"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.