yours.

But fast forward to spring of 2009, and, at least in some sense, the indictment of the passage is accompanied with a more predominant question.  What are we to be about here, on this third Sunday of Easter, as the church in a cultural climate of people who are even more scared than usual and a future even less predictable than we're accustomed?  Are we to say that we're here to win God's favor so that we have the most wealth and power and health and numbers?  The problem with that, and I think most of you will agree since you took the trouble to come from out there to be in here this morning, is that line of thinking is not much of an escape from what's out there, is it?  We're called to be different and see things differently.  The church's calling is to turn what's out there upside down with unselfish, Christ-like love.

It won't be long until you begin searching for a new pastor for Dorchester Presbyterian.  You might find this story interesting.  This past summer at the Music and Worship conference at Montreat, the preacher was Ted Wardlaw, president of Austin Theoleogical Seminary in Texas.  Austin recently undertook a comprehensive review of their curriculum to ensure that what they were producing in graduates was meeting the needs of churches.  One measure they sought to gauge was simply asking sessions of congregations what they most desired in their pastoral leadership.  The only quality that every single session independently and unanimously wanted in their ministers was humility.  That's a good quality for a minister to have; but I also wonder what that tells us that so many churches had to say they wanted humility in their pastors.

I have a friend from seminary who graduated and became a golf pro.  I'm actually not sure there's anything more pastoral.  His career goal is to get on session, which is ruling body of Presbyterian churches like ours and, I quote, "make life miserable for the clergy."  He looks forward to matching their tit for tat, while saying what he says all session members should do every once in while and declare that he reads the same Bible they do and has been going to church for just as long as they have, and he knows they're just acting like a big goober who gets to wear a robe every week.

While my friend's method might not be the most graceful or the most politically astute, I think there's something theologically correct about his goals.  You see what they don't prepare you for in seminary, after learning about great theologians like Calvin, Luther, and Barth, is that soon after becoming firmly entrenched in the local church, armed with your Master of Divinity degree—which is a misnomer if there ever was one—is that your favorite theologians will quickly change.  It won't take long until they become your brothers and sisters who worship with you every week: the school teacher, the nurse, the engineer, the retiree, the banker, the cancer patient, the widow, the astute youth—numerous folks who have the same Bible, have just as much if not more faith, and without whom, let's face it, the church could not be the church.

These are people who perhaps have a little Amos in them, ready to stand up and question what we're really about, which is a good question for us to ask every once in while.  Christ has risen and we're once again reminded of our salvation both for later and for now.  Thanks be to God for it, but now what?  What are we really supposed to be about?  And why did after all that trouble of the cross and a big heavy rock being rolled away from a tomb did God go about the trouble of calling together all of us misfits and broken people to be the church?  That's the question I hear Amos asking us as he points to God, the builder, dangling the plumb line nearby.   

So that's been my question to a variety of folks lately.  I've asked fellow church members, family, friends, even the occasional stranger.  The responses have been fascinating, the answers have been filled with passion, I think in part because to answer the question of why we are the church, inevitably you have to imagine a world without the church.  The world without a church?  Can you imagine the world without the church?

A world without the church would be good news to some.  Dorothy and I rented Bill Maher's documentary Religulous the other night.  Maher's aim throughout the flick is to portray the religious as overzealous, anti-intellectual, and downright backwards.  He makes valid points in his movie as he goes about and interviews people of the faith.  He highlights the worst that human beings have done with religion, particularly Christianity and contrasts that with who Jesus really was and what Jesus really said.  I haven't noticed this so much with stories of the fires near Myrtle Beach this week, but you know how when the national news ever comes to South Carolina for a major story they tend to find the people to interview that we all shake our heads at; that was kind of like watching Maher's choices for interviews.  He picked easy targets for his film.  There were no Presbyterians interviewed or picked on.  But as many of you might have seen in recent surveys, Maher and folks like him who would love to see a world without religion have news to celebrate here in the U.S. as no denomination is growing and most are significantly declining in numbers.  Do you see a plumb line dangling, and can you hear Amos asking us what it is that we're really supposed to be about, all of us unlikely ones chosen by God?

I asked that question of what is the point of the church to many of you.  One person, with a look of bewilderment and fire in her eye asked, "If the church wasn't here, if we didn't do these things, who in the world would?  We are the only source of goodness and hope in many folks' lives."

            Many of your brothers and sisters highlighted the role of the community of faith here, many pointing out that we are the body of Christ in the world.  Church isn't about a building, it's about providing hope and reminding people of God's promises.  It's up to us, the church, to be Christ-like.

            I was even brave enough to ask my mother-in-law in a recent conversation.  She went on to say, "we should be doing what Christ would be doing: worshipping, learning, preaching, teaching, healing, being with sinners and outcasts, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, serving, sacrificing, praying, loving…she went on and on and on." 

            That sure is a lot, isn't it?  Just think of all of the brokenness in the world, in our own community, and perhaps even in our own lives, and what it means to be the church quickly becomes daunting.  Can we even do it?  According to our passage today, God is expecting us to be faithful to our calling and remember it.  God is with us, among us, demanding us to be the church, but God is also leading the way; God is setting the plumb line.

            If you've ever been on any kind of guided tour of Charleston, your guide most likely explained to you that Charleston is known as the Holy City because of the number of churches and the fact that steeples still dominate the skyline.  There is a church on every street corner.  It's amazing.  But there's also a homeless person on every street corner.  Why are we the church?

Our culture says you've got to make the most money, look the best, drive the nicest car, accumulate power, take care of only me, me, me.  Why are we the church?

Sickness and illness and suffering, loneliness and even death often strike and we need a place like no other to be loved and comforted and feel God's presence.  Why are we the church?

Perhaps the most powerful response I received to this question didn't come in the form of words.  Actually, it took place a couple of years ago, and it came from someone I didn't ask to respond to the question of why we are the church.  But it's an image I'll never forget.  It was the night before my sister-in-law's wedding, and the family went to the church to set everything up for the ceremony.  Before we left, we did a final walk through of the sanctuary and all of the rooms that would be used for the wedding party.  The bride-to-be, my sister-in-law, began to have tears well up in her eyes.  She was fighting them back.  I confirmed this later with her, but as we walked around her mind was flooded with the memories of what that church had meant to her through the years—the Sunday school teachers who taught her God's stories, the sermons that struck a chord deep within her soul, the music that lifted her spirit, the relationships formed and work done on mission trips to Honduras and Appalachia, the opportunity to deliver meals to the needy in the area, the people who stayed in touch when she was away at college, the people who loved her when her grandmother died and when her dad faced heart surgery and then prostate cancer in the same year.  As she reached that milestone in her life and had tears flowing down her face, she was overwhelmed thinking of how the church had been the church.  Friends, there is no place like this when we're at our best. 

Brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, the world needs us to be the church. 

Brother and sisters in the body of Christ, we need us to be the church.

This ancient prophet, Amos, is still demanding that we remember why we are a people chosen by God at this point in history.  In your own hearts, minds, and souls remember and answer the question of why we are the church.  And then forcefully, faithfully, and passionately: Go and be the church.