Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 28, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Do you think of yourselves as prophets? Probably not. I recall once saying in a sermon here that you’re not prophets and I’m not a prophet. Well, today I want to reconsider that statement. It seems I’ve changed my mind, or at least I’ve changed it to this extent: I have become convinced that whether we actually are prophets or not, we are all called to be prophets. You ane, and I am. Now that may seem an audacious statement to you, or worse. We’re just ordinary people, after all, and prophets are great people from long ago who could see into the future, or at least that’s who we tend to think the prophets were. I know I can’t see into the future, and I doubt that many of you think that you can either. Prophets are people like Jeremiah and Isaiah. Jesus was, among other things, a prophet, so where do I get off saying that you and I are called to be prophets? Well, I think our Scripture readings this morning help answer that question. They tell us a good deal about what it means to be a prophet.

Let’s start with Jeremiah. Most of the Hebrew prophets begin their story with a call vision, with a story of how God called them to be prophets. Our first reading today is in fact Jeremiah’s call vision. To be more technically correct it is Jeremiah’s call “audition,” since he talks about hearing things rather than seeing things, but never mind. Jeremiah here claims that “the word of the Lord came to me, saying….” He heard God calling him, saying that God has made him a prophet; but a prophet isn’t just something that God has turned him into, it is what God appointed him to be from before his birth, or so God says.

Hearing this voice of God seems to be the first time Jeremiah has had any clue that he is in fact a prophet, and he reacts the way almost every person has reacted when he or she first perceived a call to be a prophet of God. His reaction was, in effect: “You’ve got to be kidding!” Maybe you remember Bill Cosby having great fun with this reaction of people to a call from God with his spoof of Noah: “Right! What’s an ark?” Jeremiah gives his response here only as: “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” Jeremiah 1:6 NRSV My guess is that that’s an understatement of what Jeremiah’s response really was, but the point is made. Jeremiah tried to get out of his call to a prophet. He plead his youth. He plead his inability to speak. He was saying, in effect, I’m just an ordinary guy of no particular ability. Surely I can’t be a prophet of God Most High!

But that’s just the point. God’s prophets are just ordinary people like you and me. Surely they can’t believe that they’re called to be prophets. In fact people often have trouble accepting them as prophets, as we see in our reading from Luke. There Jesus is being a prophet. As we saw last week, he has identified himself with Isaiah, a much earlier prophet, earlier even than Jeremiah, who was called to bring good news to the poor and proclaim release to the captives. And the people in Jesus’ home town can’t believe it. They say: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Luke 4:22 NRSV In other words: He can’t be a prophet. He’s just this guy we saw running around here a few years ago as a snot-nosed kid. We know his father. He’s just a guy, a carpenter, a regular Joe just like us. But again, that’s just the point. Prophets, even prophets who are God Incarnate (which is certainly not a claim I’m making for you or me) are, or at least start out as, regular people. And most of them—not Jesus perhaps but most of them—have real trouble accepting the fact that a regular person like them could be a prophet.

God, however, knows better. God never lets a prophet off the hook with a plea that I’m just an ordinary person, that I have no skills, that I can’t do it. God just chuckles and says: “They all say that. Even that guy Moses tried to get out of it with his whining “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:11 And his sniveling “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent…; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”” Exodus 3:10 NRSV

And God will have none of it. You see, when God calls someone to be a prophet and sends them off on their prophetic task God doesn’t make them rely on their own abilities alone. God goes with them. God said to Moses: “Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” Exodus 4:12. In Moses’ case God even sent Aaron along to help out. In Jeremiah’s case God promises to go with him saying “Do not be afraid…, for I am with you to deliver you.” God sends the prophet, then promises to go too so that the prophet is never alone.

We see the same thing, albeit perhaps a bit obliquely, in Luke’s story of the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth. There the people got so mad at this carpenter’s son claiming to be a prophet, and at what he was saying to them, that they grabbed him and tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff. That story ends with Luke’s enigmatic statement: “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” Luke 4:30 NRSV I’ve always found that statement puzzling. How did he pass through the midst of them? I mean, he’s got this whole crowd furious at him. Presumably they didn’t invite him for a friendly stroll to the edge of the cliff so they could throw him off. Surely they grabbed him by force and dragged him along, perhaps resisting, although Jesus doesn’t normally resist much. How did he get away? Luke doesn’t say, but Luke’s leaving it unclear makes the point, I think, that his escape is the work of God. Actually I think Luke here may be foreshadowing the Resurrection, but in any event God saves God’s prophet Jesus. Luke makes the point that God did not send Jesus alone to be a prophet but was with him every step of the way. God is always with the prophets every step of the way.

So, are we called to be prophets? Our Scripture readings this morning, and the story of Moses that I’ve added to those readings in this sermon, teach us that we can’t dismiss the question out of hand just because we’re ordinary people of no remarkable abilities. Prophets are always ordinary people of no remarkable abilities, or at least initially they perceive themselves that way. They are people that God calls out of their ordinary lives to bring God’s word to the world and specifically to those in power in the world. God sent Moses to Pharaoh to say: Let my people go. God sent Jeremiah to the nations, we’re told, to “speak whatever I command you.” In our story from Luke last Sunday and today Jesus says that he has been sent to bring good news and to “proclaim.” Prophets are ordinary people who are sent with a word from God, most commonly, as with Moses and Jesus, a word of liberation.

And isn’t that what we’re already doing? Aren’t we the ones in this community who are already proclaiming God’s liberating word? Are we not proclaiming a liberated and liberating Christianity to a community in which Christianity is most often seen as rule-bound and judgmental? Are we not proclaiming a Christianity that frees the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—to a community in which Christianity is most often seen as denying the fruits of the human mind and denying the goodness of the body and of the physical world in general? The fact of the matter is that we are already being prophets in this place. Last week I told you that we are the only ones here who can say no to bad religion. Another way to say that is that we are the ones called to be prophets.

Is that claim hopelessly arrogant? We can’t be positive that it isn’t. Are we on a Quixotic quest of our own invention, as many in this town would probably claim? Again, certainty is not given to us; but on this one I really don’t think so. Last Friday Jane and I were at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Woodinville. That store, aimed at a broad, popular market and hardly at a theologically trained elite, has a small section on Christianity; and that small section is full of books that preach the kind of liberated and liberating Christianity that we preach here. On that one trip Jane and I bought books with the titles The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted; and Why The Christian Right is Wrong: A Minister’s Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future; and Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, transforming it, that is, pretty much in the direction of progressive Christianity. We could have bought many more similar books, and we probably would have were economic realities not what they are. We spent more money than we should have anyway. One we didn’t buy is a collection of essays by people like Marcus Borg with the title Emerging Christianity, or something like that.

And that is precisely my point. There is an emerging Christianity in this country that is seeking to rescue Christianity from the dead end in which so often seems to find itself today, and we are part of that movement. We are called to be prophets of that movement here in Sky Valley. And we can’t get out of it by saying we’re just ordinary people. Of course we are. Prophets always are. We can’t say we don’t know how. Moses didn’t either, and look what he did. We are called to be prophets. We are called to go to the people with God’s word of love and grace for all. We are called to go to the people with God’s word of justice and peace for all. And we know that when we do God will go with us. God went with Moses, and Jeremiah, and Jesus, and God will go with us too. Our call may be more modest than theirs, but it is still a prophetic call. We are called to be prophets. Let’s get on with it. Amen.