Heeding the Prophets
Nobody likes a prophet. Prophets do not come to tell us what we want to hear. They come to tell us what we otherwise would refuse to hear. They denounce our wealth in times of prosperity. The cry out against our strength in times of security. They point out our faithlessness in the midst of our most important religious celebrations. They are never the life of the party. No one is glad to see a prophet. The powers that be resist anyone who seeks to undermine their authority, so they turn against prophets will all their might, and those of us with access to that power join in.
As Fr. Chuck reminded us from the pulpit several times, prophets do not tell the future. They interpret the present through God’s eyes. When God looks at the world and how we live, what does God see? Prophets remind us of the ways in which the mistakes of today will unfold with consequences tomorrow. They describe how God’s judgment—God’s reordering and resetting of the world—inevitably comes.
In the biblical tradition, prophets are often sent by God to speak to a particular king, but their message is never reserved for just one person. They address systemic sins, which are identified and embodied by the actions of a wicked, faithless leader. Society’s neglect of the poor is not purely the result of the king’s neglect, but the king has led his people in a way that ignores the needs and the humanity of the marginalized. Prophets do not come to point out what you or I have done wrong. They come to name the ways that we together, along with those around us, have failed to reflect God’s intentions for society.
This Sunday is the Second Sunday of Advent. Every year on this Sunday, we hear John the Baptist, standing on the banks of the Jordan River, calling on sinners to repent. Distinct from the religious and political hierarchies of his day, the Baptizer was a prophet in the fullest sense. He lived and operated in the wilderness, dressed in strange clothing, ate peculiar foods, and preached a counter-cultural message. Although we do not hear the full content of his preaching, we can tell from the snippets that we get that his message of judgment was directed at the religious system of the temple and the political and societal implications of that system.
As sharp as his message was, John did more than decry the sins of the religious insiders. He invited the people to repent—to forsake the ways of those leaders, to seek personal and corporate renewal, and to commit themselves to a different path. He attracted a crowd not by preaching what they wanted to hear—a reassurance that all would be well—but by holding up the inevitability of God’s judgment and by inviting the people to align their lives with it. He offered them a glimpse of the world as God would have it, and he encouraged them to pursue it with urgency.
Nobody likes a prophet, but prophets show us the beauty of what our lives could be by showing us the ugliness that we would rather ignore. Because we are enmeshed with the culture that surrounds us, we need God’s help not only to amend our lives but even to hear what the prophets are proclaiming to us. As we pray in the collect for this Sunday, “Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.”
The prophets of today succeed not by leaving us stuck in guilt and shame but by revealing to us a world that is better that the one we know and by inviting us to seek God’s help in pursuing it. Getting there requires a tough and honest look at our lives and the ways in which we participate in societal sins through things “done and left undone.” No one wants to confront the reality of their failures, but, until we hear what the prophets are saying to us, we cannot embrace their vision of a world in which God’s reign is fully manifest. Until we welcome the sharpness of their truth, we cannot receive the coming of our Savior.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan