Given at the Lynnville (IL) UMC on July 11, 2004. The Scripture is from The Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verses 25-37…
Most of you probably remember that I started working early-on as a heavy-equipment operator. And one of the machines that I did some training on was an early CMI machine. These machines were designed to finish both lanes of a highway in one pass.
The dirt machine, which is what I was on, had an auger that ran full width across both lanes and ‘ground’ the dirt of the road bed to within a few hundredths of an inch of spec, leaving the excess in windrows on the outside edges. After the rock base was put down, packed and leveled, the concrete machines would begin their work. These consisted of one that took the thick concrete from the dump trucks and poured it in a slab across the prepared surface, while the next machine power-troweled it into the proper shape and size, including the 2” crown in the center. The following machines would set the reinforcing-rod panels in place, drag a rough pattern into the top of the slab, and spray a conditioner over all of it to slow the curing time… the longer concrete takes to cure, or dry, the harder it is.
Many of you have seen the descendants of these machines at work out here on the new highway, and while many things have changed, there is still one thing that all of them need… some kind of guide that ties them into their relative position with the earth! The newer ones, I’m sure, use lasers, and very possibly GPS systems… I don’t really know, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised! However, in my day, this was accomplished by running a string-line along each side of the road and using sensors set-up against it to guide and level each side of those huge powerhouse machines! That meant that there was a lot of pressure on the surveyors who had to sight and install that string-line for the machines to follow!
Some of you may have recognized the stand that I use for the projector as the tripod for a surveyor’s transit. The transit, of course, attaches to it and you then use the legs and leveling screws on the transit itself to get the instrument absolutely level to the earth in all directions. If all you are doing is checking grades, that’s really about all you need… a grade that you will call ‘0’, and a way to measure how far away you are and how much the ground goes up and down. However, if you are laying out a road or a wall, you really need some kind of location to start from. That’s where the plumb bob comes in… the plumb bob attaches to the exact center of the transit and hangs down beneath it. You then center it directly over a known point. Since the bob points to the direct center of the earth, your transit is then in the exact location indicated on your map, and you can measure and level and grade from that point with complete accuracy!
Amos 7: 7-17 tells of Amos seeing God, in a vision, standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb. This meant that the wall was set straight to the earth and in a straight line along it. My commentaries note that this wall was Israel, and that God Himself was checking how true it was… He had the plumb bob in His hand… and it was found wanting! The ‘wall’ that was Israel had become crooked and bowed, and God was telling them that He had had enough of it and was about to tear it down and build anew.
In today’s Gospel verses, we find another telling of the Two Commandments given us by Christ… and the story is one that we should all know! Let me read it again…
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
“Who is my neighbor?” In your bulletins is a copy from the Life Application Commentary that attempts to answer that question. You will note that each example begins with a statement of faith… and each then becomes an ‘if/then’ statement. Let me read just a couple…
Faith in God
“…now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other just as I have loved you…”
Love for neighbor
“…you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
(John 13:34-35)
Faith
“We have heard that you trust in Christ Jesus…”
Love
“…and that you love all of God’s people.”
(Col 1:4-5)
Faith
“Dear friends, since God loved us that much…”
Love
“…we surely ought to love each other.”
(1 John 4:11)
Again, each item begins with a statement of faith… in other words, each statement says that if we have true faith in the Lord… we will love our neighbors… and our neighbors are everyone!
But all of this begs the question… what exactly does it mean to ‘love my neighbor?’ Jesus’ answer is what we now call the Story of the Good Samaritan. I’m sure that I don’t need to repeat it this morning… we all probably know it by heart, and if not it is a very simple read. The gist of it is that the two who thought of themselves as being ‘God-like’… a priest and a Levite, the tribe from which all priests came from… pointedly avoided the person needing help.
Now, as The Life Application Commentary points out, “Jews and Samaritans hated each other deeply. The Jews saw themselves as pure descendants of Abraham, while they saw the Samaritans as half-breeds because they descended from Jews from the northern kingdom who had intermarried with other peoples after Israel’s exile. Jews hated Samaritans, so when Jesus introduced this Samaritan man into the story, the Jewish listeners would not have expected him to help a Jewish man… But in great detail, Jesus described all that the Samaritan did for this man. He took pity, bandaged his wounds (perhaps with strips of cloth from his own clothing), put the man on his own donkey (meaning that he had to walk), took him to an inn and took care of him. The wine would have been used as a disinfectant and the oil as a soothing lotion. Apparently this Samaritan understood what it meant to help someone in need, to be a neighbor, regardless of racial tensions.”
This story, then, becomes a sort of guide for us to judge our own actions… it becomes our ‘plumb bob’, if you will, for judging how straight and true our own lives are compared to what Jesus intends for them to be!
There used to be a road in Alton that I just hated to drive my pickup on… the pavement rises and falls at just the same distance as the two axles on my truck, and at 50 MPH it feels like a rocking horse. Due to the age of the road, I had always assumed that it was probably pored with a set of those early CMI machines, and that the operator was just unfamiliar with how to set it. You see, those sensors that I told you about that follow the string-line have a sensitivity setting on them. Ideally, these would be set to allow the barest possible movement before activating the machine’s leveling system up or down without causing it to ‘hic-up’ up-and-down continuously. I have always assumed that whomever set that one up did not know how to set that sensitivity control… hence the machine would slowly move up or down over a space of some feet before the control would activate and bring it back into line… resulting in a washboard effect… in this case, every ten feet!
The same idea can hold true for us! Jesus has given us the tools we need to follow His path… and He has set that path straight and true! But if we fail to use those tools correctly… if we don’t set them right… or maybe even just not realize we need them… we fail to follow the course He has so carefully laid out! Have you ever had to wait in line someplace that has those rope barriers? Have you ever watched as kids and/or people have leaned against them and ‘bent’ or moved them out of shape… not exactly a straight line, is it? That is what happens to the path of our lives if we fail to use the tools that God gave us to follow His true and straight string-line!
Now, everybody who has ever used a tool knows that there is a right and a wrong way to use it… you don’t use a screwdriver to pry with… you don’t, do you?… you don’t beat on something with a wrench… and you don’t use a hammer to change a light bulb! But at some point, each of us had to be taught these things… we had to learn them… and the more complicated the tool, the more training that’s required! So, where do we get the training to use the tools that God has given us… where do we learn how to recognize them and get the most out of each one? Where do you think?
From the instruction book of God… your Bible! Again I tell you, everything you ever need to know about life and how to live it is in there! Read it! Know it! Understand it! Only then will you be able to follow the course that Christ has laid out so carefully for each of us!
scluebbert 