~ PASTOR'S CORNER~

Reed Hopkins

 

Sermon for July 11, 2010 Reed Hopkins
Amos 7: 7 – 17; Luke 10: 25 – 37

"How Do You Measure Up?"

 

How do you measure up? We use lots of standards to measure people: how good looking they are, how much money they have, how smart they are, how famous they are, how good they are in sports, and on and on. We measure status by height. President Ronald Reagan announced, "America is standing tall again." Some people who were not so tall might have asked: "Oh, so tall is good, and short is bad? Does that mean I'm bad?" Words can get you into trouble so easily.

I like to read Charles Dickens. What I like best is Dickens' observations on human nature, human thought patterns, and human opinions. For example, in Great Expectations, several men, along with the boy Pip, go tramping about in the marshes while soldiers track down an escaped convict. The convict is caught, the excitement is over, and then all the men go back to the house to dry out and form all kinds of theories and expert opinions on the convict's escape. The only one who's right is one Mr. Wopsle. But then, it's noted that Mr. Wopsle doesn't have his coat on, like a respectable gentleman. Not only that, but he's standing with his back to the fire, and the seat of his pants is steaming, so he can't possibly be right.

People today try to use their appearances, or their possessions, to prove they must be right. Evangelists of the "prosperity gospel" prove that God is on their side, and they have all the answers, because they're rich. "See my rings? See my expensive suit, and my designer hair? I live in a 30-room mansion with a swimming pool and own five BMW's. The Lord has blessed me, because I'm right. And if you believe everything I say, then the Lord will bless you and let you have all these things, too. Now pass those offering plates around."

The first time I went to Ethiopia, I was appalled that some American evangelists had been pedaling that trash in Ethiopia, a place where the average person can barely get enough to eat. I was leading a Bible study on Galatians, and we got to Galatians 6:17, where Paul says, "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." Paul wasn't talking about diamond rings or fine silk clothes or a pocket full of gold. Jesus didn't have those kinds of marks. He had scars on his hands, feet, and side, from His crucifixion. Paul had scars from whippings and stonings he had received for preaching the Gospel of Christ.

I listened to those saintly Ethiopian women tell their stories, of being dragged away in the middle of the night, thrown into an open-air prison, beaten, shaved with broken bottles. All because they were Christian. I was so choked up, it took me a while to get my voice back. But when I could talk again, I told them, "You are the ones who bear the marks of Jesus on your bodies. I don't. And those rich evangelists certainly don't." If somebody's trying to tell you about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who are you going to believe? The rich evangelist with the fancy clothes and diamond rings? Or the simple Ethiopian Christian, who has paid the price with beatings and torture, and still has complete trust in God?

God's standards are not our standards. God measures people with different tools from us. God sent Amos a vision of a wall and a plumbline. If you're not familiar with construction tools, a plumbline is a string with a lead weight that tells you if a wall is straight or not. The wall in Amos' vision is the nation of Israel. Amos says the wall had been built with a plumbline. Israel had been built with God's laws, laws of righteousness, holiness, justice, and mercy. It was built to be straight. But even a wall built with a plumbline can get out of plumb. God was telling Amos, "My plumbline is still here. My laws haven't changed. But see how crooked the walls are. How far the leaders of Israel have strayed from me!"
Amaziah was the high priest of Bethel. He was in charge of one of Israel's holiest shrines, a shrine established by the great ancestor Jacob. It was Amaziah's job to make sure everything at Bethel happened decently and in order. It rankled Amaziah that anyone would dare speak against the king, especially at a national shrine. He went to the king to report what Amos had said, and then confronted Amos, maybe with direct orders from the king.

"Get out of here, you seer!" he told Amos. "You ain't from here, anyway; you're from Judah! What right do you have to come here and criticize our king? Go back to Judah, and earn your keep there, and prophesy there! But don't ever set foot in Bethel again. This is the King's shrine, and a temple of our nation!"

I would have thought the shrine was God's shrine, but Amaziah thought differently. There are people who want to make our churches into nationalistic shrines, and our preachers into national cheerleaders. But places of worship belong to God and God alone. Churches are here for God's glory, and for our fellowship under God.

Amos held up the plumbline of God: God's truth. What was Amaziah's plumbline? Political correctness. Say what the king wants to hear. Say what's politically safe, and keeps you on the king's good side.
"Political correctness" is a term that's thrown at left-wingers in our world today. If you conform to left-wing, or liberal, ideology in all you say and do, you're "politically correct." An example is: it's politically incorrect to disagree with President Obama, and if anyone does, you can call them a racist.

But there's also right-wing political correctness, which runs very deep and has been with us a long time. An example of this is: no Republican politician is allowed to disagree with Rush Limbaugh or offer the least criticism of anything he says, and any Republican who does is immediately forced to apologize.

July 11 sermon, p. 2

There's also political correctness of the middle. That's when you can't say anything that would offend anybody on the left or the right, so you end up not being able to say anything of substance at all.
Amos didn't worry about political correctness. He sought God's correctness, and he told it like it was. When the high priest gave Amos his PC orders, Amos said, "Oh, I'm not a prophet, or a prophet's son." That's what our translation says, but more likely, he said, "I'm not one of the Sons of the Prophets." Those were the official, professional Israelite prophets, whom we met in the Elijah story. Amaziah had told him, "Go get paid to prophesy in Judah." Amos said, "I'm not paid to do this at all. I'm really a sheep herder, and a fruit farmer, and I would have been glad just to do that. Left on my own, I wouldn't have come here to bother you. But God took me away from my farm and told me to come here to Israel and prophecy."

Amos was the prophet of social justice. He preached about the same time as Hosea. Both of them pointed out the ways Israel was out of kilter with God's measuring stick. Hosea concentrated more on doctrine and worship: false gods and pagan worship practices that had crept into Israel's worship. Amos was not Hosea's opposite. He looked at the other side of the same coin. For him, the dead giveaway that Israel's faith had become corrupt was the way people were treated: widows and orphans were neglected, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and foreigners were mistreated. Amos said, in 5:24, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Justice is a measuring stick of godliness.

A lawyer asked Jesus, "What do I need to do to measure up?" He was a religious lawyer; he knew the standards. So Jesus turned the question back on him: "Well, what does it say in the law?" He had the answer down pat: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said, "Good answer. Do that, and live."

Ah, but this was a lawyer. "And who is my neighbor? What are all the ins and outs? Whom do I have to treat as a neighbor, and whom can I treat as scum? Define 'neighbor.'" Instead of a short answer, Jesus told a parable, and let the man reach his own conclusion.

Jesus was addressing a Jewish audience. Jews and Samaritans were enemies, down to the bone. And the one in this story who demonstrated the Jewish law of love was a Samaritan.

If Jesus told this story in our society, He'd get called "politically correct." "Now, why did you have to tell the story that way? Why did it have to be our enemy who did right? Why couldn't it have been a Jew helping out a Samaritan?" Well, He could have told it that way. It just hit home a lot harder to raise the possibility that just maybe one of "them" could be closer to God than some of "us."

When Jesus asked, "Which of these three acted as a neighbor?" the lawyer couldn't even bear to say "The Samaritan." He said, "The—one who showed mercy." Well, that was the point. It doesn't really matter what the ethnicity or sex or age or whatever of the one doing right. The Samaritan measured the crime victim not by his religion or ethnicity, but by his need. And the Samaritan is not measured by his ethnicity, but by his love, which is in turn measured by action.

We measure people by so many things. Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." That is, measured not by the human plumbline, but by God's plumbline.
I think we've all experienced at some time what it feels like to be judged. To be judged by something that doesn't reflect our character at all. Maybe you don't dress stylishly enough for some people. Maybe you never made the honor roll. Maybe you don't look good enough for some people. I was never athletic enough for some people. So, in spite of my grades in high school, I felt like a loser. I thought the great athletes had it made. What I didn't realize is that some of them felt like losers, too, because of their grades, or because of problems at home.

This week I read an article in Christian Century, written by Emilie M. Townes, who teaches at Yale University. She wrote about growing up black in North Carolina. "Every evening my mother would sit me down in front of the television so that she could watch the news while she braided my hair…. I listened to Jesse Helms, who later became a U.S. senator but who was then an executive with the Capitol Broadcast Company, spew racist diatribes against the integrationists and the 'nigras'… As I became aware that he was referring to the loving and hardworking folks that I knew, I realized that there were (and are) people in the world that dislike and even hate me because I am darker than they are." That was the message TV gave her.

But her church gave her a different message. The church told her, "you are a child of God, God loves you, God will protect you, and you are a child of worth who can do anything you set your mind to. In short, I was surrounded with loving and caring people; they were far from perfect, but they were relentless in passing along their care, and they taught that we must do likewise with others— that this was fundamental to being a Christian."

The world showed this woman the measuring stick of judgment, and of hate. But God, through the church, taught her the measuring stick of love.

God holds his plumbline up next to you. How do you measure up? You know what God says when He measures you? The same thing He taught Dr. Townes. Even if you don't measure up perfectly with the plumbline, God says, "You are a child of God. God loves you. God will protect you. You are a child of worth who can do anything you set your mind to. Now go out and show it." You don't even have to live by God's plumbline to be loved. God already loves you. But He wants you to respond to that love by living by His plumbline, the plumbline of love, love shown in action. God loves you. Now go and do likewise.