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."