Monday, December 5, 2016

Listening to the Prophets

"A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding, 
the spirit of counsel and might, 
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked."
--Isaiah 11:  1-4


"But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

'I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.'"
--Matthew 3: 7-12



When I lived in New York City I would sometimes see these folks standing on street corners or in parks, and they would usually have some kind of homemade sign with them that read something like, “Repent!” or "The end is nigh!"  I never really saw folks stop to speak to them, but even though they’re ramblings would often come off as gibberish I would think to myself, “That was a prophet!”

A NYC street preacher, or a prophet.  You decide.

Most of our modern depictions of prophets are of folks who can tell the future.  But that’s not really accurate.  The ancient prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist weren’t like Miss Cleo or the Psychic Friends network, or any of those folks you see on the infomercials at 1:00 in the morning on basic cable.  The prophets were less about predicting what was going to happen and more about speaking to what was actually happening.  They called God’s people to new repentance, called them back to remember who they were and whose they were, so that they may be the people God had made them to be. On the Second Sunday of Advent we were introduced to two such prophets—Isaiah and John the Baptist—who do just that. 

Speaking at a time when the people of Israel were under siege and about to be taken into captivity by the Babylonians, Isaiah sought to bring hope to the people who had begun to lose their faith in God.  Isaiah remembered the promise that God had made to David, most beloved of all of Israel’s kings.  God had said in the second book of the prophet Samuel that the throne of this son of Jesse would endure forever, that a member of David’s line would always sit upon the throne.  Unfortunately for the people of Israel, during the time of the writing of Isaiah they had no king, and their whole way of living was at risk of being annihilated at the hands of the Babylonians.  But wait, says Isaiah, there’s hope!  Remember how God promised a throne to David?  Well, even if there isn’t anyone seated on that throne now, there will be; after all, God said so.  Yes, a shoot will come up from Jesse, and an heir of that line will again come to throne of Israel.  And when that happens, oh what a glorious day it will be!  Wolves will lie with lambs, leopards with baby goats, and no one will hurt anyone ever again.  Dang!  Now that is a pretty picture.  At a time when religions came and went, when the faith of a conquered people usually died because it meant that their god had been defeated in some cosmic battle with the god of their oppressors, Isaiah gave the people of Israel hope.  Remember God’s promise, he said.  Remember God’s love for you. Therein lies your hope for the future.  And thanks to that promise of a Messiah, of an anointed savior, Israel’s faith in God lived on, even in the midst of exile.

The time of John the Baptist was similar to Isaiah.  It had been about 400 years since the last person had arisen as a prophet in Israel, and like Isaiah, John was preaching to a conquered people.  This time the oppressors were the Roman occupiers, and a lot of folks didn’t have much hope left.  Some of them, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, said that strict religious obedience was the only way to survive.  Others, though, turned to folks like John, who were calling the people to reexamine their lives, to turn away from the world and put all their hope in God.  Like Isaiah, John believed in the Messiah, in one who would come after him and bring hope back to the people.  John’s message was popular enough to garner a following, even among some of the elite, and it gave people the hope that one would, in fact, come and free them from their oppression.  And wouldn’t ya know it, he was right!

Neither Isaiah nor John just predicted the future.  They spoke to the present time, to the struggles people faced, to the ills of their society. They came off as gibberish to some, especially those in power, but they called people to look deep within themselves and find God’s love for them, God's hope, buried deep down.  When they found that hope they would be able to prepare the world for God’s anointed, for Messiah.  They never meant for the people to follow them, even though that sometimes happened; in fact, there is still a small sect of Jews called the Mandaens who believe that John is the chief prophet of Israel and that Jesus was a false one who just copied everything John did.  Isaiah and John did not want people to worship them, they just wanted people to listen, to just stop the waring madness of their lives and listen to God.  And if they’d just listen they’d remember.  They’d remember that God promised never to leave them, promised to empower them with divine love, and promised to break into the world once again and bring about the salvation of all.  The prophets are the ones who remind us of those promises. 

There are still prophets out there today calling us to have hope in God’s love and mercy.  In the last century prophets arose like Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, who stood in the midst of oppressive societies and called people to have hope.  Hope is so often in short supply, and heaven knows we need some here in our community after losing our dear Laura Lisk last week.  We need hope.  We need to remember that God does not abandon us, that God is still moving in our lives, and that God will once again break through history and save all of God’s creation.

I’m not going to be so bold as to say that we are all called to be prophets.  That’s just not true, if for no other reason than the fact that all of the prophets met their end by a violent death!  I’m not a prophet, and odds are neither are you.  But we can honor the prophets when we meet them.  We can listen to them, rather than kill them!  And we can all speak with that prophetic voice; not the voice that predicts that the end is nigh, but the voice that speaks of God’s mercy and love, and that is the voice that can give hope to this otherwise fearful world, even in times of exile, occupation, or heartache.

So may the legacy of the prophets be ours.  Isaiah, John, Martin, Mohandas, Laura.  All those who have shown us that, even in the worst of times, we can hold on to hope because God loves us.  May we speak with those same prophetic voices and prepare the way for hope to be born into our world once again.