Amos and the Plumb Line

I like the prophet Amos. Somewhere in the book that bears his name he says that he is not a prophet, not even the son of a prophet; rather, he is a herdsman, and a tender of sycamore trees. But God took him from his flocks and said, "Speak in My Name." What I like about Amos is that God spoke to him simply. God would show something to Amos and say "Amos, what do you see?" And Amos would dutifully describe what he saw. He may have been a simple herdsman but his eyesight was fine. Then God would tell Amos what the vision meant and what to say.
On one of these occasions God said to Amos, "What do you see?" and Amos replied, "A plumb line." And God said, "I am going to set a plumb line in the midst of My people and I will spare them no more." Now the judgment of God is nothing to be trifled with, and it set me to thinking that one of the reasons we go to church is to be judged of God. I know that would not be up at the top of anyone's list for going to Church, but in a real sense every time we come into the presence of God He sets the plumb line in the midst of us. And my train of thought led me to ask what that plumb line might be? My first response might be the law, the ten commandments, perhaps the scriptures. God may hold us accountable for what we do with these written commands, but He seems to judges us in a different way. And then it made perfect sense to me that the plumb line was Jesus. He was that one, independent, absolute measure of straightness or trueness that could never be wrong (perhaps that is why He is called faithful and true in the book of Revelation and why judgment is given into His hands by the Father). And we are measured by the fullness that He is. Law can be argued, it always requires additional legal opinion to get clear at its intent. Just consider the law, "You shall not murder." It seems simple at first, but is self defense or war murder or is it justifiable, under what circumstances, and so on. You can't argue Jesus in that manner. He is just what He is and when He stands in our midst we are seen to be what we are as well, no more, no less. That's judgment, but it is part of our salvation, and He remains faithful in completing what He has begun in us.
To paraphrase Hebrews 2:8-9 in light of how God dealt with the prophet Amos, we may not yet see everything put under the rule of Jesus, we may not fully understand what it is that we see presenting itself to us each day, but we do see Jesus. And seeing Him we know what it is that God requires of us, what He is saying in this age and for our communities.

So Who Went Home Justified?

I attended church last Sunday. That in itself is not momentous, but it was different since my wife and I had two of our grandchildren with us. Their mother, our other daughter, and the other two grandchildren were buried somewhere on River Road in Bethel mucking mud out of people's flood ravaged basements and first floors. The service was too long for the two grandchildren's limited attention span (even with coloring books, goldfish crackers, and juice), especially choppy, and pretty much unremarkable except for one statement I heard at some point during some congregational sharing about the flood. A Christian congregant stated that a lot of people had turned out to help respond to the flood and that their volunteer service was really great. She then expanded it to say that many of the volunteers were not even Christians. Imagine that! I wondered if that were really a pre-condition of sacrificial service and volunteerism? Are non-Christians incapable of good, of heartfelt concern, of real service (i.e. are all their works just fithy rags in the sight of God)? Now I know the woman that said this, and she is right up there as far as being a legitimate and genuine follower of Jesus, but somewhere along the line she has picked up this us/them terminology that pokes its head up every now and then.

And then I wondered why I had insisted on going to church this morning with so much going on. And then I started thinking about Jesus' parable of the man on the Jericho road who fell victim to robbers, and the priest and Levite who passed him by leaving him for dead, and the Samaritan who was the only one moved with compassion. And I remembered the other story of the Pharisee and tax collector praying in the temple and I got to wondering who was going down to their home today justified in the sight of God....all of us Christians who were faithfully attending church and doing those things that Christians tend to do on a Sunday morning, or my daughters (who are Christians) who worshipped God today by shoveling mud for their neighbors alongside countless non-Christians who were not necessarily offering service in the name of God, but doing it out of genuine concern, compassion, and grace for those less fortunate? Who gave the greater testimony to the love of God in a time of despair and loss? I did go down to my home after church was over but the service gave me pause to consider what is it that God really wants to see when we propose to gather in His name.

Twisted Perception of God's Word

If you have read the previous post, you will note that this is a followup to one of the thoughts I dropped there; namely, that the ultra evangelical camp has made a god out of the written scriptures and is ready to defend their god to the death. I only write this entry to give an example of this tendency through the American church.

I listen to Christian radio coming home from work. It is the one activity guaranteed to raise my blood pressure more quickly than being cut off in traffic or stuck in a construction zone. I find myself shaking my head at the message I hear, both the actual words that are spoken and the meanings implied by the voice inflections and examples used. And yesterday I heard this person describing their quiet time that they have each day, and mentioning that sometimes their reading of the scriptures is sort of dry....like when their daily reading happens to be the first six chapters of I Chronicles. But just as soon as that statement is out of their mouth, they quickly offer a disclaimer that goes something like this. "I'm not saying that these chapters of Chronicles or the list of names are not divinely inspired or that each of those chapters does not have a spiritual application for our lives, that God is speaking through them, I'm just saying they are different from the other passages of the bible"....well, you get the point. Is it really so vital to our spiritual faith that we defend this list of names and pretend that somehow we can mine great spiritual truths out of these lists? It's only important if you faith is precariously balanced on the cutting edge of the word of God and your whole practice of Christianity is dependent upon the verbal, plenary, authoritative, inerrant (and whatever adjectives you feel are important to add) inspiration of the word of God. But the scriptures themself remind us that the cornerstone of the foundation or the church and our life is Jesus Christ, and it is on this foundation that the spiritual house of God is being built up.

So here's my disclaimer....it's not that I do not believe the word of God has authority, has power, is divine revelation, or has application for my life; I am just not going to play the doctrinal definition game and build my life on dogma and apologetics rather than on a real relationship with Jesus. I don't have that much life left and I am certainly not going to waste it trying to get my doctrine laid out to the last jot and tittle. As the blind man said when questioned about the exact definition and all of the mechanisms of the miracle that had happened to him, "I don't know, but this one thing I do know, I was blind, but now I see."

Preaching and the Power of the Word

So it has been awhile since I wrote last. When you have nothing significant to say it does not seem prudent to waste words just trying to remain current on your blog site. When you add to that the fact that no one reads what you write anyway then there really is no impetus to blog. But I find myself returning to the reason why I started this site and that was to express my own rambling thought process as I painfully make my way from the center of the evangelical camp to some as yet undefined location on my spiritual journey.

So here is today's thought. For the last three weeks I have had the opportunity to preach in the South Royalton church and the experience served to confirm two things....first, I do have the spiritual gifting of preacher/teacher, and second, God puts power in the message I bring. When I look back at the last three weeks I sense that there is even more power to change hearts present than when I was first ordained. I have changed significantly since that time and it is evident in my preparation and message. For one thing, although I preach from the word of God, usually the Gospel lectionary reading for the particular Sunday, I preach about the living Word of God, Jesus. Kathy always tells me, "Just tell me about Jesus". And I find that when I remain true to that simple principle, that there is power in the message, it is contemporary for all of the cross section of the congregation present, and it is heartfelt. One of the reasons I no longer count myself in the evangelical camp (at least the way it is usually defined) is that they tend to make a god out of the written scripture and do all sorts of contortions to defend it (more on that later) when they should be concentrating on the true revelation of God found in Jesus. It almost seems as if Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees in John 5:39 has come to pass in these ultra evangelicals, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is these that bear witness to Me."

Just When I Thought I Knew What Forgivness was...

Kathy and I are doing daily Lenten readings from the Online Ministries page at the Creighton University website. Part of the daily exercise is a reading of the lectionary scriptures for the day. Just a couple days ago we had a reading from Isaiah 1, you probably know the passage, the one that opens with "Come let us reason together..." and then goes on to describe how the Lord can take sins that are scarlet and make them white as snow. Everyone quotes that verse every now and then when we find ourselves really in need of forgiveness and have that nagging suspicion that maybe this time we have gone over that line that marks the boundary of the unforgivable sin. It's a powerful verse or two but as we read the larger context of the scripture in our daily reading it suddenly became so much larger in its scope and power. Whatever I thought I understood as forgiveness seemed very shallow in the light of the whole chapter. For the first time in my entire spiritual pilgrimage I discovered who those verses were spoken to. We often have the annoying habit of taking any scripture and applying it to our own case and conditions, but often it helps to understand who the words were specifically written to. And in this case it is found in verse 10. "Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah." Now I understand that the prophet is probably speaking allegorically here....the nation of Israel had fallen so low as to become like the people of Gomorrah and its leaders like those in Sodom. But there is always layer upon layer in prophecy and I saw the Lord speaking to Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities whose sin cried out to heaven for God's vengeance, and He says to them "though your sin be scarlet, I can make it white as snow." My understanding of the power of God's grace suddenly became much larger than it has ever been. The prophet Jeremiah later asked, "Can a leopard change its spots?" The amazing answer is yes, and when it does God's forgiveness is present to affect the change.

Ash Wednesday, A Time for Returning

The first reading for today is taken from Joel 2:12 and it sets the whole call of this season clearly before me....." Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart..." Simple, straightforward, understandable - but ever elusive. Why should that be? I think it is because we grow comfortable in our spirituality and it is difficult to confess that we have drifted away from the Lord's presence over time, or even stubbornly stormed off over something that we counted as more important that what He had to offer. To seek to return one must first admit a wandering away, and sometimes we hold such a lofty view of our spirituality that such a confession is difficult. Yet why not? We may not be as bad as the prodigal son who squandered his father's graciousness, we may only be as bad as a sheep who in its own distraction has gone astray. But either needs to return and it does not seem God makes distinctions regarding depth of depravity....He meets the prodigal son on the road and interupts his litany of confession to embrace him with unmerited love. He seeks out that which was lost and when he returns with the one sheep he declares a feast of rejoicing. But the key is the word "whole", as in undivided, complete, nothing withheld. That type of returning is not done in one night and for that I am thankful for the 40 days of this Lenten season.

Church Services and Musicals

So today I found myself in a slightly irreverent mood as Kathy and I went to church. We are in that ackward position of being in between churches, and even more so being in between what we know the church of Jesus Christ to be and what is available in our immediate area. Let it suffice to say that I, at least, have grown disenchanted with entrenched denominationalism.

So back to my irreverence. We went to a local church today because it is the first Sunday of the month and in most Protestant churches that is Communion Sunday. Kathy and I seek out every opportunity to participate in communion, regardless of the church or denomination. But as I found myself sitting through what passes in New England for a traditional church order of service I found myself wondering why the church service was so much like the musicals I have seen. Whenever there was a pause in the action it was time for another song, whether it fit into the overall flow or not. Tradition is a terrible task master and we must obey without question!

Anyway the topic is irreverence. I read some articles in the recent Christianity Today about the trends in worship and the debate over whether traditional music or praise choruses are most suited for today's church. Of course people are split into the two camps resulting is ridiculous things such as "blended" worship consisting of both types and not entirely satisfactory to either camp. I believe in an unchanging gospel message and the need to bring it into the cultural setting in which it is to be proclaimed. And while I love traditional hymns there are some dogs in the hymnals. That makes me wonder how these if these really bad hymns made it into the collection, how many worse ones are out there that were not considered? I apply the same question to contemporary praise music which sometimes seems written only to fill out an album. And don't get me going on the "business" of publishing worship music. Isn't there a word like simony out there anymore? So here's the point. Irrereverently I started to make a test of cultural user-friendliness. I looked at the first 311 hymns in this nice collection published in 1985 (recent publication) and 235 of the hymns were published a minimum of 100 years ago, some 150 to 200 years or more. Can we expect such hymns written by Christians living in a different society and culture and somewhere between 3 and 5 generations ago to speak to the hearts of the unchurched visitors coming in for the first time? They sometimes barely speak to me. I mean, what kind of word is portals, and why is Jesus waiting on them?

So much for my Sunday church irreverence. Just making observations of what it must seem to others who have even less of an idea of what they are doing in church than me.

A Reflection on Faithfulness

Well, it's been a little over a year since I started this blog. I never expected anyone to really read it or follow it, I just felt the need to get some of the things I've written especially on the liturgical cycle of the church year out there onto the web so that there was a chance of them surviving me when my time comes. And reflecting back on that year I see I have been less then faithful to write, but is that any surprise? I have friends who started blogs with good intentions who have left them go fallow for months or longer. It doesn't mean that they ran out of things to write on or have nothing left to say, but just that priorities changed, time allocation became jumbled and some things laid aside or forgotten. I speak from experience. But the thing that I know about my walk with God is that there is no such thing as too late, or not enough, or anything else of that sort. Today is always a new opportunity to start afresh, a time for renewal, a time to remember, a time to pick up one foot and place it in front of the other and get back to the business of walking this pilgrim trail.

So here I am, at least a month since my last post but looking forward to Ash Wednesday in only three days and the start of Lent. There seems to be no better time to begin anew again, not only in this blog but in my spiritual journey. Seems I have left many things go fallow over the past months, it's time to decide which pieces of ground need to be reworked again, and which I will just leave to another generation to consider.