The Rev. Ann R. Lougee
July 22, 2007
Our Plumb Line
Amos 7:1-9

Amos lived early in the 8th century before the Common Era, and is one of the so-called minor prophets, but what he has to say is certainly not minor or insignificant. Amos dreams what could happen to the people as God sets "a plumb line against Israel, using a divine standard to measure the faithfulness of God's people."

Do y'all know what a plumb line is? In its simplest form, as Amos would have known it, it's a weight on the end of a string. When you're putting up a wall, you've got to know that it's straight up and down, or it won't bear the weight of the structure you're trying to build, and it will collapse. So you use a plumb line, which hangs straight because of gravity, to show you that the wall is straight and will stand.

Amos was a contemporary of Isaiah, Micah and Hosea when, under King Jeroboam II, the kingdom of Israel reached the zenith of its prosperity. But the gulf between rich and poor also widened at this time. Amos found himself called from his rural home to remind the rich and powerful of God's requirement for justice and compassion.

Amos' prophecy is mostly directed at the heartlessness of the well-off who ignore the plight of the poor, at the society's lack of justice, and at the emptiness of religious ritual apart from true faith shown in right action. He claimed that religion that is not accompanied by right action is anathema to God, and prophesied that the kingdom of Israel would be destroyed if it didn't mend its ways – which we all know it didn't.

Not being a church-raised kid, I heard about Amos, the first prophet I I ever learned about, the first time I went with some friends to church camp where our theme centered on him. I was fascinated by the notion that God would grab a self-described herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees and send him off to speak truth to power.

I was also somewhat terrified by the idea that a common, ordinary person could be so seized with a passion for God's justice and mercy that he or she would leave all that felt normal and comfortable, to become a spokesperson for God. And look what happened to me, some thirty years later!

Shy, quiet Ann got sent off to seminary and has spent the next 22 years being, in essence, a spokesperson for God! It was smart of me to be terrified!

Happily, God hasn't sent me to face people in positions of power to tell them they were about to be destroyed. My call from God has involved much less harsh drama, although it's true, even so, that I sometimes say things people would rather not hear.

At seminary they used to tell us that church ministry involves being both pastoral and prophetic, pastoral in the sense of offering comfort and care and prophetic in the sense of telling people the hard truths about how our world and our work and our church falls short of the vision of God's realm. Another way they put that was that our job would be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I guess I'm pretty good at both.

But shy, quiet Ann would never have the nerve to raise a prophetic voice, were it not for the plumb line. Yes, that same plumb line that Amos saw in his vision is still around today.

To us Christians, the plumb line is personified in Jesus, who lived nearly 800 years after Amos, but brought the same vision of God's realm of justice and compassion to his times. That's the standard by which we declare, as we join the church, that we will strive to measure our actions and decisions.


Last week, we had the second of our story-telling Sundays, this time with Marge Bland recounting her experience with the church from its earliest days and Heidi Brahms telling of her experience as a newcomer to the church in the past couple of years. The congregation jotted down on "stickies" the values that they heard in the stories.

This is one of the ways that we are helping to identify the values that are at the core of this congregation. We began this process with a group meeting in a Partners in Transformation retreat this spring, and will continue it in a variety of ways over the coming months, hoping to involve each and every one of us in contributing to this identification of our core values. After each such session, the results are published so that we can all see the collection, so watch your Pilgrims Progress.

So far from the last two story-telling Sundays, the values heard in the stories of people's involvement with this church have included: family, fellowship, friendship, caring, love, support, comfort, compassion, community and hospitality; openness, acceptance, valuing diversity, freedom, loyalty, and persevering toward a worthy goal; spirituality, independent thinking, critical thinking, and structure to support moral development; enthusiasm and initiative, goodness, and outreach to the community and the world.

This is our list. These are our values, our standard, our plumb line. When we make decisions as a congregation the question to ask of any course of action is whether it is in keeping with these values.

This may seem like so much navel-gazing to some folks, but I assure you of this work's importance. Unless we agree what are the core values that will guide our decisions, unless we agree what our plumb line is, our foundation will be shaky. After we finish with this core values identification process, the next and final step in our Partners in Transformation work will be the creation of a concise and meaningful mission statement, which will, of course, incorporate the values that are our plumb line.

Our Constitution and By-laws already includes a statement which says, The purpose of this church shall be to worship God; to preach the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth; to celebrate the sacraments; to preserve, promote and extend the heritage of the Christian church and the Church Universal; to render loving service toward (hu)mankind; and to strive actively for righteousness, justice and peace in our daily lives; and to affirm the validity of corporate worship with people of other creeds and covenants.

That's a great start. But it's a little self-focused, even though it does mention rendering loving service toward humanity. We might want to refine it a bit when we come to that part of our work to make it a bit more outward-looking. This building expresses that very philosophy, as we descend from the parking lot and enter into this almost cave-like place, signifying the inward journey. But then our vision can't remain interior, as the wall of windows reminds us that on our pilgrimage of faith we must finally turn our vision outward to the world again.

Another UCC church of my acquaintance has created their Mission Statement that says simply, "Our Mission is to share God's love with our community and our world."

They created a Vision Statement to go along with it, which says: "Our community will recognize and value the ministry we do. People will be attracted to our ministry and come to participate. Through their discipleship, people will embrace God's love."

When they make a decision or undertake a project, then, they ask is it something that will benefit the community in the long-run? Is it reaching out to others? Or does it somehow close us in on ourselves?

About three years ago, some of us from Pilgrim began meeting with folks from other churches, wanting to do something as a Christian community for the many homeless families in Redding. There are agencies and facilities to help many of them, but much of the help is limited and temporary, and many are still falling through the cracks.

After about a year, I had to drop out of the time-consuming discussions, but Rosemary Thomas and Marge Bland and few other Pilgrims continued going to the meetings, which were helped greatly to keep motivated by Kay Young, then Associate Minister at the Methodist Church. The original conception of a rotating homeless shelter shifted and changed and evolved.

Paul Frye and Pam and Brian Thayer became involved, and the group continued to meet and haggle. Eventually what evolved was named Partners Helping Families (PHF). This hardy group put together articles of incorporation, sent application after application to Sacramento for legitimacy of the corporation and its project, and looked into all sorts of insurances to assure that those involved would not all be put on the streets themselves over a lawsuit.

When Kay Young left six months ago, she gave PHF a substantial donation, but privately she wondered, "will they ever get it together, or will they disband after I leave?" Well, I'm proud to say that Pam and Brian have kept on with this project, helping it to get all the i's dotted and t's crossed, and Brian now serves as Treasurer. Recently I got an email from the chairperson, Nancy Bray, saying that PHF has now taken on their first client, a teen-age woman with a baby who showed that she was changing her life and taking the baby's life seriously. PHF had given a check for $429 to get her into a small apartment, and now they'd come up with furniture for it.

I'm glad that Pilgrim Church has played a small role in this project by providing some minor funding, but I'm sorry that the awareness raised and number of people involved has been so small. I'm hoping our work on values and mission will help us make such projects more central in future.

This is what Amos would say it means to ‘keep the faith.' This is the kind of reaching out and helping that Jesus did. This is embodying Christ. It is what we exist, as a church, to do. It is the basic reason we are here today, ‘to share God's love with our community and our world.' It's our plumb line. Let's keep it straight.