Amos, what do you see?

Scripture Lessons: Colossians 1: 1-14 and Amos 7: 7-17, OT pages 855-856 Sermon Title: Amos, what do you see? Preached on July 10, 2016 Not only was Fred Rogers the host of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, but he was a Presbyterian minister and there’s a quote from Mr. Rogers that I read recently and that I really like: “I believe that appreciation is a holy thing – that when we look for what’s best in a person we’re doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something sacred.” I really agree with Mr. Rogers here, and I agree with him so much that I wish a little bit of him would rub off on the Prophet Amos. While Amos may be into appreciating the Nation of Israel and her people, he isn’t focused more on their strengths than their weaknesses here in the 7th Chapter that I just read. He’s not convinced of the power of positive thinking or swayed by the importance of nurturing healthy self-esteem – instead, led by visions and inspired by the Lord, the Prophet Amos seems to be one of those people who are willing to say the things that no one else is willing to say to address the weakness, brokenness, messed up stuff that those who err on the side of appreciation fail to address again and again. In his two major prophetic visions, he was called by God to point out the crooked walls and the over-ripe fruit. In both of these visions the prophet address the broken places and the sin of the people, and you can imagine that pointing these broken places out did little to improve his popularity in the community, so if I, and maybe you too, had the choice of spending time with either Mr. Rogers or the Prophet Amos, I’d chose Mr. Rogers every time, but today I’m reminded that the Prophet Amos makes a good point that I need to hear because I’m guilty of ignoring the crooked walls, both in my life and in the world around me – and by the strong words of the Prophet Amos I hear the Lord demanding that I pay better attention. We read in our 2nd Scripture Lesson: “This is what [the Lord] showed me: The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.” All around Amos were these crooked walls, and it’s true for us as well. All around us are these crooked walls, but all the time I walk passed them without paying them a second thought and I’ve been doing it for years. Back when I was in college I remember doing so. I was on a mission trip and I love that our church’s youth group is so active during the summer with Mission Trips. Two weeks ago our Youth Director Diane Money took a group of Middle Schoolers to Birmingham, Alabama and just yesterday she left to take our High School Youth Group to Brooklyn, New York. Personally I believe that these trips are important because so much of who I am and what I believe developed when I was on mission trips. When I was in high school every summer I’d go with my church’s youth group to Mexico – either Juarez, right on the border, or Monterey, more to the interior of the country, and for a week we would build cinderblock houses in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. The cinderblocks were stacked on a poured cement foundation, we’d pour cement to bring stability to the corners, apply a thick layer of stucco to the walls, inside and out, and then we’d put a roof on – and the roof was made of these great big cement panels. After it was all finished we passed the keys to the house to the family who would live inside and they who would cry and we would cry and I loved every minute of it and since I loved this trip so much, after high school I was invited to go back – this time in charge of one of the four houses. It was my job to supervise the work of the youth group, and to occasionally use a plumb line to make sure that the block walls were straight, and interestingly enough, just like the plumb line in our 2nd Scripture Lesson, when I went to check the walls of my house, the back wall was dangerously out of line. When I realized this, my first thought was that the wall needed to come down, but then, after realizing how much work that would take, I did what I imagine no one else here would ever do – I decided to wait and see if anyone else noticed. That may have been what Israel was thinking too. The Prophet Amos, by virtue of his trades, probably traveled around the country for he was not a shepherd but a “herdsman” – a livestock breeder – and also a dresser of sycamore trees who would travel beyond his home country where the sycamore didn’t grow to maintaining the health of this important crop where it did (7: 14). As he traveled you can imagine that he witnessed the plight of his people, and in his day of economic growth, he watched as the rich became richer and the poor became poorer, debt slavery became commonplace (Amos 2:6; 8: 6), rights were violated through intimidation of witnesses and bribery of judges (2: 7; 5: 10, 12) for luxury and poverty both flourished in his day much as they do now. Amos was called by God to express the Lord’s displeasure, specifically with economic inequality, and so he prophesized: “Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals – they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way” (2: 6-8). With words like these you can tell that he longed for an end to unfairness and was convinced that the true intention of God for the Nation would be, to use his own words in chapter five: “[That] justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing steam” (5: 24). The Prophet was willing to say these bold words, but even after these bold declarations and those of the plumb line that we’ve just read this morning in our 2nd Scripture Lesson, we read that the priest of Bethel, the highest ranking religious professional in the nation, sent word 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” (7: 10). Maybe the priest knew that throughout the community were these crooked walls and broken systems, but he was just a little leery about pointing those problems out. And maybe the priest knew that things were not as they should be, maybe the King already knew as well, but both were willing to turn a blind eye because who wants to try and dismantle habits ingrained in culture, who wants to be the one to point out the problem, especially if it was during election season? Wouldn’t you rather be the one who appreciated everyone’s gifts? Wouldn’t you rather be the one who applauded, even if you knew that no one was exactly doing their best? Wouldn’t you rather be the positive one rather than the negative one who points out the problem? Wouldn’t you rather be Mr. Rogers than the Prophet Amos? And maybe that’s the problem that we see again and again and again – no one wants to be the one who has to call sin sin. So there I was, ignoring the cinderblock wall even though it was crooked – and this memory convinces me that there is a human tendency in us all to turn a blind eye or even launch a cover-up, because while the doctors were saying that smoking would cause lung cancer and that concussions in professional football is causing long-term brain damage, how long did it take before people were actually willing to do something about it? From time to time someone has asked me if I believe that God is sending us any prophets today just as God sent Amos and Elijah and Isaiah – and I believe that God is sending us prophets all the time, but the problem today is the problem that has always been – God keeps sending us prophets but we are so slow to listen. The sure sign of a prophet in the Bible is that after the prophet speaks the truth no one listens, and as the plot line continues, if the prophet keeps talking eventually people try to kill him because the prophet’s words, if they are words of truth that challenge the way things are – then they are always threatening – because the words that the prophet speaks challenge our tendency to look the other way. It is hard to hear words that challenge the life I’m used to, so most of the time I prefer words that affirm who I am and what I’m doing rather than challenging words that tell me it is time to pluck up and pull down, destroy and overflow, and that God is about the hard work of making the rough places plain that all might walk in peace. Even if the wall is crooked - even if the wall might well fall on the people who will live inside – I am slow to do much of anything about it. So thankfully, soon enough, that wall of mine in Mexico was torn down and rebuilt, because fortunately there was another adult assigned to our group who went behind me to inspect the work that I wasn’t doing a very job of inspecting. The cinderblocks came down, and then they were put back up again, and this time the lines were straight, the plumb line attested to it – but the memory of this experience reminds me still that I live in a broken world, and even though the walls of our community are crooked, I am more likely to ignore the voice of the one who wants to challenge the way things are than to change. I can’t be so tied to the way things are – because I don’t pray every Sunday that things in heaven will be like they are on earth, but on earth as it is in heaven. The Apostle Paul prayed that the people of Colossae would be “filled with the knowledge of God’s will” and not the knowledge of human will. He prayed for “spiritual wisdom and understanding” so that the Church would be filled with those who “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him” – and such a life as that demands the uncomfortable process of change and renewal. So as you go out into the world today to face again a country struggling with issues of race, where too many people see violence and hatred as their only solution, I challenge you - because I believe that the word of God from the Prophet Amos challenges us all – to look out on the world not just with the eyes of appreciation who value what is good about the way things are, but also with eyes attuned to God’s justice, ready to call the crooked walls crooked – to tear them down, that they might be rebuilt. Amen.