THE OTHER SIDE OF BEING PROPHETIC

2nd Sunday in Advent - 4th December 2005

Kingdom Season 6  |  Year A  |  Proper 31 Track 1  |  Ordinary Time Week 36 (Year B)

Isaiah 40.1-11  |  2 Peter 3.8-15a  |  Mark 1.1-8 : To see the current week's readings, click here

Today, being the second Sunday in Advent, we are particularly concerned with the Prophets.

So what do we know about them.

Well, they were called. God didn’t actually put out an advertisement like the one shown here - he chose ...he selected.

And being called wasn’t like having a job interview.

Let’s take Isaiah, for example...

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple”.

 Can you imagine it, you’re minding your own business, going about your temple duties, when all of a sudden you see God. Isaiah was understandably taken aback he said

“Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

“Then one of the seraphs flew to [him] holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched [his] mouth with it”

Now that might have been a ceremonial cleansing but it sounds pretty gruesome to me.

THANKLESS TASKS

Perhaps it served as a warning that the task of a prophet could be a thankless one. Isaiah asked a pretty sensible question of his new employer.

“How long, O Lord?”

And the reply …

“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate.”

So now he knows.

It was a tough life. The great prophet Elijah himself laments:

“I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.”

Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern to be left to starve to death, he was rescued in time.

BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR

And bizarre behaviour was asked of them. Isaiah walked around Jerusalem naked and without shoes for three years. I’m not sure how long he’d have lasted in St Leonard’s. Hosea married a prostitute and gave his children names which mean “God sows”, “Not pitied” and “Not my people”. Ezekiel acts out the trauma of a city under siege. He shuts himself in his house, builds a model of the besieged city, lies only on his left side, cooks his bread over cow dung, and shaves himself with a sword. Later he walks round the city carrying a bundle of possessions such as a refugee might carry.

Prophets had a tough message to deliver. Remember Nathan confronting King David with his adultery. Jeremiah calling Israel a whore; Jonah being sent to Nineveh, the capital of the hated Assyrian empire.

PROPHECY IS NOT ALL IN THE FUTURE!

So what was that message? Now there is a common misconception that prophecy is all about telling what’s going to happen in the future, a bit like fortune-telling. There is a certain element of depicting the future, but by far the greater part of a prophet’s message concerned the present. A useful description of what a prophet actually does is to tell how God sees things. The aim is that people should see through God’s eyes.

So key themes are that Israel should return to the ways of the Lord, should stop worshipping the gods of the nations around her, should remain faithful to The Lord. But even more than this faithfulness in worship, there is a constant refrain of looking after the widow and the orphan and the stranger, and of doing justice to the poor. Exploitation by the wealthy and powerful is condemned as much as worshipping pagan idols.

The reading we heard from Isaiah is typical of the prophetic messages about the future. It reassures Israel that God still loves her, despite everything, and that her future is assured “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

LIVING PROPHECY

Although we think of prophecy as an Old Testament phenomena, today’s’ gospel reading reminds us that the New Testament also has things to say about prophecy. John the Baptist doesn’t only quote from the prophets, he lives like one of them. Called by God, he preaches a message of repentance, a return to the ways of the Lord. He even has a strange diet to go with it, locusts and honey were probably very nutritious.

And then of course there is Jesus himself. The Gospel writers depict him as being the fulfilment of prophecy. Luke describes how in the synagogue in Nazareth

“He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him…..”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”

Indeed many of the people among whom he worked acclaimed him as a prophet, and although we know him to be much more than a prophet none the less his ministry had a prophetic nature about it. His teaching shows us how God sees the world.

CHRISTIANS SHOULD ALSO BE PROPHETS

Saint Paul is quite clear that Christians should also be prophets. He writes

“Pursue love, strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy.”

We too are called to tell out how God sees things.

But in case that makes you anxious, after all I’ve not exactly painted a rosy picture of the lives of the prophets; let’s have a look at how we as a community here at St John’s are acting in a prophetic way.

• Well, we welcome anyone and everyone into our church. Male and female, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, married, single, partnered, separated, divorced. Of any church background or none, of any race or creed, from any part of the world. We aim to be a truly inclusive church. That’s prophetic.

• And we’re committed to being a fair-trade church, serving fair trade coffee and biscuits and providing fairly traded goods for sale. That’s prophetic.

• And we aim to give generously in our outward giving as a church and also by raising money for victims of the tsunami, for victims of the Pakistan earth-quake and by selling Traidcraft goods, filling shoe-boxes and supporting the Seaview Centre. That’s prophetic.

• And we are planning a Church Centre that will serve the whole community here in St Leonard’s. That’s prophetic.

• On Monday I attended the funeral of Iris Lockwood, a lady who was loved into the kingdom of heaven by the people of this church. That’s prophetic.

Now, don’t run away with the idea that we’ve got it all right, we are taking steps along the journey. Our aim must be to grow in love for one another as we grow ever more into the likeness of Christ and become more truly his body here on earth. That’s prophetic.
 

Penny Sayer
St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea