The Idolatry of Human Power

Amos 7:1-17; Ephesians 1:3-14

Human beings idolize power. We look up to people in high elected office. We envy bank presidents. We admire university chancellors. We hang on the words of great orators. We celebrate the accomplishments of surgeons and architects. We are awestruck by the creativity of artists, musicians and writers. We cheer great athletes.

For all our love of power – intellectual, physical, creative, inspirational – we hate power. We think that many politicians are more interested in themselves than in the country. We see bank presidents greedily perpetuating unjust economic mechanisms that feather the nests of the 1% to the detriment everyone else. University officials appear to be more interested in rankings and endowments than in individual students. Oratory is too often empty. Doctors and engineers are unapproachable. Much of creativity is beyond our understanding. Athletes too often are overpaid, immature brats.

These love and hates are generalizations over-limned for emphasis. Yet the kernel of truth underneath the extremes is that power is the object of both love and hate. Anyone wielding power may have very necessary skills, including vision, wisdom, and charisma, nevertheless they become lightning rods for all our dissatisfaction, anger, gullibility, frustration, and disillusionment.

Yet for all that we idolize human power.

The prophetic work of Amos takes place during the time following the dissolution of Israel following the end of the reign of Solomon, David’s son. The charismatic bonds of the house of David no longer held and the twelve tribes, experiencing uneven leadership, broke apart. While Judah was a viable nation, the remaining tribes loosely formed the Northern Kingdom, commonly called Israel. Both nations drifted from the spiritual roots of the Exodus, the nation building wilderness sojourn, and the kingdom building under Saul, David, and Solomon. In fact, the moral level of the people, following the example of most of the kings, reached the level of everyone doing what was right in their own thinking.

In the reading from the prophet Amos, we have three visions and two meetings. The visions from God which Amos saw were visions of judgment. Following the first two visions, the locusts and the fire, the prophet pleaded for Israel, asking, “How can Jacob survive” He is so small?” The Lord God relented.

Then comes the vision of the plumb line. While the judging of the previous visions have been general and unquantified, the plumb line of the vision shows how off the mark the nation has gone. King Jereboam and the people have deviated too far. His kingship will be annulled and his royal line destroyed.

The plumb line is a very accessible image showing that the people are not measuring up to God’s expectations. So God’s judgment will be brought down upon the proudest accomplishments of the kingdom. “The shrines of Isaac will be made desolate and the holy places of Israel will be laid waste.”

The word of the Lord which Amos delivers is that all our greatest achievements, all the things that we hold up as our crowning human glory, the things that we puff ourselves up about, the signs and symbols of how great we are in our own eyes – all these things are temporary. If God were to choose to do so, they all could be swept away in the blink of an eye. To use an image that Jesus used, they are grass that blooms at dawn and withers at dusk.

Amaziah, the head priest, heard about the words that Amos was speaking. He reported to King Jereboam that Amos was plotting against the king, that the king will die by the sword, and that Israel will be forced out of its land.

We can understand where Amaziah was coming from. He and the king were the two most powerful people in the nation. The priest’s response is both personal and public. Imagine how each of us might respond if someone came to Waverly declaring that God was going to tear down this church, the museum, the municipal building, the court house, and the country building, and then would go on to kill the mayor, the village council, the county commissioners, and other office holders. We would respond as Amaziah did.

Amaziah works from his power base. He immediately tells the king, and then, whether on orders of the king, or on his own authority, he confronts Amos. After all, he didn’t get to be the head priest by being a wallflower. He knows how to use his position. Coming on with full bravado, he shows just how big he is. He tries to banish Amos by sending him packing back across the border with Judah to speak his treasonous words there.

Were you paying close attention to Amaziah’s two conversations? Never once does he mention God. When threatened by Amos’ words he runs not to the sanctuary to pray but to the king to tattle. When he talks about the sanctuary at Bethel he calls it the king’s holy place.

Do you remember how Bethel got it’s name? Way back in Genesis, Jacob named the place where he slept and dreamed of God’s messengers ascending and descending a raised staircase. Then he saw the Lord standing on it promising to give the land on which Jacob was lying to his descendants who will be come as innumerable as the dust of the earth. Jacob awoke and knew that the place here he lay was an awesome, sacred place. “It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven” (Genesis 28:17), which is what the name “Bethel” means.

The descendants of Jacob were indeed living on the land that Jacob was promised, a land flowing with milk and honey as Moses had been promised. All that abundance had led God’s people to the point that they failed to recognize the presence of God. God’s house had become the king’s house, a human being’s house. The abundance of blessings had distracted the people from the God who provided them.

Amos refuses to be labeled as a professional prophet. He is a shepherd and a trimmer of sycamore trees. Amaziah’s order for him to leave Bethel is countermanded by God’s order to Amos to go to Bethel. As Amos stands before Amaziah and all his supposed power and might, Amos may well be realizing just how small the priest really is in the eyes of God.

We are small. We huff and puff, we billow our egos, but we are small. We allow the perceptions of our power and privilege to cripple our relationship with God. We look at what we have earned and bought and built and we fairly break our arms patting ourselves on our backs. We believe that it all belongs to us. We forget that the blessings that we have are “according to [God’s] goodwill and plan and to honor his glorious grace that he has given to us freely through the Son whom he loves” (Ephesians 1:7-8).

When we deny our smallness, we make ourselves into our own creator. When we take on that role, we cannot hear God’s word of judgment, repentance, and forgiveness for our lives. We cannot hear the words of Jesus, just as the Pharisees, Sadducees, teachers of the law and elders could not see God’s grace in the actions of Jesus or hear God’s words of grace in Jesus’ words.

When we carelessly or intentionally accord ultimate authority and power to human institutions we have broken relationship with God and have entered into idolatry. We live a falsehood. When we believe that we can control the activity of God, indeed God’s very will, through the institution of the church or through the auspices of positions within the church set aside for particular ministries and service, we deny the abundance of God’s grace and mercy lavished so greatly in Christ. God will do what God wills to do, through us or in spite of us.

We cannot save ourselves. That is why we again and again come to this table which is hosted by Christ, the Lord, the giver of mercy, who though he was rich, though he was the Son of the Father, gave up all that in order to become powerless and small that we might receive the greatness, the power, and the glory of God’s love in our lives. This table reminds us that God will be active in ways that do not match human ways. God’s power and glory are nothing like the power and glory we human beings we conceive. And for that we may be eternally grateful.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

General Resource: Douglas T. King, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year B, vol. 3, pp. 219-223. 
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.