The Prophets Among Us
Sermon based on Amos 5:18-24; Hosea 6:1-6; Joel 2: 12-17
The Prophets Among Us
Preached at Frazer Mennonite Church on November 10, 2019
Sometimes God speaks through an angel or messenger, sometimes in a burning bush. Sometimes in a mysterious figure that wrestles you all night. Sometimes God speaks in creation, or even in silence.
And sometimes God shows up in the form of prophets that say things we don’t want to hear.
We heard from three prophets this morning–Amos, Joel and Hosea–and they were saying some hard things to God’s people, things that God’s people did not want to hear.
These prophets were speaking to the people of God before their enslavement in Babylon. And–in the case of Hosea and Amos–the people were doing pretty well, at least some of them were. The rich were getting richer, but the poor were getting poorer. There was prosperity among the elite, and they were enjoying their wealth, without much care for the poor or for God.
And to the wealthy people of God, the prophet Amos said, “I despise and reject your feasts. I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies. I reject your offerings and refuse to look at your sacrifices of fattened cattle. Spare me the racket of your chanting. Relieve me the strumming or your harps.”
The prophet Hosea said, “Oh Ephraim and Judah, what am I going to do with you? Your devotion is like the morning fog, like the dew of the morning that vanishes!”
Now, for the prophet, Joel, the message was different. Because the circumstances were different. In the midst of a prosperous season, the people experienced a locust infestation, which destroyed their crops. There was also–at the same time–a terrible drought. The combination of the two led to wildfires and a great famine. The people were in ecological crisis and were suffering. Joel called the people back to God–Tear open your hearts, not your clothing. Return to God who is gracious and loving, quick to forgive and abundantly tenderhearted. Who knows? God may relent and leave a blessing behind.”
We don’t hear much from the prophets in our worship and life together. We use certain parts of the biblical text to emphasize things we want to hear, like “Let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like an unfailing stream.” or “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, acknowledgement of God, not burnt offerings.”
We nod our heads when we hear those words from the prophets, and say, “yes, it’s true.” But conveniently when we read these texts we leave out the parts that are condemning of us. The parts about how we need to change.
God shows up in the scriptures in the form of these harsh, hard hitting prophets, from the wrong families and wrong social class, saying the wrong things. They were dressed badly, and weren’t welcome in the religious centers. And what did the people do to the prophets among them? They killed them. Or if they were being “nice”, they destroyed their character. They did everything they could do to silence the voices telling the people that they were in trouble, and that they must change their ways. Or else.
God sent prophets to the people, to say hard things to them. And God’s work of sending prophets continues. I want to highlight some modern day prophets, their messages, what happens to them when they speak, and what happens to us when we ignore them.
Greta Thunburg, Mari Copeny and Jamie Margolin are among several young women who are working against climate change in our world. Greta’s name is the one you are most likely to hear. Greta is a 16 year old Swedish girl who in 2018 protested her government for not doing enough to curb climate change. This summer she took a two week solar powered boat ride from Europe to the US to participate in a national youth led climate strike.
This is what she said to the United Nations this fall, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing….and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
These words enraged world leaders. People began to strike back at her with conspiracies that she had been funded by left leaning corporations to say these words. Political leaders said that she was young, and what did she know. People criticized her parents for letting her take this trip instead of going to school.
But it’s hard to deny that her words sound a lot like those of the prophets. “People are suffering. People are dying. Ecosystems are collapsing….and all you can talk about is money….how dare you.”
In 2011, the Occupy Movement began in New York’s financial district in response to big banks getting buyouts while everyday folks were suffering from the recession. It was a movement that spread from New York to Philly and all over the country.
The movement was made up of young folks, who were fresh out of college and still feeling the reverberations of joblessness in the recession economy. There was not one message of this movement, or was there one leader. The movement made every effort to decentralize leadership and messaging, which confounded just about everyone.
Folks were camping out by the hundreds in central locations in cities. In Philadelphia the Occupy Movement had a nonstop presence just outside city hall. They were there for two months, creating an alternative community. They were making sure that everyone there had a voice, was fed, and was cared for.
There was talk in November that the Occupy movement in Philadelphia would be disbursed forcefully, and there were calls for clergy to go downtown to be witnesses and to encourage peaceful responses on all sides. So I went down with another Mennonite pastor. This is one of the few instances where I wore a clerical collar, because it was important–as a public witness and for my safety–that I be recognized as a pastor. It happened that there was an Eagles game letting out at the same time that the Occupy Movement in Philly was being threatened, so folks were flowing up from the subway and coming into the City Hall area, where the encampment was. Some were drunk, and many were angry and scoffing at the occupy folks. I overheard two drunk guys saying that they were going to enter the encampment and hurt people, and just as they said it, I locked eyes with them. They disappeared from my sight for a moment as I frantically looked for them, to make sure they didn’t do anything dangerous. Then they appeared in front of me again. They said, “Father (because I had a collar on), we were going to go into the Occupy space and beat some people up, but then we saw you and we couldn’t go through with it.”
This encounter was an opportunity for both of us. We talked some about the reasons for the Occupy movement. These guys were angry that a bunch of deadbeats were hanging out instead of going and getting jobs. But, as I dug deeper with these guys, they confessed that even though they were Union Electricians, they couldn’t get work either. They were hustling between two and three part time jobs and living with their parents unable to make ends meet.
And then they had that moment of epiphany. Without me even having to say it for them, they realized the connection–they were struggling the same way that the folks in the Occupy encampment were. They didn’t like the message or methods of the Occupy Movement, but with a little time, they understood the connection between their struggle and those messengers whose words they despised.
As a little side note, I hired these electricians to work in my house, and they were fantastic.
The occupy movement was confusing, yet powerful. They were very much like the prophets of old–hated and despised, speaking from outside of the centers of power, yet with challenging words reaching into the deepest parts of economic systems. And, like the ancient prophets, the people wanted to see them destroyed.
We don’t always understand the messenger, or appreciate that message, we don’t always see the prophets as people of God, but that doesn’t mean that God isn’t speaking through these prophets.
This summer I spoke on a panel with other Mennonite pastors at the Mennonite convention. The topic was “Prophetic Preaching.” If you’ve ever seen a panel, you know how it goes–the moderator poses a question and the people on the panel answer and try to look smart.
But. as the microphone was being passed from expert to expert, I had to say to the group that prophetic preaching is a dangerous thing for a pastor. Because we know what happened to the prophets of old–they were killed, or their names were drug through the mud. Prophets were not welcome in their home towns or home denominations. So, calling a pastor a prophet means they are about to get their pink slip and sent off. Or maybe the get to write a book that no one reads.
Mostly prophets don’t come from the inside of the walls of power. They don’t come from inside the church or inside of wall street. They are the ones screaming in the city squares, saying “The end is near.” They are the ones challenging the powerful by exposing the ways that our systems fail all but the wealthy and privileged.
So if we are looking for God’s prophetic voice to show up inside the walls of the church, we’d better look again. God has sent us prophets, and these prophets are speaking to us from the outside of the church. They are not usually welcomed in the church, and maybe they wouldn’t want to come in anyway.
These prophets are calling us out on the ho-hum day to day worship that’s been going on for centuries. They are telling us –enough. God is sick of this. Open your hearts, turn to God. Enough of your solemn feasts and assemblies. Enough of worship as usual. Enough business as usual. Open your hearts and let God’s justice transform you and this world.
God is showing up today, just as God did thousands of years ago–God is coming to us in the form of prophets who say the words we do not want to hear. We could destroy these prophets, or we could listen and change our ways. Changing our ways is more than just a behavior tweak. It’s a radical change, a 180 degree turn to God.
The prophets have spoken to us–in ancient and modern times. What then will we do?