The plaque read, "All who pass by remember with shame the many thousands of people who lived for generations in district six and other parts of this city, and were forced by law to leave their homes because of the colour of their skins. Father, Forgive Us. ." Yet in South Africa, under apartheid, the land could not bear the load of this simple message of remembrance and confession.

For over fifty years the institution of apartheid laws separated the peoples of South Africa in mind, body and spirit. These oppressive measures ensured the comfort of the few at the greater expense of the needs of the many. In 1971 this "plaque of conscience" was the first monument of its kind, placed in a Methodist church by a racially mixed congregation and their parish minister and local prophetic voice, Peter Storey. When the governing authorities tore it from the wall of the church it was replaced because the higher authority governed that space. And this space demands truthful confession.

We need prophets to remind us of the difference between building an empire and building an altar. Unlike those "1-800 charlatans" who forecast "fortune cookie" fantasies. Prophets, true prophets, are inspectors of the kingdom of God, checking its internal structures for corruption from within and clearly defining its boundaries from encroaching on earthly kingdoms that seek to enter its domain.

When the Church in the sixteenth century taxed salvation by selling out purgatory for the profits a renovation campaign, it was the prophetic voice of an Augustinian monk named Luther who voiced a faithful critique of the Church's indulgences. When the established church in Germany underwrote the plans of Hitler's Nazi regime, it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who rejected this adulterous union and founded the underground "Confessing Church." When Southern ministers of all kinds refused to read the racist writing on the wall, it was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote, "Religious people should not be the servant of the state nor the master of the state, but the conscience of the state."

The faithful actions of South African churches echoed the call for conscience uttered by the prophets of the biblical witness. Modern prophets, like Bishop Storey and Desmond Tutu, led the way in building communities bonded and insured by the gospel standard of "equality for all."

For the prophet Amos, it was during a visit to the northern kingdom that he first witnessed the shoddy foundation of their community: opulence floating on poverty. It was a time of relative success. This short- lived state was sustained briefly by the overextensions of Israel's neighboring bullies. This was, for the first time in a long time, a secure time.

This recent respite from life as a vassal territory led the Northern Kingdom up the primrose path of elitism. Their newfound success created two classes within Israelite society . the haves and the have nots. Freedom that began as a serendipitous blessing for all the people became an ordered scheme to maintain privilege by any means necessary.

Into this system of oppression enters Amos, an agricultural businessman from the Southern kingdom of Judah. With the big-picture vision of an outsider, Amos cannot believe what he has seen: a class whose privilege was financed by the lives of the poor masses and a community of faith . a willing accomplice to it all. Compared to the plumb line of God, this community stood slanted ... its blessings shared only by the most wealthy and work borne by the most destitute.

Lamax Thompson was a master craftsman whose skill made him a regular fixture for choir productions, Vacation Bible School preparation and the occasional renovation of the pastor's office. Right now, it was grace that Lamax measured, in no small amount, as he took yet another opportunity to turn his 16-year-old summer assistant's mistake into a teachable moment.

And I knew it was coming . he picked up a 2X4 and held it up to his sightline. Grinning, he just took off his glasses, wiped his brow and shook his head. And with that sweet-yet-sour South Georgia twang, he added, Contrary to popular belief, Mr. Hall, wood does not appear from a factory perfectly square and plumb. We have some work to do if we are going to keep the "dry-wallers" from profaning your name tonight.

I learned my lesson that night about the relative nature of straightness. If we hadn't taken the time to correct this, then everything attached to that wall would have to have been adjusted to its slant.

Lamax taught me that crooked wood . does not a straight wall make." Amos teaches us that crooked ways do not make straight the way of the Lord. We must carefully measure our way in the world, adjusting our assumptions to ensure that they are plumb straight with the way of Jesus.

Amos took his message of social equality and faithful worship into the center of the political and religious life of the territory, challenging their most basic assumptions about how their lives fit together. How can it be, asked Amos, that your kingdom is so religious and your religion so much a part of the kingdom, and still there is such injustice?

The response of the High Priest Amaziah was less than receptive. "Go home . do not prophesy here; this is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom." For the high priest, the wall of the temple was a load-bearing wall for the weight of the earthly kingdom of Jereboam, merely an outpost to reinforce the will of his regime.

But we as Christians must bear the burden of answering the question: whose coming kingdom are we praying for anyway? If the church is to be a present witness to the coming kingdom of God, then we must accept our dual citizenship, living in and among all nations as resident aliens, citizens of the coming Kingdom of God.

Well, here is the rest of the story on Bishop Storey; he found that most white South Africans lived in a bubble. They continued to be fine, upstanding, church-going citizens, unaware of the individual role they played in the larger systems of oppression. Storey explains, We could live these "good" lives because we'd become experts at letting our institutions do our sinning for us.

The awakening spread as white South Africans stopped looking for easy answers to their social problems and asked prophetic questions: "What does it mean to be a Christian and white in South Africa?" or "What does is mean to be a Christian and black in South Africa?" Apartheid ended when white South African Christians began to view themselves as citizens with a higher authority, more "Christian" than "white" or South African.

Not that we are practicing some nefarious form of apartheid . but the prophetic question poses itself to us as well in the realm of American Christianity. What does it mean to be a Christian and an American? As Christians, do we have the prophetic vision to see the weaknesses of our country as well as our strengths? [See also Storey]

As Amos, an outsider, provided his brothers and sisters of the Northern Kingdom with a needed perspective on how their culture was viewed from the outside, let us hear with receptive hearts and repentive spirits what Bishop Storey, an outsider, now among us, has to share with his brothers and sisters in North America.

His words: "Looking on all of this, the outsider says, "This is an amazing culture and an astounding nation but it's all in a bubble . floating on a sea of poverty and want, called the "developing world." It is a culture that needs to feed an ever more hungry life-style with more and more of the planet's resources; it relies on more and more of the people from beyond the bubble to mine and process and manufacture its needs. This culture has spread to every corner of the globe, so that you are known by everybody on this planet, who you don't need to know, in places you don't have to learn about; you tolerate large numbers of outsiders for menial work inside the bubble so long as they agree to be invisible and to go home outside the bubble when they are no longer needed; holding the expectation that the affairs of the outside world will always be ordered in ways that serve the interest of insiders. . [Storey, Peter. "Rules of Social Engagement: Faithful Congregations in a Dangereous World." For excerpts see Divinity magazine, Duke University, Spring 2004]

Our first response might be like that of the high priest to Amos: Go home! To many of us, all of this, just, sounds too political and not very patriotic for a Sunday morning. For Bishop Storey though, it is the "higher patriotism" built in the heart that says, "I love my country. I love it so much that I am determined it will do what God wants it to do, and it will be a servant to the world." Whether your party is left, right, green or libertarian, all Christians bear a responsibility to measure their political systems by the rule of God's love

A group of American interfaith ministers have found that highest form of patriotism. Their purpose is not to convince but to convict all persons of faith to live true to their moral values in the public square

Through an online community, Faithful America.org facilitates an ongoing conversation committed to our country's founding values and the practices of social justice; they seek to practice and promote respectful, sincere political and religious debate that looks for truth on all sides: seeking a common good and challenging themselves to live up to the values we proclaim as religious Americans and be honest when we do not.

Moved by the Iraqi prison abuse, they created a 21^st-century "plaque of conscience" by running this commercial, read by American clergy, on Arab television: Peace be with you. As Americans of faith, we express our deep sorrow at abuses committed in Iraqi prisons. We stand in solidarity with all those in Iraq and everywhere who demand justice and human dignity. We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs. This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans." [www.faithfulamerica.org]

Living lives that promote justice begins when we construct our own plaques of conscience. Our very lives should be visible signs of the coming Kingdom of God: when we begin feeding the poor instead of hording resources for ourselves, when we choose to walk simpler lives instead of running a race to the finish, when we begin to teach others instead of just entertaining ourselves, and when we allow our love to overpower our fear even toward our enemies. It begins when we refuse to pray selfishly but acknowledge God's will and way in the world, praying as Our Lord has taught us:

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and power and the glory forever. Amen.