A Prophet Among Them
by Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9) - July 6, 2003
- Ezekiel 2:1-7
- Psalm 123
- 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
- Mark 6:1-6
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Knowing I was going to open this Sunday's sermon with that sentence of invocation, like I do every time I preach, I was toying with the idea of turning around at this point, going back to my seat, and seeing how many of you will get the point of my action. Linda, my bride, accuses me of often being obscure, and in this case I think she would probably be right. But sitting down now would graphically make one of the points I'm trying to make this morning.
This Sunday's Old Testament and Gospel readings are about prophecy, and the nature of prophets, and to a certain degree, the reward for prophesying. To be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure what the lesson from Second Corinthians is about, so we'll leave Paul for another time and another preacher.
What is a prophet? In this age of Sister Cleo, that guy who supposedly talks to dead people, and the Psychic Friends Hotline, we sometimes make the mistake of equating prophets and prophecy with soothsayers, and fortunetellers. But prophecy is not necessarily predicting coming events. Prophecy, in its strictest definition, is giving a message from God to God's people. Therefore, a prophet is someone who relates a message from God to God's people. In our Old Testament reading, Ezekiel recounts his call to be a prophet to the people of Israel. God says to him, "I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God.'
So every time preachers get in front of congregations and open their sermon with, "In the name of God," or with a prayer for the presence of God, or for God to direct our thoughts and words, they really believe that they are delivering messages from God to God's people. Hence, my temptation to sit down early on.
Keeping in mind that broad definition of prophecy, there are a number of ways in which deacons, priests, and bishops act as prophets. Reading the gospel, preaching the gospel -- these are prophetic roles. Deacons in particular -- Linda, Michael and I -- are charged at ordination to protect the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely, and to insure that in our zeal to continue the existence of the corporate body of our Church, we don't forget to be the Body of Christ to the world around us.
In fulfilling our diaconal role of interpreting the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world to the Church, deacons often become burs under the Church's saddle, or "thorns in the flesh," though hopefully we are not messengers of Satan, as Paul seemed to think his was. See, I did manage to work Paul into this after all. It is a deacon's role to comfort the afflicted, but deacons are also called to afflict the comfortable. And we occasionally reap the rewards of being prophets.
For several years I led a workshop in my former diocese on the "Spirituality of the Diaconate". And every summer I introduced our discussion about a deacon's responsibility to be a prophet to the Church, by having the workshop reflect on Jeremiah's call to prophecy, since that is one of the readings from the ordination rite. After that, I had the participants brainstorm all the things their congregations wanted their deacons to be, you know, spiritual, studious, loving, nurturing, etc. Then I had them list all those things their congregations didn't want their deacons to be - drunken, crack-addicted, sexual abusers, all of those. And every year they always left one thing out of this last list. Their congregations did not want them to be prophets. The truth is, no one wants a prophet. Ask any of the prophets about the reward of being a prophet, and they'll tell you.
In our Gospel Lesson, Jesus returns to his hometown at the beginnings of his ministry. It had been 400 years since the last prophet walked the land, and now, suddenly, here was the carpenter's son traipsing around, acting like a prophet. Sure, he was doing some amazing tricks, but where did he get off all of a sudden? In his usually minimalist account of the incident, Mark tells us, "They took offense at him." In Luke's account, they tried to hurl him off a cliff.
It's established policy that when a person goes off to seminary to become a priest, they are never returned to the parish from whence they came, but this is often not the case for deacons. During my diaconal formation process in Iowa, I struggled with this story of Jesus' rejection in his hometown, wondering if the parish I called home should be the parish in which I served as a deacon.
And, in a pretty good example of the foretelling the future kind of prophecy, in the ensuing four years of ordained ministry in that parish, I found that I was always "Bryan" first, and "the deacon" when convenient. My ministry was hampered by my shared life with the parish. If I tried to wax prophetic, I was ignored, not because of what I was saying, but because of who I had been among them. "Oh, that's just Bryan. He's always on about something."
Conversely, when I finally requested reassignment to a different parish in a different community, I became "the deacon" first, and "Bryan" only occasionally. Don't get me wrong, I was still ignored. Remember everything I said about people not wanting a prophet. But I was ignored for what I was saying, I was ignored for being a prophet. God told Ezekiel, "Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house)," and that pretty much summed up that parish, "they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."
There's even better news this morning. Like all of our ministries, being a prophet is a shared role. Bishops and priests are called to speak God's word to God's people. But above that, the laity, also, are called to be prophets. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were priests, but Elisha was a prosperous farmer, and Amos was a shepherd and an early tree surgeon. In our Eucharist, lay people read the lessons from the scripture, a message from God to God's people, and the prayers of the people, literally bring the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world to the Church, and to God. Moreover, at the end of the Eucharist the deacon calls the entire congregation out into the world, to proclaim Christ in both word and deed.
Like God sent Ezekiel to the people of Israel, like God sent Jesus to the people of Nazareth, God sends you and I forth from this place to those around us. To deliver a message from God, a message of good news, to a world that desperately needs to hear it. Let us pray for God's grace that, "Whether they hear or refuse to hear...they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."
