"The Plumb-line" July 12, 215

Amos 7: 7-15 Mark 6: 14-29 The problem with secrets is that by their very nature they make the persons involved complicit in taking what ever is visible and making it hidden. Secrets cause you to feel as if you and only you know what is really going on. In that way, secrets twist reality, making the public private, making two separate from the whole, twisting, bending and hiding the truth. Each of the Gospels tells the life, teachings, actions and relationships of Jesus through his death upon the cross, and that not even death could ever separate us from his love for us. But each of the Gospels also have a slightly different purpose. Matthew is linking everything Jesus said and did with the First Testament of Judaism. Luke is presenting the life of Jesus to a non-Jewish listener. John to a community that has given up on the world, and chosen to live life apart. But Mark's Gospel we read from this morning is continually wrestling with the Secret that Jesus is God incarnate, what does it mean for a Carpenter, the Son of Mary to accept being the Messiah sent from God. Internally and externally to struggle with our faith, which can be uncomfortable for others to accept, can include accommodations to people, but when and how do we make known the importance to us of what we believe and who we are. Every Memorial we do, there is something in me that wants to reveal the secret identity of the person, which no one, not their neighbors, nor life long friends, not their children or even their spouse new. That this person was an instrument of God, Baptized and set apart for a secret purpose in living life. You are a Child of God, you are a Believer. Some members of this church, some Baptized, some Ordained. As rational responsible believers in the 21st Century, you take notice and try to make sense of the world around us. Friends tormented by abuse, by domestic violence, by seeking out circumstance that can only lead to ruin, by war, by oppression, by terrorism, and you want to say something, to do something. When one day, you have a Vision, a Vision of the God of PASSOVER in Judgement of the World saying God will never PassOver again! God will Pass Through. The Creator is forming a plague of locusts, a pest that will consume all the crops and vegetation, that humanity will suffer for what we have done and allowed. And witnessing what this devastating insect will do, you respond “NO!” And God listens and God repents. But humanity does not change, a church is gunned down at a prayer meeting. People are herded up by ISIS and decapitated. The Ancient and continuing Nation of Greece are in debt without ability to rescue itself. And you have a Vision of God, sitting on a bump on a branch on a log at the bottom of the sea. And what is God doing, at the bottom of the oceans God is forming an unquenchable fire, to burn over the face of Creation, cauterizing the earth of sin by killing all living things. And your response to God is “NO!” And God listens and God repents. But humanity does not change. And God shows you a Vision of a Basket of Summer Fruit. Melons, Plums, Peaches, Cherries and Apples. But as you look, the whole basket of fruit rot. And God speaks to you saying “It is already too late.” And God shows you a new Vision, which you hear as God is taking you to the Crossroads of the City, the Center of Commerce and Faith and Cultural Life, in Jerusalem the Wailing Wall of the Temple of Solomon. And your Vision is of a Plumbline, a piece of tin hung at the bottom of a line, which by gravity causes the line to be taught and perfectly straight, up and down. How would you respond to what you see and believe and know? The problem with being a plumbline, is that you cannot choose what in life is crooked, or secret, and virtually everything about life is not perfect. Recently, I was at the Sherwood Inn and recognized that all the paintings appear to be crooked, because while the frames are level the building is not square. The same is true at the Masonic Lodge and all of the Churches. A plumbline witnesses how few things in life are perfect, how rare that anything is straight and true, and due to time and circumstances of life how many imperfections have been allowed. How many secrets have been tolerated and kept as acceptable. Does it matter that there are imperfections, that century old structures have settled? Are the imperfections and wrinkles and age spots and scars not part of the charm and character of what has experienced life? But when do those very imperfections become a blight of rotten fruit? John The Baptist saw himself as being a Plumbline. He came from a wilderness outside the society, and called people to repent and believe. And all the people, Jew and Gentile, everyone came to confess their sins and be baptized to be made new. But as a preacher he took on the powers of the day. Recall that in the Gospels, when Jesus was born there was a King named “Herod,” when Jesus is tried before Pilate, Jesus is recognized as a Galilean Jew and sent to another King Herod. There were Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa and Herod of Antipas, who were horribly corrupt having abandoned faith in God, adherence to God's Law for popularity and favor with the Greeks, later with the Roman culture. Because Herod lusted after his brother's wife, and he took his sister-in-law as his wife. Which John “the Plumbline” publicly described as not only as Lust, but as Adultery and Covetousness, and Herod making himself out to be God, to be above the Law. There is a problem with being a Plumbline... Those whose secrets you make known as imperfections want to cut your throat. But Herod was fascinated by John. Have you ever known those, who totally aggravate and frustrate you, but who also intrigue you? So when his wife Herodias demands John's death King Herod has John arrested. Oddly, this is all that the other Gospels reveal, but Mark which is the shortest and tightest in word choice includes an elaborate story of the cost to John of being a Plumbline, of revealing the secrets of the powerful. This is the only passage in all of the Gospels where Jesus is not the main character. He has called the twelve, taught them parables, shown them power in faith, shown them the cost of being rejected by family and home, and sent them out. Here the Gospel of Mark reveals the cost of secrets. King Herod is so corrupt, that he not only lusts after his brother's wife, and murders his brother to have her, Herod has a party for himself to show off to all those of power and influence his power, possessions and lusts. At this party for himself, Herod lusts after his brother's daughter, by marriage his own daughter. And the cost for this secret, is John the Baptist's Head on a Silver Platter. Our lusts, our abuses of others, our secrets which at times are even secret to ourselves, these do have terrible costs a rotting of our Creation, a violation of boundaries and twisting of the truth, of our authenticity and our Self. But rather than this being the end of the story, King Herod decapitating John: for being God's Plumbline in his midst, for revealing that Herod had violated God's laws, becomes the rallying call for Jesus' ministry of repentance. In a different twist on resurrection, King Herod interprets that Jesus must be John raised from the dead, because he continues John's purpose in the world. From this point forward, Mark's Gospel is not about teaching the Twelve, but about revealing God's presence in the World and the imperfections. God and God's purposes are not stopped because we cut the plumbline. The wall does not become perfect because you took away the level. However, there is yet another secret. The Bible was not originally written in English. The New Testament was written in What is described as Koine Greek, Common Greek as opposed to Classical, much like our Americanized English compared to the King James version. And the Old testament, the First Testament was shared orally and eventually written in Hebrew. In this Vision of Amos, what is shown to man is “Anah.” In the Middle Ages, when Chapters and Verses and Vowels were being added to the written text to make it more usable by English speaking believers, the translators knew the Syro-Phonecian word Anak to be a Plumb-line, and this made sense given the context, and that the Hebrew people and Syro-Phonecians had had interaction, so they translated it as Plumbline. The difference between ANAH and ANAK only being a tiny dot to convert the H to a CH or K sound. But in where the hard sound created the word Plumbline, Hebrew did actually have a word ANAH which means “A Sigh.” What does it mean if as the final vision to Amos, God held up to Humanity's imperfections at the Crossroads of culture, a Sigh from God? After fashioning one destruction for the world after another, and God continually repenting while humanity never did, like the Minnions in the Movie seeking the worst possible leaders to follow, if God's Vision for the Believer was God's Lament, God's Sigh at what we could be?