SUNDAY SERMON: Amos calls a crooked nation to repentance
By Rev. Stephen Baldwin
OT: Amos 7.7-15
*Before the sermon, please join me in a word of prayer for our nation. Let us pray:
Glorious God, we need your grace right now. For years now, our country has been divided and heated…and the temperature reached a horrific boiling point yesterday. We pray for former President Trump, for the family who lost a loved one in the crowd, and for our nation in full, for we are all watching prayerfully and anxiously, hoping against hope that good can come from evil. Light can shine forth from the dark. Love can emerge from hate. We come to you, O God, not with politics in mind but with your kingdom in mind.
You entrusted us with stewardship of this world, and we are falling far short of your glory. You teach us: blessed are the peacemakers. You teach us: love your enemies. You teach us: pray for those who persecute you. You teach us: pursue peace with all people. You teach us: that it’s not enough to refrain from murder but we must not even be angry with our brothers and sisters. You teach us: turn the other cheek. You teach us that you’re in charge; justice and righteousness belong to you.
In these hot days of a scorching summer, may our tempers be cooled. Our children are watching, seeing how we respond to this violence and mayhem. May this moment be a turning point where we see we’ve gone too far with rhetoric and violence. May this moment be a turning point for grace, which brings out our better angels. Gracious God, you intend us for life, not death. Peace, not violence. Unity, not division. Love, not hate. Keep us focused ever on your kingdom, on doing your will, and your will alone.
May our brothers and sisters just across the state line in Butler, PA, feel your grace and mercy as they endure this crisis in their own community. We pray they know you are with them, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Be with us, too, as we do what we can to spread your good news in bad times. Help us reach out to neighbors, hug loved ones closely, take care of our brothers and sisters, and lift each other up, for we are all your children, O God. We pray this in your holy name. Amen.
The Sunday Sermon
A friend said to me this week, “I’ve got a weird idea for you…” And before he could keep talking, I interrupted and said, “Let’s do it.” Why? Because I like weird. Weird ideas, weird music, and most of all, weird people. So if I really like you, I’m sorry…it probably means you’re as weird as I am.
Which is why…I love Amos. He’s a weird guy. Not much about him makes much sense. He was a southerner who worked in the north. He was a farmer, but also a prophet. Whenever he was farming, he talked about prophecy. And whenever he was prophesying, he talked about farming. So how’d this weird farmer get his own book in the Bible? Because his prophecies came true.
Around the year 850BC, Amos prophesied that Israel would soon fall because the rich and powerful had no regard for the average people. Sure enough, 30 years later, Israel fell when greed got the better of them…and Amos got his own book.
In the book of Amos, he has a series of three visions. In the first vision, an invasion of locusts devours all the people’s food and they perish. In the second vision, a great fire destroys the land and even the water. Both visions show a famine, where the people and the land die because of their greed. They take and they take, leaving nothing for anyone ever again. It’s a punishment fitting for the crime. Amos knows it. He rails against those who are stealing and storing up all the food every day, but at the same time Amos begs and pleads with God not to let it happen. And after both visions, God does not do it.
Then comes the third vision, which we’ve just read, where Amos and God have a talk. They’re standing beside a wall. God holds a plumb line to the wall, showing Amos how crooked it is. If you don’t know what a plumb line is, Google it and you will find a video of Bob Vila showing you how to use a nail and a string to make a straight line for building things with a plumb at the bottom. The implication of the plumb line is clear–God has tested Israel with a plumb line, and it’s crooked as can be. Unjust, unrighteous, corrupt, and crooked.
Unlike the last two times, Amos doesn’t push back. God has judged the royal leaders–not all the people, just the royal leaders–as unrighteous, and Amos cannot defend them any longer. What did they do that upset God so much? Instead of protecting the weak and poor, they took advantage of them. They took their resources to store up more treasure for themselves. God has had enough, and so has Amos.
Amos was a prophet, whose job was foretelling or forthtelling. Foretelling is what we usually think of with prophecy–foretelling the future. But most prophets are actually in the business of forthtelling–telling the people a message which comes forth from God. They are the messengers.
Amos’ message was clear. Stop exploiting people. He tells a story in the next chapter where the rich would buy off the courts to get a judgment that favored them and hurt the poor. He told the religious and political leaders that God despised such behavior.
As you might imagine, Amos paid the price for speaking truth to power, like Ghandi did and just like Dietrich Bonhoeffer did and just like Martin Luther King did. The son of the king’s prophet killed him. Because they didn’t want to hear about God’s judgment. They didn’t want to be told they were crooked.
For Amos, the prophet of God, the test of a nation is how it treats the least among them. Israel failed the test. The plumb line showed how crooked they were. Let me be very clear. Amos is speaking to the leaders of the nation. He is speaking about the unrighteousness of the nation. I know we often look at scripture through the lens of the individual today, but that’s not who Amos is speaking to so much as he is speaking to the leaders of the nation about the nation as a whole. So, would our nation stack up to the plumb line?
At last week’s closing service for Alderson Presbyterian Church, I shared a quote found at the top of their church history. It comes from Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who visited America in a quest to discover what made this country tick. The quote says, “I sought the greatness of America in her harbors and her commerce, mines and fertile fields, but it was not there. It was not until I entered her churches and found her pulpits aflame with righteousness that I understood the greatness of her power. America is great because America is good. And if she ever ceases to be good, she’ll cease to be great.”
That was a much gentler, more diplomatic way of saying the same thing Amos said. The same thing God said with the plumb line, too. We are called to be good as a nation and as a community of people, especially to the least among us who are in need.
We started off this sermon talking about being weird, and let me tell you…Amos is preaching a weird idea not only for his world but for ours today. The culture teaches us to take care of ourselves at all costs. That is not a kingdom value. God’s kingdom values goodness. God’s kingdom values compassion. God’s kingdom values treating others the way you want to be treated. God’s kingdom calls for righteousness, especially towards the nation’s most vulnerable.
Can we measure up? Amen.
