Last week I wrote about prophets and their unique role in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Prophets are persons with a special connection to God and special understanding of God’s desires for the world. I emphasized the prophet’s work in calling people to change their ways, to be more in line with God’s will, in order to avert the disaster that results from straying from God’s intentions.
However, this is only half the story. As persons with special understanding about God’s character and desires for the world, prophets know better than anyone that God’s predominant interest is not punishment but salvation. Prophets do not only warn us of doom unless we act right. They also remind us that God loves us, that God is faithful to his Covenant promises, that God is working for the well-being of creation and its deliverance from the powers that threaten it. “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.” (Jeremiah 5-6a) It is up to the prophet to offer God’s word of hope and encouragement, every bit as much as it is to offer warning and correction.
Again, we can look to Jesus-as-prophet. Certainly, Jesus has that special connection to God and keen insight about the way people ought to live. Jesus was not above calling people to task, overturning the money-changers tables and prodding the religious authorities to attend to the “weightier matters of the Law: justice and mercy and faith.” But for most of us our prevailing impression of Jesus is one who came to offer hope; to calm storms and cure ailments and rid the world of injustice and oppression; to reach out to the poor and the lonely and the rejected; to confirm God’s promise of a better world.
Hear a sermon related to this post at http://revbob.podbean.com/2010/07/28/july-18-2010/
Showing posts with label Prophecy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prophecy. Show all posts
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Prophet; Part I
“Prophet” has a very particular meaning in Biblical, Judeo-Christian theology. We tend to think of prophets as predictors or forecasters or even “fortune tellers.” I like to differentiate prophets from mere predictors this way: prediction is about events that will inevitably come; prophecy is about where we are headed unless we change our ways. Prediction is about preparing for something to happen. Prophecy is about changing behavior so the worst does not happen.
A prophet is someone who
(1) analyzes the state of the world around us,
(2) compares how things are with how they should be,
(3) warns of what fate awaits if the current course continues, and
(4) urges the appropriate folks to change their ways.
An economist might be “prophetic.” The economist evaluates current business behaviors (how things are) against sound, established economic practice (how things should be). A prophetic economist might have said something like this 5 or 10 years ago: “This risky home-mortgage business will mean trouble. They are lending more than the homes are worth; they are lending more than the people can pay; they are avoiding accountability. If this keeps up, the economy is in for a collapse.” Such a “prophecy” might have helped change what was happening before it resulted in catastrophic collapse.
The Biblical prophet aims for the same kinds of things: to remind people how they ought to be faithful, because bad things tend to happen when we don’t live the way God intended. For a Jewish or Christian prophet, the “standard” or “measure” of how things should be is God’s will, revealed directly to the prophet or through the scriptures. In addition to being God’s son, Jesus was also considered a “prophet,” because he critiqued how things were and told us how they ought to be to conform with God’s reign.
Read a passage from a prophet named Amos (Amos 7.7-17), who lived almost 800 years before Jesus. Amos reminds us that prophets often tell people things they don’t want to hear. Whether we are listening to Amos or Jesus, we must learn to hear the prophet’s voice, to get past our initial resistance, and consider how we ought to change to be more faithful.
A prophet is someone who
(1) analyzes the state of the world around us,
(2) compares how things are with how they should be,
(3) warns of what fate awaits if the current course continues, and
(4) urges the appropriate folks to change their ways.
An economist might be “prophetic.” The economist evaluates current business behaviors (how things are) against sound, established economic practice (how things should be). A prophetic economist might have said something like this 5 or 10 years ago: “This risky home-mortgage business will mean trouble. They are lending more than the homes are worth; they are lending more than the people can pay; they are avoiding accountability. If this keeps up, the economy is in for a collapse.” Such a “prophecy” might have helped change what was happening before it resulted in catastrophic collapse.
The Biblical prophet aims for the same kinds of things: to remind people how they ought to be faithful, because bad things tend to happen when we don’t live the way God intended. For a Jewish or Christian prophet, the “standard” or “measure” of how things should be is God’s will, revealed directly to the prophet or through the scriptures. In addition to being God’s son, Jesus was also considered a “prophet,” because he critiqued how things were and told us how they ought to be to conform with God’s reign.
Read a passage from a prophet named Amos (Amos 7.7-17), who lived almost 800 years before Jesus. Amos reminds us that prophets often tell people things they don’t want to hear. Whether we are listening to Amos or Jesus, we must learn to hear the prophet’s voice, to get past our initial resistance, and consider how we ought to change to be more faithful.
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