O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
Who are our prophets? In other words, when there is a tough truth to be heard, who are we willing to listen to? As I said last Sunday, this Advent, the sermons are going to be based on the Collects for the season. Today, we heard “Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins.” It’s a deep and profound prayer, but one that is utterly useless if we’re not willing to receive feedback or correction.
The question of who our prophets are is a particularly important one for us in society. If someone says something that you disagree with, we can dismiss them by saying “Well, I see it differently” or “That’s your opinion.” To be clear, I’m not at all suggesting that we should always agree with everyone. A lot of invigorating and healthy dialogue is based on a difference of opinion. The issue is when we outright dismiss the ideas, or the people who hold them, instead of engaging in thoughtful pondering or conversation. And this intellectual narcissism is destroying our communities, our political structures, our churches, our families and friends, and our psyches.
We have become so accustomed to everything being tailored for us that we struggle to receive information that we don’t like. Almost everything these days is customizable, where every app and piece of technology remembers our user preferences. Which, if I’m honest, is quite nice. I’m glad that I can have my computer set up in a way that makes sense to me. The problem is that we’ve been conditioned to expect that everything will bend to meet our expectations. We live in a user-centric environment and we’re used to having it our way.
You don’t like how CNN presents the news? Fine, go to NPR, Fox, the Times or the Journal. Don’t trust mainstream? Fine. Get your news from TikTok or Instagram. Get offended when someone has the audacity to be a human being who makes a mistake? Then shame and cancel them. You all might have heard that the National Cathedral worked themselves in a public relations fiasco a few weeks ago when they charged a required $7 ticketing fee to reserve a seat for Christmas Eve. The public shaming and vitriol was excessive and unchristian. Now, in this particular situation, they made a mistake, which the Dean freely admits. But the point is that our culture of cancellation means that if we disagree with anyone, we can exile them, unfollow them on social media, and live our lives without ever having to engage with whatever it is that we disagree with.
The epitome of this problem is seen in the phrase “fake news” or “post-truth.” To be very clear, this isn’t at all about politics, but rather society. In 2005, on an episode of “The Colbert Report,” comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness” to mean “a belief that a particular statement is true based on one’s perception without regard to evidence, logic, or facts.” The question before us is no longer “What is true” but “What do I want to be true?” And, as we’ve seen in pandemics and elections, our society is one in which we are entitled not only to our own opinions, but our own truths.
As Christians, this ought to deeply disturb us because we gather in the name of the One who came among us and said “The truth shall make you free” and said of himself that he is the way, the life, and also the Truth. We’ll hear it read in a few weeks that “In the beginning was the Word and was with God and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth.” One way to understand what “Word” means is this context is logic, reason, or truth. If we live with truth as something that is subjective, something that we can take or leave, something that we can have our own versions of, well, then we are rejecting God and committing idolatry.
Yes, I realize the danger in what I’m saying. Who gets to be the arbiter of this truth? Whoever gets to define truth would have tremendous power to set agendas and priorities, to include and exclude. Horrendous evils have been done to marginalized groups because those who got to define truth abused that power. People have been dehumanized, vilified, and ignored because those in power did not want to recognize the truth of their sacred dignity. In the name of orthodoxy, people have been jailed and executed for not adhering to a particular interpretation of the truth. None of this is good and it is not at all what I am advocating for.
Instead, I am simply asking a question – who are our prophets? When are we willing to listen to a truth that is not ours? Who is it that we are willing to be corrected by? Who is able to speak truthfully to us in a way that will convict us instead of making us want to cancel them?
The Collect this week, as well as the readings from Isaiah and Mark, hold up the godly vocation of the prophets. Prophets are not those who tell the future, they are not foretellers. Rather, they are forth-tellers, they speak the truth of God into a situation. And there’s an easy way to know whether or not a truth is a Godly truth or a human lie – is it something that we’d expect Jesus to say? Jesus always includes, always expands, always challenges injustice, always extends mercy, always offers peace, always loves. Now we can disagree about what exactly challenging injustice looks like, but if it’s less than love, then it’s less than the truth. The prophets are those who remind us that God is love, that God has prepared the way of love for us to walk by in Jesus, and that God intends for us to walk that way of love being empowered by the Spirit.
In Isaiah, the Prophet speaks on God’s behalf saying “Comfort, O comfort yet my people.” Prophets not only challenge us by nudging us towards justice; sometimes they help to challenge our own self-doubts and criticisms. We need prophets because they remind us that the first word from God is always that of comfort. You are enough. You are loved. So much of our sin comes about when we doubt that we are loved or that we are enough. We end up manipulating people and systems to try to get more, to try to find something that will assuage our feelings of inadequacy. It is as St. Augustine said centuries ago, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” The prophets speak a word of comfort that challenges our assumptions that we don’t deserve God’s love or that we need to do more and be better. That’s a lie. You are enough and we all need prophets who remind us of that comforting truth.
Prophets like Isaiah also remind us that though we are enough, we are not perfect. Isaiah writes that valleys will be lifted and mountains will be made low. In other words, some things need to change to prepare the way of the Lord. It is simply a truth that there are some who have too much in our society and too many who have not enough.
A good prophet also helps us to keep a check on our egos. Isaiah records, “Surely the people are grass… The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever.” In other words, we are not the main character. Our lives are all fading and the purpose of life is not to maximize our enjoyment, our wealth, our opportunities, or our reputation. Rather, we are here to be a part of the beloved community of God. Naturally, many of us have accomplishments that we are proud of, and that’s okay. Prophets though help us to remember that we received from God and others more than we can ever accomplish on our own. Prophets call us to humility, which is about having a right-sized relationship with God and others.
The other prophet that we have in front of us this morning is John the Baptizer, who, as the Collect puts it, calls us to repent and forsake our sins. The word “repent” does not mean “to make an apology” or “say we’re sorry.” Sure, those words might show forth our repentance, but repenting is not about following a verbal formula. To repent means to “change our minds.” To repent of stealing would not be to issue an apology, make restitution for what we’ve taken, receive punishment, or anything like that. No, to repent of stealing would be to fundamentally understand that our needs do not outweigh the rights of others, that our desire for more does not mean that we are actually entitled to more, that others are not our competitors but a part of the Body of Christ. Repentance is about recognizing the error of our ways and committing to an amendment of life.
These are the prophets that we tend to reject. When Amos and Micah called the people of Israel to repent, they were ostracized and rejected. John the Baptizer was beheaded and Jesus was crucified. And it’s not just people a long time ago who didn’t like having a prophet in their midst. Our world killed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, and Oscar Romero – all ministers of the Gospel who had a prophetic word for their society and all who were killed for it.
We really don’t like being told that we’ve gotten it wrong, that we’ve made a mistake, that we need to change. Those who hold up those mirrors of truth, who show us where we’ve gotten off the path of the way of love, who reveal to us that we don’t have the full picture are often met with resistance, with cancelation, with dismissal.
One of the problems with our society and personal lives right now is that we don’t have any prophets. Again, we dismiss criticism as “just their opinion,” we reject the idea of God’s grace as “too good to be true,” and we ignore information that challenges our priorities and narratives.
And, by the same token, many of us have become afraid to speak a loving and godly word of truth when that word needs to be spoken. We convince ourselves “It’s really none of my business,” or “It wouldn’t be polite for me to comment on that,” or “They might not like me if I tell them that.” We’re afraid to tell the truth and just as afraid to hear it.
Without the prophets, it’s that much harder for us to walk the way of our salvation, to foster beloved community, to find reconciliation, and to receive mercy. It’s awfully hard to be transformed by forgiveness if we insist that we have nothing to be forgiven for. It’s unlikely that our society will become more loving if we only blame others without recognizing our own sins and shortcomings. It’s crushing to have to create our own sense of meaning and worth instead of holding dear the comforting message of grace, that we are enough.
So, again, I put forth the question – who are our prophets? Who reminds us that we are always loved? Who calls us to return when we have gone astray? Most of us need several prophets, just as Scripture has many prophets. It might be a spouse or partner who can be a prophet in one part of your life, a friend in another, and a newspaper columnist in another. It might be a priest, it might be a child, it might be a stranger. A hymn can deliver prophecy, the Sacrament of Baptism or Eucharist can be prophetic, a piece of art, a sunset, or a blossoming rose can be a prophet. The thing about prophets is that a prophet is simply a messenger. And anyone can carry a message from God. The prophets remind us that our task is to be bold in the delivering and listening to the truth of God.
There are plenty of prophets because God’s word pours forth abundantly. The question for us to wrestle with is – are we willing to have a prophetic word spoken to us? Are we willing to be corrected or see things differently? Are we willing to listen when the Lord speaks?
