{"id":256,"date":"2012-07-22T07:53:12","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T12:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=256"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:32","slug":"sermon-the-plumb-line-july-15-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/07\/22\/sermon-the-plumb-line-july-15-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: The Plumb-Line July 15, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 Amos 7:7-15; <\/strong>Ps. 85:8-13; <\/strong>Mark 6:14-29<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s a gruesome tale if ever there was one!\u00a0\u00a0 Several things are worth noting at the outset:\u00a0 First, whoever thinks that Judaism and Christianity are religions that focus on the spiritual and not on political matters, hasn\u2019t really read the Scripture of either religion.\u00a0 And Mark is the most politically radical of all the Gospels.<\/p>\n

Second, location, location, location applies as much to scripture as it does to real estate.\u00a0 Please note the location of the gruesome tale of John\u2019s death.\u00a0\u00a0 It comes on the heels of the sending out of the 12 disciples that we heard last week, and before their return to Jesus. \u00a0The preceding two verses read:\u00a0 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.\u00a0 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. <\/em>Our reading for today begins with King Herod taking note of the street buzz about these successes, and Jesus, about whom there was much debate as to his identity.\u00a0\u00a0 Herod Antipas (one of three sons of the Herod the Great of the nativity stories) has heard about him, but thinks that Jesus may be John the Baptizer raised from the dead.\u00a0 Then Mark gives us a flashback to tell us of the death of John the Baptizer.\u00a0 If you remember, the first chapter of Mark\u2019s Gospel says:\u00a0 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God\u2026\u201d <\/em>The reading today reconnects us with that opening context, and reminds the reader that John\u2019s fate and that of Jesus will be quite similar.\u00a0\u00a0 This passage in Chapter 6 marks the end of any innocence that could be connected to the ministry of Jesus.\u00a0 A dire future is in the cards.<\/p>\n

Third, we have here a stark contrast between Jesus sending out his disciples to cure and heal in last week\u2019s Gospel lesson and Herod\u2019s sending his servants to destroy life.<\/p>\n

And fourth, the story, with its flashback to the execution of John the Baptizer, recounting a feast in the high courts, is set alongside a different kind of feast out in the countryside that we will hear about next Sunday where two fish and five loaves of bread feed a crowd of over 5000 people.\u00a0 For Mark, the contrast is intentional.\u00a0 The location of this story matters.<\/p>\n

One final point:\u00a0 the word used for Salome as \u201cgirl\u201d is the same word used for the \u201clittle girl\u201d, whom Jesus raised from death in the home of Jairus the synagogue leader at Capernaum.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence, Salome is not some late adolescent sex siren dancing a lascivious pole dance for Herod and his guests.\u00a0 She was probably a pre-pubescent child, used by her jealous and vengeful mother in ways that must have traumatized her for life to be forced to bring Herod John\u2019s head on a platter fresh from its separation from his body.<\/p>\n

<\/em>Who wants to think about lust, and spiteful anger, and bloody heads?\u00a0\u00a0 What does this story have to tell us today?\u00a0 And is there any good news for us in this sleazy account of what one scholar calls a \u201cdoodle-head\u201d ruler of a backwater province and his \u00a0relationship with a prophet?<\/p>\n

One might surmise from the juxtaposition of the two readings\u2014one from Amos and the other from Mark\u2014that at least part of the point is that to be a prophet is a dangerous thing, and doesn\u2019t bode well for one\u2019s future.\u00a0 Amos gets accused of treason.\u00a0 In truth, his words threaten outright the homeland security of Israel, and her king Jeroboam.\u00a0\u00a0 Israel is enjoying a period of great prosperity, and here comes this rag-tag shepherd from the south to say that they are not measuring up to the standards of their God.\u00a0 That is the meaning of the plumb line, and ancient tool to enable carpenters and masons to build a perpendicular wall.\u00a0 A wall that slants will collapse.\u00a0 The plumbline made a powerful metaphor.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, Amos utters his indictment in the very shrine where Jacob received the promise that he would become the father of a great nation, where he wrestled with the angel and received his new name, Israel.\u00a0 No wonder the king\u2019s toady prophet Amaziah runs to Jeroboam with the story, and tells Amos to go back home because Bethel is, note the word here, the KING\u2019s sanctuary (not a sanctuary for God), and it is the Temple of the KINGDOM.\u00a0 God\u2019s word, Amaziah says to Amos, isn\u2019t welcome in the seat of power. \u00a0\u00a0Things haven\u2019t changed a whole lot in the corridors of power.<\/p>\n

Mark\u2019s story means to remind readers that discipleship is not always going to make you popular, and might, in fact, be a bit risky.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So part of the point of the story is to continue to reveal to us who Jesus is, and at the cost his ministry will take on him, and on his followers.\u00a0\u00a0 And if we claim to be more than admirers of Jesus, if we claim to be his followers, the implications are that there will be a cost to us as well.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s think together just a bit about this matter of cost.\u00a0 What does your commitment to be a follower of Jesus cost you?\u00a0 For most American Christians, it \u00a0doesn\u2019t cost much.\u00a0 It may mean a small portion, nationally now at just under an average of 2% of net income, and a few hours per week of attendance at church and perhaps some service on a committee or in a leadership role. \u00a0\u00a0Most people are good folk, but don\u2019t stand for a whole lot, because they don\u2019t want to cause, much less be the center of attention, in anything the least bit controversial.<\/p>\n

These texts pose a pointed question for us:\u00a0 Does our back-bone align with the plumb-line of our conscience and the model of our conscience, Jesus?\u00a0 Many people are attracted to the Holy, but not much changed by the association.<\/p>\n

It is terribly easy to behead our faith in order to look good in front of our peers, as did Herod Antipas in his quandary about how to keep his promise in front of all his toady friends, and at the same time, listen to his conscience that told him John the Baptizer was a holy man, and right about his incestuous adulterous relationship with Herodias.\u00a0 Most modern Christians would prefer to avoid getting too public, or stepping into controversy because it might be too costly.\u00a0 Hence, the church has lost its voice in the public square, when it has been called to be the plumb-line for the nation.\u00a0 It should be of little surprise then that so many people, especially the young, find the American church today irrelevant.<\/p>\n

The real theme of this Gospel reading today may not be the drama of life and death, love and hate, that so easily captivates our imaginations and that is so often portrayed in those gory paintings that can be found in every major art musem.\u00a0 Rather, the\u00a0 inner struggle that Herod faces, after finding himself between a rock and a hard place, the struggle with his own integrity, may be helpful for us.<\/p>\n

Flannery O\u2019Connor, the great Southern story-teller, wrote somewhere that \u201cthere is a moment in every story in which the presence of grace can be felt as it waits to be accepted or rejected, even though the reader (and we might say also, the actors) may not recognize this moment.\u201d\u00a0 [Feasting on the Word, Vol. 3, p. 237]<\/p>\n

There are moments throughout our lives where the presence of grace hovers around the edges of whatever hard place in which we find ourselves.\u00a0 Our integrity waits to be acknowledged, or rejected.\u00a0\u00a0 Our integrity, you see, is that plumb-line, that Amos saw in the midst of Israel against which they should be measuring themselves\u2014a plumb-line of compassion and responsibility, of commitment to justice, and a sense of what is \u201crighteous.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Amos came to tell the king and people of Israel that they had abandoned justice, that they were trampling on the poor, that they had come to hate those who spoke the truth.\u00a0\u00a0 And it wouldn\u2019t have upset Jereboam and his toady prophet Amaziah so much if the truth of what the prophet had to say hadn\u2019t touched that deep core of goodness in themselves, as well as their knowledge of what the Torah commanded.<\/p>\n

Our integrity is like that part of Herod that knew he should protect John the Baptizer from his wife\u2019s vengeance.\u00a0 Herod found himself trapped between social conventions\u2014he had, after all promised Salome \u00a0in front of his dinner guests whatever she wanted \u2013 and his own inner conscience, however frail it might have been.\u00a0 \u00a0We can\u2019t really excuse him as a \u201cdoodle-head\u201d who is overly proud, entrapped, and seduced by his wife, who used to be his brother\u2019s wife and who was also his niece in a convoluted way, because at the end of the day, he still gave the order.\u00a0 He tried to cut his losses, and gave in to outside pressures.<\/p>\n

It happens to us sometimes as well:\u00a0 our ears stop working, our minds refuse to address the inherent conflict with our consciences, and we walk away.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to pick your battles, we say to ourselves.\u00a0 You can\u2019t be Miss Prudie, or Mr. Goody-two-shoes in every situation.\u00a0 But little by little, we can give up our integrity with such concessions.\u00a0 The same applies to churches as it does to individuals.<\/p>\n

The way of integrity attracts us, much as the Baptizer attracted Herod.\u00a0 Integrity\u2019s constancy and congruity between words and deeds\u2014in private as well as in public\u2014appeals to \u201cour better angels\u201d, or more religiously, to the image of God within us.\u00a0 We want <\/span>to be people of integrity.\u00a0\u00a0 And even though we may sometimes cut our losses and walk away from conflicts with our inner conscience, if we keep on looking for those moments of grace, those opportunities to express our fundamental integrity,\u00a0 we become more and more like the one in whose image we are made and like the one who invited us to follow him, by picking up the crosses of the world.<\/p>\n

All of us who would follow Jesus are called to confront the wrongs we see around us.\u00a0\u00a0 Herod admired the word of God but he didn\u2019t follow it.\u00a0\u00a0 Either we are admirers of Jesus or we are his disciples. We aren\u2019t called by God to go to church; we are called to be Church.\u00a0 \u00a0Every day it is up to us to decide.\u00a0 The plumb-line has been provided.\u00a0 May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand, and the courage to stand straight alongside God\u2019s plumb line.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

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Texts:\u00a0 Amos 7:7-15; Ps. 85:8-13; Mark 6:14-29 Well, that\u2019s a gruesome tale if ever there was one!\u00a0\u00a0 Several things are worth noting at the outset:\u00a0 First, whoever thinks that Judaism and Christianity are religions that focus on the spiritual and<\/p>\n

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