God's plumb line

 

Sunday 11^th July – 6^th after Trinity – Proper 10

Amos 7: 7-15. The plumb line means that God is going to establish a standard of behaviour and will no longer be indifferent to how people live. We don’t know if Amos directly prophesied Jeroboam’s violent death but according to 2 Kings 14:29 Jeroboam died a peaceful death after ruling Israel for 41 years. We do know however that the Northern Kingdom of Israel was laid waste by the Assyrians in 721 BC which would accord with his prophesy against Israel.

Ephesians 1: 3-14. “Blessing” in Greek is both an act of praise or thanksgiving or an act of bestowing a gift on another, so God is to be blessed for God’s blessings. The gifts bestowed are redemption, forgiveness, wisdom and faith and the only appropriate response to that is one of giving thanks and praise. This should prompt us to recall that the chief end of human life according to the Westminster confession (1646) is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Mark 6: 14-29. This longest piece in the gospels not directly about Jesus is drawing a parallel between the deaths of both men at the hand of weak vacillating leaders who left to their own devices would have spared them but under the influence of other circumstances order their executions. Speaking truth to power has always been a dangerous thing to do and having friends in high places (Herod respects John) never guarantees your safety.

 

Honesty and integrity and treating your fellow men and women with justice and as equally loved by God have always been highly prized human attributes and especially within the house of Israel (at least to each other) these are the foundation stones of what honouring and praising God looks like in practice.

 

It is a commonplace in the Bible that a love of God and a pure religious cult must go hand in hand with a just society purely because it was revealed early on that this is what God wants and prizes.

 

But it was a fact that no matter how correct the religious worship was and how strictly the sacrifices to God were conducted, Israeli society at the level of both the societal and the personal level had become corrupt.

 

Injustice, cheating, lying and exploitation had become commonplace and the message given to Amos the prophet was that God was not going to tolerate it any more from what was after all his chosen people.

 

A plumbline is a piece of string with a weight on one end and was used to measure how straight walls were – and the plumbline God was dropping into Israelite society was the law, or Torah.

Measure up to that or face the consequences was the basic message revealed to Amos, because actions have consequences.

 

The actions of powerful men and women like Herodius, Herod and Pilate have far reaching life-ending consequences for which they should have been held to account in this life but will have to account for before God.

 

And that is the same for all of us on a personal level of private morality, and the more power you wield, the higher up you are in the pecking order, the more your decisions and morality impinge on ever more people so your honesty and integrity become even more important.

 

What we do know is that the Northern kingdom of Israel was wiped off the face of the earth by the Assyrians in around 722 BC.

 

Were the Assyrians an unknowing instrument of God. That is unknowable but the Southern kingdom of Judah must have looked at what happened to their brothers and sisters to the North and shuddered.

 

Did it make them think about their own actions and morality? Probably, in the short term but humans are flawed beings, prone always seek the easiest most expedient way so even if it did produce a sudden burst of moral probity I dare say it wouldn’t have lasted very long – and historically of course we know it didn’t last.

 

Of course, when the time was right God dropped another plumbline into human society, his son Jesus Christ.

A definitive once for all standard against which all things can be measured and found wanting.

 

Jesus Christ is the eternal revelation of the truth about God and his moral rectitude and wisdom shines as an everlasting light to the world at large and for his followers like us a paragon of virtue to emulate and use as an example of how to live a godly life.

 

Jesus was immersed in God’s grace and lived out of that grace. That is the example he left us. Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

 

Just like our Jewish antecedents we fall and fail often but in the light of the revelation in Christ we also know that if we repent (turn our lives around) there is forgiveness and mercy and eternal life.

This is why we praise God. His love, forgiveness and redemption are revealed to us in Christ. We are blessed in Christ and we praise God for that blessing.