The first reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 11th, is Amos 7:7-15. Verses 7-8 says…
7 This is what the Lord showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall, with a plumb line in his hand. 8 The Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” “A plumb line,” I said. Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel.’
A plumb line is a pretty interesting tool. My Dad is a carpenter and a mason and a few years ago he and I had a conversation about this passage from Amos and manly about a plumb line. Dad explained to me that it is often referred to as a plumb bob and that it is used to make sure jobs are vertical or plumb. The tool has been used since ancient Egypt and it is still being used today. A plumb line has a pointed tip at the bottom and it is suspended from a string. The point of the plumb line is used to mark a perfect vertical drop between the line beginning above and the ground below. Basically it is used to measure a perfectly straight wall. And this is the point, when something is “out of plumb” it is not perfectly straight but rather it is crooked, imperfect, and potentially dangerous. In Amos’s vision the Lord is standing beside a wall that is perfectly plumb. It is the Lord who has built this wall and so of course it is plumb. The Lord grabs the attention of Amos and explains that the divine plumb line will be used by the Lord to measure how straight God’s people really are. The result of the Lord’s measurement is that Israel is out of plumb and therefore something needs to happen.
The book of Amos has so much to offer to us today. God has given us everything. God has given us life, God has given us creation, the gifts of family and community and love and joy, God has given us grace and forgiveness, God has given to us all these things. And God has given us a guide as to how we are to live our lives. We can choose if we are going to live lives that are plumb, that are straight and that are pleasing to God, or we can be “out of plumb” not perfectly straight but rather crooked, imperfect, and potentially dangerous. Righteousness, holiness, sanctification, these are the things to which God is calling us. Living not for ourselves but living for Christ is how we know the life that really is life.