Prophet-ting with God

 

We still want to make something or somebody a sacrifice so that the status quo can be maintained.  Richard Rohr

 

Who are we sacrificing today for the sake of the status quo?  This is a difficult, demanding question because it shines a light on an inconvenient truth that we benefit from the ways things are, even as we complain about it.  We can be offended because we don’t want to admit or accept that others hurt, so we can go about our lives.  How do we embody a paradox of saying we want change…we just want everyone else to go first?!?

The prophets ask difficult and demanding questions of our souls.  The prophets are so passionate that they can end up pushing us away with their endless calls to repent ~ which means to go a different direction.  Repentance isn’t about raining guilt, shame, and blame ~ repentance is to accept that we are accepted by God and that eternal affection transforms our lives. 

 

I can sacrifice rest at the altar of looking necessary and needed.

I can sacrifice clinging to savings accounts at the altar of fear that there is not enough.

I can sacrifice helping others at the altar of wanting to be seen as a good person.

I can sacrifice looking put together at the altar of other people’s opinions.

I can sacrifice wanting to say the “right” things at the altar of being considered acceptable.

I can sacrifice pushing myself at the altar of being considered productive.

 

Where are you sacrificing when God is calling you to rest and be in this moment?  May that question churn, challenge, and remind you that you are beloved not for any other reason than God’s claim on your life.  Amen.

 

Prophet-ting with God

 

Yesterday, we explored the idea of prophets being the masters of paradox, ones who hold the hurt and hope; the ones who can hear the heartbreak and taste the sweetness of honey, the ones who both comfort us and challenge us.  Prophets not only point out the brokenness but remind us of God, who repairs the ruptures of our Humpty Dumpty lives. 

 

Richard Rohr writes, “Throughout scripture, prophets emphasize one sin above the rest – idolatry, our habit of making things 'God’ that are not absolute, infinite, or good.” 

 

We tend to chase after that which promises us fame, fortune, followers on social, love, and legacy.  We race after purpose and profits.  Much of our idolatry, or brokenness, or disoriented love or sin, could also be called addiction.  We pour all our attention and affection into what the culture deems and declares worthy of our one wild and precious life.  Addiction is not only confined to alcohol or drugs.  Addiction to work, perfectionism, hurry/hustle, being seen as ‘correct’, our own opinions, making more money, vacations, or anything where you think, “Just one more _____ and I will be happy.”  Anything that keeps promising us fulfillment but leaves us feeling empty in our wallets and souls can be classified and called “addiction”. 

 

Prophets call our “addictions” out ~ individually and collectively.  No wonder most of the prophets failed to convince people to change.  After all, when was the last time you received “constructive feedback” and you thought, “Thank you so much, random person who I didn’t ask to give me advice, I am totally see the errors of my ways and will henceforth correct myself!”?

 

Nope.  I think, “Who appointed you color commentator of my life?”  Or in the words of my grandmother, “Who died and made you King of the World?”  We resist those who want to fix, or save, or advise us. 

 

Prophets not only call out, but they call us back to God.  That is the paradox: we can think we are heading toward the Holy, and the prophet says, “Not really,” and our first reaction and response will be denial and defensiveness, and downright anger at the other.

 

Hold this today as you continue to ponder, “Who is the prophet of life today?”  A prophet is rarely someone you will agree with 100% or who makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.  Prophets will stretch you in directions you did not want to go, and you will resist.  Hold this as we continue to live the countless paradoxes that exist and persist today.  Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

A hand was there, stretching out to me and holding a scroll…on it was written lamentations, weeping, and moaning – I opened my mouth; and ate the scroll it tasted sweet as honey – Ezekiel 2:9-10 and 3:2-3

 

Re-read the above quote from the Prophet Ezekiel, who you might remember is the one called and commissioned to preach to a valley of dried up, gnarly, gross graveyard of bones!  Talk about a tough crowd…and to think I get offended when people don’t laugh at my lame jokes on Sunday!  Before Ezekiel went to the Church of Dried-Up Souls, he had a vision of being given a piece of paper with words of heartbreak, hurt, and soul ache.  In other words, he was given the Boston Globe and the New York Times, and every political pundit out there was trying to capture and keep your attention!  All that cynicism and criticism you consume and consume your soul day after day, written down on a piece of paper.  Ezekiel not only brings this so close to his heart and ears that he can hear the voices of the immigrants and marginalized and the hatred that fuels the hearts of too many, but Ezekiel also eats this piece of paper. 

 

Why? 

 

Good question.  I don’t know.  Why do we keep returning to read the news each day?  Why do we keep our news station of choice in the background all day, blasting and blaring, re-wiring and rewriting our minds and souls?  Why do we think that somehow this informs us?  I know my grandparents drilled into me the importance of being an “informed” citizen, but we are drenched and drowning in information, and I am not sure our souls are breathing anymore.  Don’t hear me say that you can stick your head in the sand or fingers in your ears to sing, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” to the world.  Nope.  But neither do I think that hearing “experts” arguing about whatever the topic de jour is helping to make me a better citizen. 

 

Eziekiel hears this hurt and heartbreak and lets it enter his life.  And then, he eats the paper, and did you catch that it is sweet like honey to the tip of his tongue?  Wait, what?  How could hurt be sweet?  Shouldn’t the paper taste like a Carolina Reaper pepper?  Shouldn’t the scroll be sourer than rhubarb mixed with grapefruit? 

 

The prophets were masters of paradox.  A paradox is the ability to hold two conflicting and contradictory thoughts or ways of being at the same time without choosing.  An example of this is laughter at a funeral while you are crying tears of sadness.  An example of this is dropping your child off at school with your heart ready to burst with pride while feeling raw sadness that the summer chapter is ending.  A paradox is holding both the pain and the possibility of a moment.  Think about how we hold Good Friday and Easter Sunday as both being true.  There is a liminal in-betweenness of God who is not finished yet.  Where are there paradoxes in your life right now?  How might those tension points be what author Valarie Kaur describes as darkness as being both a tomb and womb ~ both an ending and beginning. May the paradoxes of this present moment open you to the Holy Movement of God who hovers and still dances on the tips of our tongues with hope sweet as honey.  Amen.

Prophet-ting with God

 

Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion, and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.”  Walter Bruggemann, The Prophetic Imagination.

 

The prophets walked the line between despair and delight.  The prophets held the tension between heartbreak and hope.  The prophets knew that they were in the liminal space of what is and what could be.  The prophets called for God’s dream not in the future, but as a way of life for you and me and we.  Bruggemann is correct that the prophets could both critique society and self, but also cling tightly to redemption and repair.  When we think about prophets, it isn’t only those who shout and scream, “Repent!”  Prophets laugh with joy that is contagious and connective.  We will be continuing with the prophets in the weeks to come.  We will continue to swim in the justice stream of God’s refreshing love.  This coming Sunday, we will listen to Micah call us to do justice, love, and humility.  I believe that justice, love, and humility are the threads that make the bands of God’s love Hosea will describe as well as the vision Habakkuk needs to write so a runner can read it.  Today, who or what or where gives you holy hope that you admit in the corners of your shy soul?  Where does God’s holy hope reside and rest in you?  How does God’s holy hope fuel and feed your life with God’s grace, we need right here and now.  Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

In this way, the prophets introduced a completely novel role into ancient religion: an officially licensed critic, a devil’s advocate who names and exposes their own group’s shadow side! Few cultures, if any, develop such a counterintuitive role. By nature, civilization is intent on success and building, and has little time for self-critique. We disparage the other team and work ceaselessly to prove loyalty to our own.  Richard Rohr

 

I often wonder today if what was once novel, being a prophet, has become so mainstream and is a role we too gladly accept?  I wonder if many people want to be the ones on the cutting edge, declaring “the word of God”, which conveniently aligns with that person’s perspective?   If you look at the prophets, many of them initially refused the role.  Like Moses, who said to God, “Go ask Aaron”.  Isaiah in chapter 6 says, “Um, God, have you read the paper, I would prefer not to do this!”  Jeremiah in chapter 1 says, “God, I am way too young.”  The prophets were always aware of their humanness (or humility).  And, if you look at the prophets, except Jonah, many of them did not convince anyone to change his/her/their minds! 

 

Wait…go back and re-read that last sentence.

 

By the standard of what humans have always called “success”, the prophets failed.  The people didn’t flock back to thank them for showing the error in their ways.  The people, except for Jonah, did not repent.  The people largely ignored the prophets as odd and exceedingly unusual.

 

This makes sense!  The prophets walked around naked (Isaiah); told the people and priests their worship made God sick (Micah); and bought real estate right before the Babylonians conquered and destroyed Jerusalem (Jeremiah). 

 

If some naked person came into our church and told us that what we were doing stunk to high heaven, we’d call the police!  If someone started to tell us that what we were doing was all wrong, which many people do to each of us, we tend to put our shields up and disengage.  Prophets were concerned about the present time and how no one, regardless of how you voted or how much you gave to the church or how many morning meditations you wrote, would win you God’s grace.  We don’t earn or deserve God’s love ~ that is what unconditional means.  And as grace saturates our lives, we can respond.  God initiates the relationship that changes our lives.  The prophets keep asking, What evidence is in your words, actions, and being that show you are connected to the Creator? The prophet is always aware and open to self-critique, which Rohr reminds us, many of us are not.  We want to be on the winning team, not the ones who have our blunders and brokenness pointed out to us. 

 

Prophets grounded in the present, trying to convince and convict the people of the ways we have missed the mark in our relationship with God, and call us back to another way of being, this remains a mission impossible task, insert that theme music here. 

 

Take a moment to ponder who might be calling you back to God right now?  Who speaks into your life with grace and love about your shadow side, and who does that culturally for us?  Who gets under your skin, but in your heart, you know has a point?  May these questions divinely disrupt and interrupt our tidy lives this day.  Amen.

Prophet-ting With God

 

Prophets were in collaboration with creation.  Isaiah and his peaceable kingdom, which tells of lions and lambs living together.  The whale in the tale of Jonah.  Amos splashing and swimming in the sacred river of justice.  Daniel looked into the eyes of a lion, gnashing its terrible teeth.  Ezekiel is out in creation, in a valley with gnarly and gross bones that he preaches to, which makes me wonder if I could do that?  Creation is not a side character in the prophets but a central actor in the redemption and reimagination of what might be.  Creation overflows with God’s wisdom, but we get too caught up in paving over paradise for our creaturely comforts.  We have stopped listening to creation as prophetically teaching and telling us our place in relationship to the Creator.  During our summer with the Psalms, I often invited you to go outside as you read the sentences and syllables so Creation could help the words sink/sing deeper into your imagination.  Reading about lush valleys is easier when the grass is tickling your toes. 

 

That was true not only in the Hebrew Hymnal, but also for the prophets.  Go outside to the trees that have weathered hurricanes, storms, seen election cycles come and go, as well as people so concerned about legacy that they forgot to live a life.  Go outside to the snakes and snails who are not wrapped up in whether their last social media post got enough likes.  Go outside to where the sun rises and sets each day with a rhythm.  Feel the light shining on the rhythm your choices are creating right now ~ liturgy (or the work of the people) is always about the patterns, both on Sunday mornings and in our lives.  The prophets called us out on how we live every day is an act of worship to God.  We are caught in a web of interconnected interdependence and inter-mutuality.  The prophets, with the psalmists, knew that the more we heard the trees and birds and clouds calling their wisdom, the closer we might be to hearing God’s voice once again.  God, who is still speaking but not through politics or preachers or pundits or prognosticators online, but right outside your window.  May God’s blessings go with you as you step into the sacred of creation with open hearts, ears, and lives.  Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

There was a deep need, then and now, for someone who would call the people to return to God and to justice. Someone who would warn them, critique them, and reveal God’s heart to them. We call them prophets, and every religion needs them.  For hundreds of pivotal years—starting around 1300 BCE and continuing through the eras of Israel’s kingdom, exile, and conquest—prophets like Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel performed this utterly important task. Besides being truth tellers, they were radical change agents, messengers of divine revelation, teachers of a moral alternative, and deconstructors of every prevailing order. Both Isaiah 21 and Ezekiel 3 (also Habakkuk 2) describe a prophet as a “sentry” or a “watcher,” whose job is to hold Israel maddeningly honest, and to stop them from relying on arms, money, lies, and power to keep themselves safe and in control.  Richard Rohr

 

Rohr reminds us that the prophets were deeply grounded in the present moment, to speak the truth in love (because if you are going to criticize and be cynical, your voice will be lost amid all the others with platforms, podcasts, and political pundits who do just that right now!).  Prophets call us back not to an idealized past (that probably never existed) or into some future utopia (that as humans we will always struggle to both create and sustain ~ see Genesis 3, the garden!).  Prophets seek to root us in the soil of the sacred.  The prophets point out that the rulers, money-makers, priests, and the powerful want to maintain the status quo.  The prophets say, God has always called us to another way, not just when it is conducive to our calendars, the conditions are correct or when someone else is elected, we are called to live God’s way every day.  This is difficult in good times and can be downright impossible in a time such as this. 

 

Who is helping you imagine what is possible to live as God’s beloved right now?

What gives you the strength to listen for God, rather than all the other voices that clamor for attention and allegiance? 

Given that the prophets were not just predicting the future, how does that open your sacred imagination to hear their words as an invitation for this day of August?

 

I pray you will continue to pay attention to God’s wisdom, not for some future day, but for right here and now to guide our living.  Amen.