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Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 7.7-15

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’


On the whole, people do not tour my neighbourhood. I'm not saying anything negative about Olde East York, except to say that it is neither a popular tourist destination nor a place worthy of a guided tour. When I lived in historic Sydenham Ward in Kingston, with it's ghost tour, trolley tour and endless tourists peering into the garden, you began to get a sense of what it might be like to be an animal at the zoo. But in East York, we are free of such hassle.

Imagine my surprise the day I arrived home to find a teacher and ten or so students at my sidewalk taking pictures of my house. I smiled a vague kind of smile and said "Hi, can I help you?"

Without skipping a beat, the teacher pointed to one of the youngsters and said "read it." He read:

This is an example of an early East York home in the tenement style. This house was constructed in the 1920's for a working class family. The rowhouse style and small size indicate housing for a labourer or someone of modest means.

After a few nervous chuckles from the kids, I told them that indeed the house had been build around 1925 and was one of the older homes on the street. I told them that the house is approximately 550 square feet in size, a fact that didn't impress the kids but left the teacher a little wide-eyed: "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope," I said. "Take a look." With this I gave the group a quick peek in the front door, showed them my prized map of the neighbourhood (circa 1910) and they were on their way. I'm thinking it's time to find a curator for my own museum of tiny East York homes.

I love old houses. This is the third old house that I have renovated since I found my way to Toronto and my love for these old places only grows. They have character. They pose unique problems that challenge the mind and test your patience. They are (for the most part) solidly constructed and make a solid base from which to begin a renovation. And they are home. When I think of Toronto I think of the tens of thousands of homes build in the first twenty-five years of the last century that define the character of the city.

Among the great challenges of renovating an old house is finding something level or square. Houses settle and houses sag. Houses endure the renovation attempts of both the professional and amateur. Houses sustain damage or age in such a way that what was once build with perfect right angles and level surfaces is no more.

This is enough to drive most handy people to the suburbs. Drywall is square, flooring is square, tools are square, but the house in not square. If it's not level or square you need to improvise and make do. Think of it as Jazz renovating: the starting place is commonly understood but then you need to improvise to truly make the sound.

***

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’

You can't argue with a plumb line. You can look at the line and look at the wall and think "this can't be right" when in fact it is. Gravity does not lie, something the ancients were aware of long before Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple. The plumb line was being set in the midst of Israel, to test them, to test the extend to which they were "upright" on the vertical or "on the level" on the horizontal.

It is a fun trick (and handy when you can't find your level) to establish the vertical using a plumb line and then make yourself a little triangle to establish level. Any triangle that measures three-by-four-by-five has a prefect right angle. Apply it to your plumb line and voila! you have found level.

The Israelites were busy building in the days of Amos. Houses were getting bigger, farmland was disappearing, and what farmland that was left was being transferred to agribusiness. Peasant farmers were being forced to convert their plots from basic subsistence farming to crops for export including grapes and olives. The gap between landowner and farmer was widening, and more and more people were struggling to feed their families. Listen to Amos:

11Therefore because you impose heavy rent on the poor
And exact a tribute of grain from them,
Though you have built houses of well-hewn stone,
Yet you will not live in them;
You have planted pleasant vineyards, yet you will not drink their wine.
12For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great,
You who distress the righteous and accept bribes
And turn aside the poor in the gate.

Some call the time of Amos the apex of the Israelite period before the Babylonian exile of 587 BC. Prosperity was up and religious observance was down. Career and safeguarding the prosperity of the family was more important that clan and neighbour. The Lord reminded the people through Amos that the nations will be judged according to the perfect law set down by Moses, and that no nation, not even Israel, will be exempt from the critical eye of judgement.

***

You can't argue with a plumb line. Like all good basic building tools, it still works today. It may be made of bronze and sculpted in the usual way, but in the utility of God any heavy object on a string can serve.

There is little doubt that Amos would understand our time. He would understand gentrification and sprawl and monster homes and agribusiness and unemployment and food banks and the threat of judgement. I'm not going to connect the dots because they are already firmly connected. In the same manner that we recalled a few weeks ago that J.S. Woodsworth was arrested for quoting Isaiah, Amos is timeless and hard to ignore.

***

What I want to explore is also rooted in the art of the physical, and comes to us through Luke from Isaiah:

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

This was John, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He set out a vision, found first in Isaiah 40, of a new measure, where the very geography is transformed in the forgiving love of God. It is God's desire that after judgement comes the forgiving love that levels the topography of human sin and straightens the most convoluted paths of human experience. The plumb line shifts from the wall of judgement to the newly leveled ground of forgiveness, showing us in the most concrete way that God's desire is for a closer walk with us on the new ground of reconciliation.

We often say "if these walls could talk, they would have much to say." It seems fitting that as some of these walls are set to come down, we listen a moment or two for some speaking.

First off, we could draw our plumb line near for just a moment to acknowledge that the walls are not square and the floor is not level and that every congregation falls short of the glory of the Most High. Having done this, we set down our tool and we listen for the words spoken in God's name, the Word proclaimed and the Word received.

We hear words of kindness and generosity
and we hear words of reconciling love.
We hear care extended and the peace of Christ made known.
We hear welcoming words and words of comfort.
We hear words that speak for the voiceless,
and we hear words that challenge the injustice
that exist right outside these walls.
We hear words of gratitude for our work,
and words of relief when more recently there was only despair. We hear words that speak of hope and the coming Kingdom,
and we hear words of compassion from the lips
of the Author of compassion, Jesus the Christ.

May the echo of old walls so fill new walls that the sound of love is deafening in this place. And may we continue to bless each other. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 8:39 AM