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Hespeler, 11 July 2021 © Scott McAndless
Amos 7:7-15, Psalm 85:8-13, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29 (Click to read)

I am sure that you all heard the story of the terrible tragedy that took place in Surfside Florida at the end of last month. A condominium tower in that city just collapsed in the middle of the night. So far it has been confirmed that 32 people died and the remaining missing, 124 in all, are now presumed dead. The whole event is just horrible and frightening to consider and, of course, we feel for all those who grieve and mourn.

But what was horrible was made somewhat worse when the news came out days later of an engineering report that was made on the condo tower and brought before the management board in November of 2018. This report noted that there had been major structural damage in the building that had been caused by a leaky pool over top of a parking garage. Nevertheless, a building inspector came in and told the board meeting that he had reviewed the engineering report and assured everyone that the building was in good shape.

Now, I realize that all of those events that I just referred to are contested and are being litigated. I’m hardly in a position to say for sure who is actually to blame. But it does seem to me that, if any of that is true, it points to serious problems, and I’m not just talking about the problems with one particular building. There seem to be some significant problems with how these kinds of things work in general.

Amos and the Plumb Line

My mind turned to those recent events when I first read our passage from the Book of Amos as I prepared for this week’s service. Amos starts out talking about an odd vision that he had. “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.’”

This is actually how a lot of Amos’ prophetic oracles go. He starts out by saying that God showed him a pretty ordinary and everyday thing – a small swarm of locusts, a basket of fruit – and then tells us that God had a message to bring through that ordinary thing. I suspect that this may be Amos’ way of telling us that he would often just meditate on ordinary objects until he was struck by some connection to some of the issues of the day. That was how he discovered that God had a message for him, something that he needed to say to the people.

Why a Plumb Line?

But I find it interesting that this oracle begins with Amos seeing a plumb line. A plumb line is, of course, one of the most ancient of all engineering tools. It is the simplest thing in the world. It is just a weight tied to the end of a string. But since it has this wonderful ability to always create a perfectly straight line that is perpendicular to the surface of the earth, it has so many uses in building.

Before the invention of laser levels or even of bubble levels, plumb lines were an absolutely essential tool for building walls and houses that would actually remain standing. And, of course, if they were useful for building, then they were also useful for checking on any ongoing stability and security of a structure. If you held a plumb line up against the wall that was built to be plumb and you discovered that the string and the wall no longer followed the same line, well, that was a pretty good indication that that structure might not remain standing too much longer.

What the Vision Meant

And that is what Amos saw in his vision. He saw God holding a plumb line up against a wall that was no longer plumb. To put it in modern terms, you might say that Amos saw the 2018 engineering report on Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside Florida and he saw God’s name signed at the bottom.

And Amos understood what that vision meant. He was smart enough to see that the structure in question was not a particular wall or house, it was the structure of the entire Kingdom of Israel. And that put him in a very difficult position.

Imagine that you are that engineer who made that report on the building in Florida. You know what you have discovered in your study, and you know the very real danger for the people who live in that building. Clearly you have a moral and ethical duty to tell people what you have seen.

What if People won’t Listen?

But what do you do when you have very powerful and connected people who, as seems to be the case in that story, have a vested interest in making your report go away? Who don’t want, for example, to spend millions of dollars to make the necessary repairs. What if they are people who can cause problems for you or your family, who can disrupt your career or who can just make your report disappear on a whim? What do you do then?

You might reply, and rightly so, that that does not change your ethical duty, but there is no denying that it certainly makes your next steps a whole lot more difficult and complicated.

The Cost of Speaking Up

Well, when Amos saw the structural problems that were there in the Kingdom of Israel, problems that were leading it towards a terrible disaster, he quickly decided that he knew what his duty was. He spoke up loudly and often. He went to the City of Bethel, one of the key worship centres for the entire kingdom. There Amos spent his days preaching at all of the people who came to sacrifice at the sanctuary and warning them that the condominium was about to collapse. And, yes, Amos only did this at enormous cost. In particular, Amaziah, one of the most powerful officials in the entire kingdom threatened him saying, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

And there is something kind of typical in Amaziah’s threat. Did you notice the assumptions that he makes about Amos? He assumes that he is a seer and says that he is just hanging around the sanctuary at Bethel in order to earn his bread. He is accusing him of being little more than a fortune teller who is making money selling prophecies about people’s futures to those who come to worship there.

This is very telling. Those people who use whatever power or influence they have in order to exploit people and enrich themselves often just assume that that is what everyone else is doing as well. The only reason Amaziah can imagine for why Amos is doing what he’s doing and causing such disruption is because he must have some angle, some way in which Amos is enriching himself. It would never occur to somebody like Amaziah that Amos might be doing what he is doing because he feels dutybound to try and save the whole nation from itself.

Amos’ Reply

And that is what makes Amos’ reply so important. “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son,” he says. He is saying that he is not a professional, not someone who does this for a living. “But I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”

Wow, what a statement. He is saying that he does not need all of this aggravation. He is certainly not interested in making any money by it. He could be living very comfortably, thank you very much, looking after his herds and dressing the odd sycamore tree. But something happened. He saw the plumb line. He saw that the structure was in bad shape and a danger to the people. He spoke up because he knew that the people needed to know. That is what he means when he says, “the Lord took me.”

And I believe that what Amos says there has many applications to the challenges of living in the world today. Back then, it was the expectation that only certain people, prophets and the sons of prophets, were allowed to speak up on national issues – and it is very clear from what Amaziah says that they were expected to tow the party line and support whatever the king wanted. But Amos says something very different. He says that those who have seen the plumb line, who see how the structures are out of alignment, simply have the duty, given by God, to speak up. That is a challenge for all of us.

Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce

It makes me think of a story that I heard recently. In 1904, Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce was named as the chief medical officer for what was called then the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs. Bryce was not an indigenous person; he was just a doctor with a great deal of experience and many honours in the area of public health.

One of the first jobs that he was given was to investigate an issue that had that had arisen in the country’s Indian residential schools. Apparently, it seemed that a lot of the children who were being placed in these schools were dying. We are talking of a death rate among students that averaged at that time about 50%. Yes, you heard that right. About half of the children being sent to those schools were not surviving. In some schools, the death rate was as high as 69%.

So, Bryce went to work to try and get to the bottom of this mystery. He came back a few years later with a well researched report in which he laid the blame for the unconscionable death toll of the residential schools primarily on the federal government for its failure to enforce even a minimal level of health standards in the schools. Bryce had held a plumb line up against the entire system and revealed that the wall was completely off-kilter. And he apparently thought that he had finished his work. He had identified the problem and fully documented it. Now that the government knew what the problem was, surely they would just fix it.

Duncan Campbell Scott

But any guesses what happened when Bryce submitted his report? He was confronted by his own Amaziah in the form of Duncan Campbell Scott, the head of Indian Affairs, a man who declared that it was his job to “get rid of the Indian problem,” and was apparently quite comfortable with doing that by killing about half of the indigenous children who came into the government’s care. When Scott saw the report and conclusions that Bryce had come to, he quickly sprang into action. He dismissed the report and immediately cut all of Bryce’s funding. From there, Scott and the government set about destroying Dr. Bryce’s career, preventing him from speaking at conferences and eventually pushing him out of the public service altogether.

Bryce’s Response

But what was Bryce to do? This had become a political hot potato and he was no politician nor a politician’s son. He was just a doctor and a man of faith (a Presbyterian, in fact) and he had seen the plumb line. He knew that he could not remain silent. When all political action was closed off to him, he chose to speak in a different way. He wrote a book, “The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada.” He got it published and began distributing it himself, particularly handing out many copies of the book throughout Ottawa. He knew what he had seen, and he was committed to get the word out about what he had seen no matter what the cost to himself.

That – that kind of courage and commitment to speaking the truth – is, I believe, what our passage in the Book of Amos this morning is about. I think Amos makes it clear that prophets – true prophets of the – are not special people with unique gifts or insights. They are ordinary people – herders, sycomore tree dressers, doctors and engineers. They are any one of us, whatever we may do, but they are people who have seen the plumb line and know the danger that the system is in. They are, above all, people who have the courage to speak up and say what they have seen. That, my friends, can and should be any one of us.

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Hespeler, July 4 2021 © Scott McAndless
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13 (click to read)

Did you notice something as we read from the Old Testament this morning? I don’t know about you, but for me it was unmistakable. Something changed; something just clicked. Now, I will admit that maybe it was just me. Maybe the click just happened in my own head and it was so loud that I thought everyone could hear it. Because, you see, I am a bit of a historian. I actually have a bachelor degree in history. That does give me an awareness of something that others might not notice. And what I noticed, as I read this passage, was that we had suddenly entered an era of documented history.

Independent Confirmation

You see, when it says, “So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel,” there is something different about that statement from any other biblical statements that go before it. You see, David is the first person in the Bible for whom we have independent confirmation of his existence. That is to say, he is the first individual in the Bible for whom we have extra-biblical evidence. I mean, there have been some archaeological discoveries that confirm a few things older than David – the existence of certain cities or population groups – but nothing that you could use as evidence that a certain person existed.

But, for David, we have that. We don’t exactly have proof of the existence of David himself, but there are ancient inscriptions that have been uncovered that refer to something called the House of David. So we know for sure that there was a dynasty of ancient kings who traced the foundation of their rule to a man named David. That is about all we can prove about the man, and I know that might not seem like much, but it’s really quite significant for that time and place.

The City of David

And there is a little bit more that we can say. Our reading goes on to describe how “David occupied the stronghold, and named it the city of David. David built the city all around from the Millo inwards.” As you read on, it becomes clear that this is a reference to David establishing his capital at a little place called Jerusalem. You might have heard of it.

And archaeologists have found evidence of some ancient construction near the top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem that seems to correspond to that period of time. In particular, they have discovered a large retaining wall that they have identified as the Millo that is mentioned in this passage. It was apparently considered to be quite an engineering feat at the time as it is mentioned several times in the Bible.

Even a Date

And if you put all of that together, we actually even have a date. If David is the guy responsible for the construction of what is called the City of David, then we can say that he must have ruled in Jerusalem in about the year 1,000 BC. If you ever want to impress people at a party with your biblical knowledge, pull out that one! It’s easy to remember and the first confirmed date in the Bible: 1,000 BC.

Now, some of you – maybe especially those of you who don’t get excited by history – may be saying “So what? What does it matter that something has been confirmed by extra-biblical sources? After all, just because something isn’t mentioned outside of the Bible doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.” And, yes, that is absolutely true. But it does mean something. It means that, with the story of David, we finally have something concrete that we can hold up and compare to the biblical account.

The Traces of David’s Kingdom

The Bible does say many things about the rule of King David. Of course, we are not going to find historical evidence for every little detail, but we should be able to find some corroboration. In particular, the Bible says that David established a very large kingdom that united all of the tribes of Israel over a large territory for the very first time – a united kingdom that endured during his life and the life of his son Solomon before coming apart and never being reunited. Now that is an enormous achievement for that time and place.

What’s more, it is the kind of administration that you might expect to leave significant traces in the archaeological record. If there was such a united kingdom in David’s time, we ought to be able to find the traces of it. And so, of course, archaeologists have searched for those traces. And, news alert, they haven’t found them.

On the contrary, they find that there was very little in the way of political unity in the area at the time. As a result, most scholars and archaeologists would say that the evidence seems to indicate that, if David was a real person and he ruled in Jerusalem, his kingdom was probably more of a chieftainship and likely didn’t extend all that far from Mount Zion. It seems that, as time went by, kings in the line of David looked back on the time of David and Solomon as a great golden age and so, kind of naturally, they exaggerated the size and importance of that kingdom.

The Idea of a United Kingdom

So there really is little evidence of a united kingdom under David. But I will tell you something that there is a lot of evidence for, and that is for the idea of that united kingdom. For much of its history after 1,000 BC, there were two kingdoms in the land of Israel – the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. And for much of that time, the northern kingdom was by far the largest, strongest and most prosperous of the two. The kingdom of Judah in the south was really a runt of a kingdom. But the southern kingdom had Jerusalem and it had the House of David in charge.

And it seems clear that the idea that there had been a united kingdom under the rule of David and Solomon was established and grew in that southern Kingdom of Judah. Based on this idea, yes, the rulers of the House of David did claim that they should also rule over the people in the north. This claim became even more insistent when the northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire and, in a seeming miracle, the southern kingdom just barely managed to survive.

At that time, prophets such as the great Prophet Isaiah proclaimed that the time had finally come to re-establish the united kingdom, though it never actually happened. Over time, the idea of a united kingdom became linked to the idea that the temple in Jerusalem was the only place where people could correctly worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.

The Idea Outlives the House of David

The idea of the united kingdom continued even once the ruling House of David ceased to exist after the Babylonian exile. When the exiles returned from Babylon, many of them returned with the idea that God had sent them back to rebuild the old kingdom of David, even if it didn’t really work out that way. Centuries later, the Hasmonean kings, who did not claim to be descended from David, still wanted to re-establish his kingdom and entered into a war of conquest to bring Galilee under Judean control.

In fact, to this very day the idea of David’s kingdom has been a driving force behind the modern Israeli state, especially in the establishment of Israeli settlements in occupied territory. Of course, this has often rendered the hope for peace in that part of the world somewhat complicated.

So, it is kind of amazing, when you think about it, that the very idea of the kingdom of David and Solomon had more influence on the future course of history than did the actual reality of those kingdoms on the ground. But, as I think of it, maybe that is not so strange after all. In fact, I think that is how it always works and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

National Days of Celebration

We gather today just three days after Canada Day, and we also gather on the American Independence Day. And there has been a lot of discussion this year about how or even if people ought to celebrate Canada Day, especially because, over the last couple of months, we have been confronted in a particularly graphic way with some of the failures and shortcomings of our country, particularly in regards to our relationship with indigenous people and the residential school system. And there doesn’t seem to be anything to celebrate about that.

As for our good American neighbours, I’m quite sure that they would never tone down their patriotic celebrations today, but there is no doubt that the past year may have tarnished the image that many of them have of their country when you think of the events that prompted the Black Lives Matter movement, a terrible pandemic experience and an insurrection at the nation’s capital.

As I think of these celebrations and of how the idea of David’s kingdom was bigger than the kingdom itself probably was, it makes me ask the question today, what exactly do we celebrate when we celebrate a nation?

Looking Critically at our Past

I know there are some who really struggle with the idea of looking at our past with a critical eye. This is because we have long associated the idea of our country with a glorified view of that past. We have looked to stories of heroic settlers heading out into the clearings, to visionary leaders like John A. Macdonald and Edgerton Ryerson, to brave leaders like Generals Wolf and Brock to tell us who we were and what we stood for.

But, if that is who we are, that makes any act of looking critically at those heroes feel very dangerous. It makes any act of looking back feel dangerous because very few people or policies of the past will stand up against our present-day sensibilities. So, all of a sudden, indigenous people asking to have their experiences heard and validated or maybe just historians doing their jobs feels like people are attacking our patriotic spirit. But I do not believe that we should be afraid of history, and we certainly should not be afraid of the truth of our history.

In many ways, our idea of our country has been based on an idealized picture of our past, as romanticized, in some ways, as the united kingdom under David. But just because that past was not as ideal as we may have thought it was, just because it turns out that we may have blinded ourselves to some of its flaws, does that mean that the idea does not have a purpose?

An Idea of Canada

I do have an idea of a Canada – a Canada that takes care of its people, all of its people. I have an idea of a Canada where we do not value people less because of their race or their origins. I have an idea of a country where we value and care for the land and honour those who have lived in relationship with it for thousands of generations. That is my idea of Canada. I suspect that it is God’s idea as well.

Did that ideal Canada exist in the past? No, certainly not in entirety and there have been many cases when we fell far, far short of that idea. Does that ideal Canada exist in the present? Well, I’m afraid I have to say that the answer there is also no. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not the real Canada. The idea is real and, if we commit ourselves and if we work at it, if we really work at it, that idea will begin to align more closely to the reality on the ground in the future because, I believe, that is where my idea of Canada will be found – in the future, and in my heart. Where will yours be found?

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