ADVENT I A

Tell it Like it Is

“Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday.” 

― Joan Chittister OSB

Introduction

Prophecy has a bad rap in our day and age. When we think of people who prophesy we tend to think of the fortune teller type people.

Like that Fundamentalist guy down in the states who said the world was going to end a couple of years ago.

It didn’t. It never seems to. And so these people who tell us that they have heard God’s voice telling them the end is near tend to go down in history as being more or less crazy.

There were some famous people like this, Zarathustra and Nostradamus were two of the ones whose words seem to have survived… mostly because the conspiracy minded type people like to think that someone saw it coming…. In the year 2013 the moon will turn red… If someone wrote that in 1300 and it happens… it is a big deal.

The Mayan people prophesied that the world would end in 2012… so far we are still here.

The thing is… that is not Prophesy. That is, as I said, fortune telling. And it is almost always wrong, and mostly just a good guess if it right.

Prophecy is something else… it is hard core truth.

It is an inspired message. Sure, a lot of the time it is communicated as a message from the gods… But it is a message that cuts through to the core of the matter, that sees the world for what it is, and that wakes you up to possibility.

A true prophet does not say, the world will end some day. A true prophet says, look around, we are destroying the world.

For thousands of years we have come to see that prophets have risen up among the people trying to help them to see the truth right in front of them, trying to get them to see that things have to change, trying to get them to admit they need help.

To understand that baby born in a manger in Bethlehem, you have to understand this message. People who spoke for God spoke of someone needing to stand up and make a difference.

With the Kids

-          Preparing. How do you prepare your house for Christmas? What sorts of things do you do?

A Voice in the Wilderness

John the Baptist stood in the traditions of the prophets before him. Like Isaiah, Like Micah, Like Jeremiah, Like Ezekiel and all the rest John looked at the world before him and saw that it was not the way that God wanted it to be.

People had made religion into following rules. Romans were bringing a lot of foreign concepts and changing things. Life was hard an unfair.

And somehow, John saw that this was about to change. He knew that he was standing at the threshold of a different world.

See, here is what prophecy is. Think of it this way. Winston Churchill might have stood on the balcony one day and said to the gathered people, this will end in war. He did not make the war happen; he did predict it… he saw it coming.

We cannot be sure what John saw, but he saw it coming… a change. He knew someone was going to stand up and take over. He knew that the time was ripe for a new way of thinking. And so he was all about preparing, inspiring, and beginning to change the people.

The moment was right for a religious leader who would change everything.

God Will Save Us

You have read enough Psalms in church, you have heard passages like I read from Isaiah and Micah, what I am about to say will not surprise you. The overall prophetic message of Judaism for thousands of years was simple. Surely God will save us.

We are slaves in Egypt, The Babylonians have deported us, the crops have failed, God will save us.

When you read the Old Testament it is basically thousands and thousands of pages outlining a repeating pattern, we ignore God, we get in trouble, God steps in, we are saved, over and over and over….

We mess everything up and the flood happens so we can start over, we get trapped in Egypt and Moses comes along, we end up in a civil war and King David brings peace… This is the message of the Bible, the gospel truth, the good news… we mess up, God saves us.

Now, that is the simple answer… but it is not the real thing that is happening.

If we look a little deeper what the prophets are pointing out is far more complex: Here is the complex message that each of those Old Testament prophets, and even the New Testament ones like John… and even Jesus… preach:

The world is going to heck in a handbasket. Look around, things are not going well. And you know why? Because you have ignored the way you should live. You look to your own needs instead of the needs of others. You have become callous and self-centred… people have forgotten the basic ideas like generosity and love and compassion.

If things don’t change we will destroy ourselves.

You need to listen to the people that speak with God’s voice. You need to turn back to God’s way. You need to see that there are people right in front of you trying to show you the way. Listen to them and change your heart.

Martin Luther King Jr: On Vietnam

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate in to the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." 

The Prophetic Voice

 See what I am saying. That is a prophet. That is someone speaking for God. They are looking at the world around them and saying, this is not right, this is not the way God wants it to be. Something has to change. Someone needs to step in and make things right.

This is our tradition. And it is into this understanding of the world that Jesus entered.

Jesus came to be just that person, Jesus grew up and embraced God’s love and God’s way of seeing the world so completely that he showed us a completely different way to live.

He showed that it was possible in the midst of poverty to still be generous, that it was possibly in the middle of a cynical world we can still have hope, that in the middle of self centredness we can still care.

He changed the way we thought about life.

Conclusion

When we speak of waiting for Christmas, when we speak of preparing for Jesus, when we speak of Advent, this is where we begin. We begin with the prophets, we begin knowing that we too live in a world that is not what it should be, We begin hoping that something, that someone will come once more to help us change it.

That is what we are waiting for.

And that is what we believe that Jesus can do when he is born once more into our hearts at Christmas. 

Pentecost 5 - B

Writers note: the opening paragraphs are from another sermon I read and cannot find the source of - I used them as a jump off point.... secondly; as I read this I realize I went so far away from the written text in preaching this that it will be a 'new' sermon for those who read it compared to what they heard in church...

Welcoming a Prophet

Where is the transporter, the “beam me up Scottie” of Star Trek fame that can avoid congestion and CO2 emissions and move me from one place to another? Where are the brochures for holidays or moving to the moon on a colony in order to relief the pressure on the earth’s resources? In my childhood it was obvious such things were on their way; they were promised. Now it’s the 21st Century and still no transporters or possibility of moving to the moon in spite of all the wonderful technology around us that can be used for good or bad. I have to admit, I’m a bit disappointed.

Imagine how the folks in Nazareth felt when they heard that an anointed prophet, maybe even the messiah, was coming to town. They went to synagogue that morning with great anticipation that the “future is now”... but they were disappointed too.

When they looked up front they saw a common carpenter – not only that, he was a ‘home town boy’; Mary’s Son and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon; event he sisters still lived in town... everyone knew the whole family.

I think I would have been disappointed to. I would be expecting someone from away to come tell me the ultimate answer to all my questions.

Thus the saying that a prophet is not honoured in their home town.
There is a problem with prophets...

They often say things we don’t like to hear. They are too honest. They want us to change.

And we know they are right; that is the real problem; the prophets among us remind us of the values of God – the need for justice, the need for obedience, the reality of life, the emptiness of materialism. A prophet keeps going on about expecting great things and believing in God that the will of God may be realised.

You see, the prophet recognizes that the deep feelings tucked way down inside of you are true – the prophet recognizes the value of the spiritual promptings inside of you are what are most important to living the authentic life.

So they challenge and provoke us with what God desires and seeks; what God wants from us. A prophet is one who speaks by divine inspiration, one through whom God’s will is spoken. ‘This is what I desire. This is what may happen. This is how I, the Lord your God relate to you my beloved creation.’

The truth is that most of us are called to be a prophet at some point in our lives... how is that for a scary thought? How in touch are you with those deeper truths? Are you ready to risk anything for them? Could you walk the walk?

Jesus was a prophet who not only spoke the will of God, but lived it in his very person, by being willing to risk his very life for his belief in God’s way of living.
It is all too easy to assume we, in the church, respond well and eagerly to the prophets amongst us today. It is easy for us to assume we, in the church, are the prophetic voice of God now. Yet our gospel reading challenges us to think again – it is the people that know Jesus best who reject him outright.

Jesus knew his scriptures so he probably was not that surprised, he would remember that Ezekiel went through the same thing;

Ezekiel was called to be a prophet and this is what he was told, ‘Whether those rebels listen to you or not, they will know that a prophet has been among them’.

We must speak out God’s word, for we are sent by God, we can expect to be rejected and scorned, to be treated as a pain, but the truth of the message of God will still touch folk and they will know a prophet has been present. Shaking the dust from our feet we are to put time in with those who are responsive and put less energy and resources into those who are fixed and turned away from the call of God at this time.

This was true for many other prophets too; Hosea with the weakness of being married to a temple prostitute who was regularly unfaithful to him, Ezekiel whose visions were so pronounced that today we might well diagnose him as schizophrenic. For most of us seeking to speak out God’s message within the world we have a weakness, a thorn in the flesh, a hardship or two, which counterbalances the strength of inspiration by God and enables us to recognise the power of God, the love of God, the majesty of God over and around us. When we face difficulties this enables us to work and speak inspired by the Spirit of God rather than relying on our own strength.

Those who are prophets who speak out God’s will within the world are often rejected and experienced as a pain in the flesh to others, particularly those in leadership positions. Also prophets often experience a thorn in the flesh, a weakness which makes them aware that they can not speak in their own strength alone but must be fed and inspired by God. And thirdly prophets also often have an experience of the awesome nature of God, that overpowering transcendent overwhelming sense of the beauty and grandeur of God.

For Ezekiel at the point of his call he has a vision of the bronze person, shining with a bright light, reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. This dazzling light showed the presence of God. Isaiah had a vision in the Temple of flaming creatures, who cleansed his lips so he could speak God’s word. Paul had the experience of the Damascus Road, a blinding light of the presence of the Risen Christ. Jesus at his commissioning at his baptism experienced the affirmation of the Holy Spirit descending on him as a dove and a voice saying ‘This is my son with whom I am well pleased.’ Occasionally as we come to know what must be said and done as we follow God known in Jesus we too are overwhelmed and have a picture, a glimpse of the grandeur of God. It is part of the prophetic call to have an awareness and experience of the greatness of the one Holy God.

When we come to church, when we worship in garden, or hallowed space at home do we expect to encounter the Holy God? Are we awe-struck and overwhelmed by God’s glory?

Just occasionally we may be and when we are it will probably be a challenge to prophecy, to speak out to others what God would have us be and do. But in that call to prophecy there is potential rejection, and probably weakness. But God inspires it and is present within it.

I end with Gerard Manley Hopkins expression of it in his poem God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

This is the inspiration of prophets down the ages and is our inheritance today.

Amen.