The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10), July 13, 2025

“What do you see?”

This is the question of faith – but it is not, what do you see with your eyes, but what do you
really see? What can you “see” with your heart? This notion of vision, beyond a physical, optical
vision, is at the heart of scriptural faith.
In our passages for the next two weeks, we focus on visions of the interesting prophet, Amos.
These were visions the prophet “saw” (though most of the recorded vision episode involves a
conversation with God, not a visual experience), and visions he tried to communicate with the
people. Both aspects of the visionary task – the seeing and the communicating of the vision –
represent challenges, no less for today’s preacher than for Amos himself.
Amos prophesied in the 8 th century before Christ. The introduction the Oxford Annotated Bible
says, “During the long and peaceful reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.) Israel attained a height
of territorial expansion and national prosperity never again reached. The military security and
economic affluence with characterized this age were taken by many Israelites as signs of the
Lord’s special favor that they felt they deserved because of their extravagant support of the
official shrines… Amos was called by God… to the difficult mission of preaching harsh words
in a smooth season.”
This setting makes Amos, along with the other Minor Prophets, particularly appropriate textual
material for a prosperous superpower like the United States in our current moment. No one can
read Amos carefully and not feel that these words hold pointed messages for contemporary
Americans.
Not trained in yeshiva or university, Amos was, instead, “a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore
trees” (Amos 7.14), who was called by God to prophecy. After his call, Amos travels from the
southern kingdom of Judah to the northern kingdom of Israel, to the shrine/temple at Bethel.
Amos 7.10-17 records the tense argument between Amaziah, the priest of Bethel (perhaps
representing trained clergy everywhere), and Amos, the meddling, untrained street-preacher.
Amaziah has heard Amos’s dire prediction of the impending destruction of Israel, God’s
judgement, and says to him, “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” (Amos 7.12). In other words, “Go back home where you belong – and
take your message with you!” It is telling that Amaziah identifies the temple of Bethel as “the
king’s sanctuary” – not God’s.
This encounter may be uncomfortable for contemporary preachers, suggesting that the true Word
of God, a new vision for a new day, may not come from the halls of academia or within the
institutional church. God sometimes uses the untrained prophet to “school” the more enlightened.
In the Interpretation commentary, James Limburg says, “Each of the prophets spoke because
they had been spoken to. More often than not, they delivered messages which were not popular
and which said precisely the opposite of that which the cadre of religious professional of their
day were saying.” (Interpretation, Hosea-Micah, p.115.)
Any preacher tempted to use a traditional reading of this text, making the “plumb line” the object
of the sermon, might want to reconsider. Many good and appropriate lessons can be drawn from a vision of a divine plumb line, set within one’s heart, or one’s church, or one’s nation, to
“square” or “rectify” or “make right” – but there is much reason to question this translation of
the Hebrew word “anak.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible, Donald E. Gowan says, “It is almost
certain that ‘anak’ does not mean ‘plumb line,’ and yet all they modern translations and some
commentaries continue to use it. The word occurs only here in the [Old Testament] and is now
known to be the Akkadian word for ‘tin.’” (NIB, Vol. VII, p.406.)
According to Gowan, “plumb line” first appeared in medieval commentaries, and has become the
favored translation – and provides ample substance to make Amos’s vision a “judgment oracle”
(p.406) against Israel. And, what preacher doesn’t like a good judgement oracle, right?
Gowan says Amos’s vision depends on a complex wordplay between ‘anak’ (tin) and ‘anah’ or
‘anaq’ (sigh). James Nogalski says the wordplay is between ‘anak’ and ‘anahah,’ the Hebrew
word for mourning. “Thus, YHWH is not measuring the people; rather, YHWH is placing
mourning in their midst – meaning death is near.” (The Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary,
The Book of the Twelve, Hosea-Jonah, p.339.)
It is fascinating that for hundreds of years the interpretation of Amos’s “plumb line” – one of the
features by which the book of Amos is known – has been based on such a clear mistranslation.
Why have so many not been able to see?
What do you see? Are biblical commentators and preachers alike too willing to take the easy
way, to employ the standard interpretation, to use the angle that makes for good (maybe more
judgmental) preaching? Maybe we need to work a little harder? To see more clearly?
Alfred North Whitehead, once said, “Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness
when they are first produced.” It’s much easier to stay with what we know, with what has
already been “seen.” New visions are difficult, which is why so many prophets get martyred in
the line of work. “God is placing mourning in your midst,” is not a message many people in the
pews want to hear!
The cost of prophetic preaching is why Paul’s work, bringing the Gospel out of Judaism, a new
vision within an old truth, cost him so much, finally his own life. “You have heard of this hope
before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you.” Paul was bringing a new vision
to the people. (Does “you have heard of this hope before” mean they had already heard Paul’s
preaching, or does this refer to truths in the gospel of Jesus that were already present in their
Jewish truths? Richard Rohr says, "God's plan and presence – the Christ – has been with us since the beginning of the universe. In Jesus, the blueprint materialized and became visible, showing
us the way toward wholeness." (Rohr, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-new-consciousness-
2019-09-02/ “A New Consciousness,” September 2, 2019.) Either way, Paul says they had
already heard the message, but were not living into it. Paul gave his life believing this new vision
could change the world.
Let the preacher caution against the antisemitism that so often creeps into Christian pulpits, the
view of supercessionism: that the Jews had/have it all wrong, that Christians have superseded or
replaced the Jewish people as the one and only chosen nation. It is possible to preach, affirming the work and uniqueness of Jesus, without excluding the truths of other faith traditions. That kind
of interfaith Christianity is a vision that also needs to be shared by modern day prophets. What
do you see?

Elements for Worship

If you use a printed order of service, you might consider using a “magic eye” image on the cover
for these next two Sundays, emphasizing that “seeing” often requires looking beyond the surface.
A Prayer of Confession
Forgive us our sight, O God, for our world is filled with perverse images and violence against
your children – and we cannot take our eyes away. And our world is filled with children, starving
and alone, and often we cannot bear even to look, much less to lend a hand. Give us the sight of
the saints, O God, that we might learn through their eyes to see you, even now, in the land of the
living. Amen!

A Prayer of Confession
And Jesus said to them, “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do
you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?”
Forgive us, O God, when we do not even see our past clearly. Open our eyes today. With
honesty and courage, give us faith to see – that we may truly live today and trust tomorrow.
Amen.
—from Mark 8
A Litany
“There are no new ideas.”
No new ideas? Civil Rights… Equal Rights… Gay Rights… Animal Rights… Worker
Rights… Trans Rights… No new ideas?
No, “There are no new ideas…
Only new ways of making them felt.”
So, may God give us old eyes, and new hearts –
That when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide us into all the truth!
–from Audre Lorde and John 16
Quotations on Seeing/Vision
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it.
–Max Planck
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it…
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy…
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground…
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a glove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.
— Wendell Berry, “A Vision”
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high
with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew
and act anew.
–Abraham Lincoln
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But
there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the
adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
–Alan Cohen
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
–Audre Lorde
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
–John Cage
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
–John Dewey
The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is
new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
–Henry Miller
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
–Alfred North Whitehead

There are those who seek to penetrate the immensities and to see God. One ought rather to sink
into the depths and seek to find God among the suffering, erring, and the downtrodden. Then the
heart is free from pride and able to see God.
–Martin Luther
We are in the world to see God. That is the final spiritual purpose of life. Across the cradle of the
babe and the playtime of the girls and boys this purpose ever falls. It can be forgotten and
frustrated, but as life’s highest possibility and truest destiny it is always with us…
–Percy C. Ainsworth
The path of life’s highest knowledge and supreme enlightenment lies through the heart within us.
The more like God we become, the more of God we behold.
–Percy C. Ainsworth, “Weavings,” Nov/Dec 1996, p.29ff
How can we behold this vision? Jesus says the conditions of sight are moral conditions. We must
have purity of heart. It is the heart that sees. True vision is through the affections, the
sympathies, and the will. The light and darkness of life are accounted for by the cleanness or
uncleanness of the heart. Vision is determined by character.
–Percy C. Ainsworth
Traditional Christians often contend that “seeing is believing.” Seeing issued a head-faith. That
note dominated much of the 20 th Century church life – belief was correct cerebral faith.
Postmodern Christians will increasingly insist that seeing results in the practice of being
Christian.
–Robert Parham, Baptist Center for Ethics, newsletter
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
–Mary Oliver, quoted in Weavings, Vol XI, Nu. 6, p.7
It is what I was born for –
To look, to listen,
To lose myself inside this soft world –
To instruct myself
Over and over
In joy,
And acclamation.
–“Mindful,” Mary Oliver
The light shines in the dark. Who comprehends?
Some see the light and others cannot tell
Brightness from black, or noonday from the well
Of night. Unless the great Creator sends
Vision with eyesight, blindness never ends.
–“When the Christ Appears,” Edith Lovejoy Pierce, Christian Century, June 28, 1961, p.791

George Fox preached the Good News that we were all children of God and that, as children of
God, we had inherited powers from God. Each of us was given a measure of this power or light
and in accordance with how we used it, so more would be given to us. Jesus had possessed this
power or light, without measure so that he became the Light and the Light within is Jesus Christ.
–For more Quaker info, go to: http://www.quaker.org/friends.html
Writer Annie Dillard says when she was six or seven she’d take one of her precious pennies and
hide it for someone else to find. “I was greatly excited at the thought of the first passerby who
would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe.” She goes on to say,
“There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded
and strewn with pennies broadside from a generous hand.” Jesus was always saying “blessed are
those who have eyes to see and ears to hear” (Matthew 13.16).
The path of life’s highest knowledge and supreme enlightenment lies through the heart within us.
The more like God we become, the more of God we behold.
–Percy C. Ainsworth