Amos 7:1–17
As sometimes happens in the lectionary, we get a snippet of scripture that misses important context. Prior the start of this passage, God has expressed dissatisfaction with the Israelites and threatened a plague of locusts and an all-consuming fire. Both times, Amos pleaded with God and God backs off. Notably, Amos didn’t ask for lenience because the people were good but, instead, because they were “small”, citing human finitude as the reason God should relent. The third exchange begins at vs 7, which we pick up in this lectionary passage. Instead of a tool of destruction like locusts or fire, God is holding a tool for measurement. Like a pendulum, a plumbline is a cord with a lead weight on the end and is meant to assess whether a wall has been built straight and sturdy or if it’s uneven and prone to self-destruction. In these verses, God is measuring according to the expectations of the covenant and finding the people of Israel lacking.
It’s important to know that this isn’t a ritual failing – it’s a moral one. Back in chapter 5, we learn that all the right festivals and songs are happening but that’s only making God angrier. Right ritual isn’t matched with right relationship and the poorest, highest risk, and most marginalized are being abused. God has seriously pissed off mama bear energy even to the point of destroying everything that has been built.
What strikes me is the evasion of accountability that happens in vs 10-13. Instead of recognizing how they are harming people, Amaziah and Jeroboam blame Amos and try to send him away, closing their hearts, minds, and land to protect themselves from hearing Amos’s message. But God’s pronouncement of destruction comes anyway.
As we read in last week’s post, it’s important to hear the hard truths coming from the most marginalized among us, even when it’s hard. In vs 14, we learn that Amos is a shepherd, meaning he’s most likely been on the receiving end of government greed and exploitation. Amaziah and Jeroboam are getting called on the carpet and, even though they are the antagonists in this story, I sympathize with them. It takes a lot of spiritual fortitude not to double down when you’re being called out and, like Amos notes, sometimes people are small. But if we are going to build the world we dream of where the prison industrial complex is abolished, we need to learn to sit with our discomfort, acknowledge it, and choose to act according to our stated values. Though so much of building an abolitionist world is experimental, an abolitionist ethic provides us a “plumbline” that keeps us building toward this goal in a sustainable, structurally sound way.
A plumbline isn’t a tool of destruction. In fact, its only function is literally to aid in the work of construction, meaning it is only to be feared if our pride is protecting what’s already been built. Possibility lives beneath that fear if we are courageous enough to search for it. Sometimes, we have to deconstruct so we can rebuild. Activist Mariame Kaba writes “Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses…abolition is not about your fucking feelings.” She goes on to say “we have to govern the world not based on our personal desires and our personal feelings. We have to have a politic and set of basic values that we as a society are governed by…sometime our feelings aren’t actually aligned with our values.” Abolition is our plumbline, the way we measure the alignment of our actions and our ethics. It’s the true thing we can come back to. May we have enough humility to be accountable when harm is brought to our attention, the strength to resist the urge to reject accountability, and the courage to build something better.
Mallory Everhart is a pastor, poet, and abolitionist spiritual director based in Colorado Springs, CO.