The Sermons At Calvary
By
The Reverend Richard H. Humke
Priest
Associate
JUDGMENT COMES TO US,
INDIVIDUALLY AND AS A NATION
July 16,
2006 (10-B), Calvary Church
Amos
7:7-15
Psalm
85:7-13
Ephesians
1:1-14
Mark
6:7-13
No one likes to be judged, but we
all are judged in some way from time to time.
Perhaps it’s that annual job evaluation (which, surely, no one
looks forward to), and amidst the good things that are said about you, you are
certain to hear some things that you would prefer not to hear. Sometimes they may seem unfair and you grit
your teeth and accept them. But in
other cases they provide you with a moment of enlightenment, and if you are
honest, you know that the criticism or the stated failing has some truth in it
and you may be goaded to do something about it.
That’s one kind of judgment that
comes to you. Another way may be the
honest friend who risks the friendship by telling you the truth that you don’t
want to hear. You know what I
mean: the friend who takes you aside
and tells you that what you said or what you did was wrong. It stings; it hurts; it may make you
angry. But deep down you know it’s
true.
Still another kind of judgment is
that which you make about yourself.
Most of us do that at some time or other, though there are
persons, it seems to me, who seem never to look at themselves critically. This self-judgment is perhaps the most
fruitful of all because it may issue in a real change of life. I’m speaking here about something a little
deeper than that moment when you whup yourself on the back of the head and say,
“I shouldn’t have done that!” I’m
talking about that time when you say to yourself thoughtfully, “What I did – or
what I said – was wrong and I’ve got to do something about it.”
Some of us were taught along the way by some wise spiritual
director or in some good old-fashioned book on spirituality that we should
conclude each day with what is called an examen – a moment when you review what
you have said and done during that day, ask God’s forgiveness, resolve to try
not to do it again and plan to make amends where needed. Once I was much more intentional about that
than I am now; but I still know how valuable that kind of self-judging is.
Our Prayer Book bids all of us to do that before we come to the
Sacrament on Sunday. It says this:
Examine your lives and conduct by the rule of God’s commandments,
that you may perceive wherein you have offended in what you have done or left
undone, whether in thought, word, or deed.
And acknowledge your sins before Almighty God, with full purpose of
amendment of life, being ready to make restitution… (p.317)
Perhaps we do too easily come
to Communion these days so it would be well for us to reflect on those old
Elizabethan words that bid us to make internal, spiritual preparation before
receiving the Sacrament.
These examples are all ways in which
our lives get judged, by others or by ourselves. We are held up to some standard – a job description; or an
expectation involved in our friendship with another person; or our own
expectations for ourselves. (We have to
have some standard against which we are measured.) And the standard we apply, when we examine ourselves before
coming to the Holy Communion, may be as simple as the Golden Rule (to do to others
as you would have them do to you) but much better still, the Summary of the Law
with which we began the Eucharist today:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This
is the first and great commandment. And
the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these
two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
However judgment happens, it
involves some standard against which we are measured and found wanting.
That brings us to our First Reading
today, that strange little story about Amos and the plumb line. Unless you know something about the story of
Amos himself, our snippet of reading cannot be understood. I think it is one of the great readings from
the Old Testament with imagery that stays with you once you understand what it
is.
So let me give you this background
to the Reading. Israel has been divided
into two countries by the time of our story, a northern nation and a southern
nation; and Amos comes out of the south to preach to the people of the more
prosperous north because he has been called by God to speak out to that nation
which has become decadent and unjust, a nation that has forgotten its roots as
the people of God.
Amos was a nobody, as he says in the reading today, “I am…a
herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees…”
In other words, I am just a common laborer, not one of the great
professional prophets; but I feel compelled to preach my message to you.
Amos does not only call them back to
the old ways by words, to that simple life that they once had when they were
closer to God before they had become so prosperous and dissolute and so
unconcerned about justice in their society.
He does it graphically by telling them about a vision of God he has had
in which God was holding a plumb line.
And God tells Amos that God will judge the land as a plumb line judges
whether something is straight or not.
(I have always assumed that Amos himself used a plumb line to make his
point, but the story doesn’t really indicate that.) Is Israel doing the will of God. Or not?
We have had a room built on our
house in this past year, and so there have been a lot of workers of various
sorts around the place. I was
interested in watching one day, early in the construction, how one worker used
a home-made plumb line – a string with a screw on the end -- to see whether
something in the room was right or not.
My mind sometimes goes to a biblical story when I see something, and
that was the case that day. I thought
of this story of Amos and his challenge to the people of Israel by using
a plumb line.
You see, nations as well as
individuals get judged, and they get
judged against those standards that they have claimed are the standards they
believe in. In biblical times this
would be called God’s judgment and whatever happened to that nation would be
seen as a direct act of God in judgment.
In our time we are more apt to say that it is the judgment of history. But perhaps they aren’t that different at
all. Perhaps ours is only the way a
more secular time speaks of it, but the end result may be the same.
It’s the great debate going on in our nation today, you know. Are we out of plumb with those values we
have proclaimed and lived by for over 200 years? As we admit to torture and rendition and imprisonment without
trial, we as a people are wondering, not only what history will say about us,
but also what history will do to us.
That’s the judgment of God, I think.
That’s why today’s First Reading is so very relevant. Those people didn’t want to hear what Amos
had to say, so the priest Amaziah, working not for God but for the king, as so
many religious figures still do, says to him, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread
there...” In other words, “Go back
home!” But Amos’ leaving didn’t change
the future for northern Israel. It
ceased to be a nation soon and was swept into the dust bin of history. The Bible says that was because it was out
of plumb with its own values which were God’s values.
Judgment comes to us in many ways in life. None of them is pleasant, but most of them
need to be listened to. God – history –
life – circumstances -- however you name it – have a way of judging us – and
there are always consequences.
Richard H.
Humke