Plumb Line and Fruit Baskets
July 22, 2007
Luke 10:38-42; Amos 8:1-12
Sometimes we don’t know what we’ve got when we’ve got it, as the prophet Joni Mitchell sung. We don’t know what’s right in front of us even when we see it; we cannot read the writing on the wall even by the noonday sun.
Amos must have felt that way. I love the conversation that Amos reports: “God showed me a plumb line and asked me what I saw. I said, ‘hey, that looks like a plumb line.’ And God says, ‘plumb line? Look again! I see the high places of Israel made desolate and the sanctuaries laid waste.’ And then God showed me a basket of fruit and asked me what I saw. I said, ‘hey, that looks like a basket of summer fruit.’ And God says, ‘summer fruit? Look again. I see dead bodies cast out in the street.’”
How can it be that God’s vision is so spectacularly different than what Amos sees, and what can that possibly mean? How is it that where Amos sees the tools of construction God sees temples laid to waste? How is it that where Amos sees the fruit of a functioning agricultural economy God sees the needy trampled and the poor of the land brought to ruin?
Of course, we’ll cut Amos a great deal of slack here; after all, he reports the discrepancy in vision. Clearly he does so in order to show the people the fundamental injustice of the social order of their day, and to call them to account concerning that injustice.
We’ll cut Amos some slack here, and hope that we might see with new eyes what God lays before us. Then again, would-be prophetic vision often turns out to by myopic.
Let me show you what I mean.
God showed me a newspaper and asked me what I saw. “Well, I see that the Braves are only one game out of first place in the National League East. Cool!”
“Uh, wrong section,” God said. “Try the Metro section.”
“Oh,” said I. “Now I see: Mayor Fenty has endorsed Obama. Are you trying to tell us something, God?”
“No. No. Look at the back page.”
“Hm, nothing there but the weather.”
“Now you’re getting there. Read your own church’s confession – that line about ‘threatening death to the planet entrusted to your care’ ring a bell? Think about it. Look beyond the forecast for this week and ponder the long-term. Consider the lilies of the field, if you can find a field. My eye is on the sparrow, but your eyes seem glued to the bottom line. Your economies are out of balance, and now the ecosystems I created for you are out of balance, too.”
Then God set before me a remote control and asked me what I saw. “Oh, I get it now,” I said. “It’s a remote control so I can check out the Weather Channel, right?”
“Oy,” said God. “You are one of the dense ones,” she muttered under her breath.
“You are entertaining yourselves to death. You ignore the real violence that you do to one another and to my creation while passing time with fake violence. The myths you televise make violence seem redemptive, and then your national budgets reflect the mythology. You who see yourselves as a city on a hill – your Capital Hill spends more money on weapons of war than every other nation on the earth combined. I see your high places made desolate, and weep at your spiritual death.”
“All that from a remote control?” I asked.
“Wait till I get started,” God said, and then placed before me a bottle of pills.
“What do you see?”
Not wanting to outdrive my headlights again I was afraid to say anything more than, “a bottle of pills.”
And God said,
the great house shall be shattered to bits,
and the little house to pieces.
Do horses run on rocks?
Does one plough the sea with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—
“Uh, you lost me there, God,” I said.
“Oh, that’s just how Amos responded when I told him the exact same thing.”
“Yes,” I said, “and what did it mean to Amos, and what does it have to do with the pills?”
“Amos got it pretty quickly,” God said. “He understood that it was about the way you organize your lives – individually and socially. Do horses run on rocks? Not if you want healthy horses. So why do you keep running on empty, into the wind, blind and not even sure what you’re hoping to find? By the way, that’s what Jackson Browne said when I posed the question to him. Do you plough the sea with oxen? Of course not! So, why do you pursue fulfillment with that which does not fill you up?”
“It’s like that story Luke told about Junior and Mary and Martha.”
“Junior?” I interrupted.
“Joshua – you know him as Jesus. His dad and I always call him Junior. Hm, I can see I’ve confused you with the gender references and personification. I forget that you never remember what I always told Isaiah: my ways are not your ways. You always get hung up on gender and names for me. Do me one favor: remember I’m beyond gender and that I respond to various names. Use what you’re comfortable with; it won’t offend me. Anyway, about Jesus and Mary and Martha: the point was that Martha was too busy with the wrong priorities. The truest dream – the ultimate reality – the authentic human being was right there in her midst and she missed it because she was chasing down someone else’s dream, living into someone else’s expectations.
“So human. You live your lives chasing down dreams that were never authentically yours to chase.
“It’s not that different today. You want I-pods and I-phones and I-thises and I-thats – never we, always I. You define your national life by the pursuit of happiness, but seem mostly to define happiness in the first-person singular. Why not the pursuit of community? Or justice? And when you cannot find happiness – because you so often define it in terms of things that you do not yet have or own – when you cannot find it, is it any wonder that so many of you are so depressed and so many turn to pills – prescribed or otherwise – to medicate your unhappiness?”
“You remember what I finally said to Amos?
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
“I’m not sure that’s what I’d say to you. It’s not anything like antipathy that fills me as I watch my children these days; more a deep sadness. Oh sure, I hate, I despise your violence and warfare, and I take no delight in the ways you turn your faces from the truth. Even though some of you still offer all kinds of worship in my name, I’m not impressed. You know what I’d like? The same thing I told Amos: let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
“Well,” I said, “that last bit will preach.”
“You have my permission to use it,” God said, “just remind folks that it’s not you speaking there, but me.”
And then God said, “one more thing.” And God showed me a newspaper again and asked, “what do you see?”
I pretty much figured I was onto God’s ways this time, so I focused on one of the big news stories from the week – the Senate refusing to vote on withdrawing troops from Iraq, and I said, waxing as prophetic and poetic as could be, “the great house is trapped between Iraq and a hard place; the waters of peace have run dry” and, stealing another line from Amos, I added, “In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!”
I felt pretty good about that answer – I knew I had her … or him, whatever. But then God said, with what must have been a Godly twinkle in the divine eye:
“Wrong section. I meant the sports page. Look, it’s the middle of baseball season. I love baseball!”
“Huh?” I sputtered.
“Remember what Augustine said? ‘The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.’ Augie missed some things, but he nailed that one. Life is a gift for living, for enjoying fully. I may take no delight in your solemn assemblies, but I love your games, your play, your life. Live it fully, the way I intended from the beginning, with laughter and delight, and someday justice will roll down like a water slide!”
“Oh, one last thing,” God said, “that last image – justice like a water slide – why don’t you go ahead and take credit for that.”
And then God said, “I think I’ve showed you enough for the day.”
And I said, “Amen.”
Luke 10:38-42; Amos 8:1-12
Sometimes we don’t know what we’ve got when we’ve got it, as the prophet Joni Mitchell sung. We don’t know what’s right in front of us even when we see it; we cannot read the writing on the wall even by the noonday sun.
Amos must have felt that way. I love the conversation that Amos reports: “God showed me a plumb line and asked me what I saw. I said, ‘hey, that looks like a plumb line.’ And God says, ‘plumb line? Look again! I see the high places of Israel made desolate and the sanctuaries laid waste.’ And then God showed me a basket of fruit and asked me what I saw. I said, ‘hey, that looks like a basket of summer fruit.’ And God says, ‘summer fruit? Look again. I see dead bodies cast out in the street.’”
How can it be that God’s vision is so spectacularly different than what Amos sees, and what can that possibly mean? How is it that where Amos sees the tools of construction God sees temples laid to waste? How is it that where Amos sees the fruit of a functioning agricultural economy God sees the needy trampled and the poor of the land brought to ruin?
Of course, we’ll cut Amos a great deal of slack here; after all, he reports the discrepancy in vision. Clearly he does so in order to show the people the fundamental injustice of the social order of their day, and to call them to account concerning that injustice.
We’ll cut Amos some slack here, and hope that we might see with new eyes what God lays before us. Then again, would-be prophetic vision often turns out to by myopic.
Let me show you what I mean.
God showed me a newspaper and asked me what I saw. “Well, I see that the Braves are only one game out of first place in the National League East. Cool!”
“Uh, wrong section,” God said. “Try the Metro section.”
“Oh,” said I. “Now I see: Mayor Fenty has endorsed Obama. Are you trying to tell us something, God?”
“No. No. Look at the back page.”
“Hm, nothing there but the weather.”
“Now you’re getting there. Read your own church’s confession – that line about ‘threatening death to the planet entrusted to your care’ ring a bell? Think about it. Look beyond the forecast for this week and ponder the long-term. Consider the lilies of the field, if you can find a field. My eye is on the sparrow, but your eyes seem glued to the bottom line. Your economies are out of balance, and now the ecosystems I created for you are out of balance, too.”
Then God set before me a remote control and asked me what I saw. “Oh, I get it now,” I said. “It’s a remote control so I can check out the Weather Channel, right?”
“Oy,” said God. “You are one of the dense ones,” she muttered under her breath.
“You are entertaining yourselves to death. You ignore the real violence that you do to one another and to my creation while passing time with fake violence. The myths you televise make violence seem redemptive, and then your national budgets reflect the mythology. You who see yourselves as a city on a hill – your Capital Hill spends more money on weapons of war than every other nation on the earth combined. I see your high places made desolate, and weep at your spiritual death.”
“All that from a remote control?” I asked.
“Wait till I get started,” God said, and then placed before me a bottle of pills.
“What do you see?”
Not wanting to outdrive my headlights again I was afraid to say anything more than, “a bottle of pills.”
And God said,
the great house shall be shattered to bits,
and the little house to pieces.
Do horses run on rocks?
Does one plough the sea with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood—
“Uh, you lost me there, God,” I said.
“Oh, that’s just how Amos responded when I told him the exact same thing.”
“Yes,” I said, “and what did it mean to Amos, and what does it have to do with the pills?”
“Amos got it pretty quickly,” God said. “He understood that it was about the way you organize your lives – individually and socially. Do horses run on rocks? Not if you want healthy horses. So why do you keep running on empty, into the wind, blind and not even sure what you’re hoping to find? By the way, that’s what Jackson Browne said when I posed the question to him. Do you plough the sea with oxen? Of course not! So, why do you pursue fulfillment with that which does not fill you up?”
“It’s like that story Luke told about Junior and Mary and Martha.”
“Junior?” I interrupted.
“Joshua – you know him as Jesus. His dad and I always call him Junior. Hm, I can see I’ve confused you with the gender references and personification. I forget that you never remember what I always told Isaiah: my ways are not your ways. You always get hung up on gender and names for me. Do me one favor: remember I’m beyond gender and that I respond to various names. Use what you’re comfortable with; it won’t offend me. Anyway, about Jesus and Mary and Martha: the point was that Martha was too busy with the wrong priorities. The truest dream – the ultimate reality – the authentic human being was right there in her midst and she missed it because she was chasing down someone else’s dream, living into someone else’s expectations.
“So human. You live your lives chasing down dreams that were never authentically yours to chase.
“It’s not that different today. You want I-pods and I-phones and I-thises and I-thats – never we, always I. You define your national life by the pursuit of happiness, but seem mostly to define happiness in the first-person singular. Why not the pursuit of community? Or justice? And when you cannot find happiness – because you so often define it in terms of things that you do not yet have or own – when you cannot find it, is it any wonder that so many of you are so depressed and so many turn to pills – prescribed or otherwise – to medicate your unhappiness?”
“You remember what I finally said to Amos?
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
“I’m not sure that’s what I’d say to you. It’s not anything like antipathy that fills me as I watch my children these days; more a deep sadness. Oh sure, I hate, I despise your violence and warfare, and I take no delight in the ways you turn your faces from the truth. Even though some of you still offer all kinds of worship in my name, I’m not impressed. You know what I’d like? The same thing I told Amos: let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
“Well,” I said, “that last bit will preach.”
“You have my permission to use it,” God said, “just remind folks that it’s not you speaking there, but me.”
And then God said, “one more thing.” And God showed me a newspaper again and asked, “what do you see?”
I pretty much figured I was onto God’s ways this time, so I focused on one of the big news stories from the week – the Senate refusing to vote on withdrawing troops from Iraq, and I said, waxing as prophetic and poetic as could be, “the great house is trapped between Iraq and a hard place; the waters of peace have run dry” and, stealing another line from Amos, I added, “In all the squares there shall be wailing; and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!”
I felt pretty good about that answer – I knew I had her … or him, whatever. But then God said, with what must have been a Godly twinkle in the divine eye:
“Wrong section. I meant the sports page. Look, it’s the middle of baseball season. I love baseball!”
“Huh?” I sputtered.
“Remember what Augustine said? ‘The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.’ Augie missed some things, but he nailed that one. Life is a gift for living, for enjoying fully. I may take no delight in your solemn assemblies, but I love your games, your play, your life. Live it fully, the way I intended from the beginning, with laughter and delight, and someday justice will roll down like a water slide!”
“Oh, one last thing,” God said, “that last image – justice like a water slide – why don’t you go ahead and take credit for that.”
And then God said, “I think I’ve showed you enough for the day.”
And I said, “Amen.”
posted by David Ensign at
3:05 PM
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