When we left our hero last
week, Jesus of Nazareth, having made a name for himself preaching in the
synagogues throughout Galilee, had returned to his hometown and his home
synagogue. There he read impressively
from the scroll of prophet Isaiah that one day God would tap someone to bring
good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom
to the oppressed. Jesus's one-sentence
commentary afterward was a sermon disguised as a mission statement. With it Jesus initially wowed the hometown crowd by
announcing: "And I’m taking this on, y'all."
It seemed at first they were
all with him. But Jesus could tell from
their overly enthusiastic reaction that the congregation had misunderstood
him. They hadn't really grasped the
radical reforming he had in mind in order to bring good news to the poor and
imprisoned and blind and oppressed. They
thought they knew the hometown boy-turned-preacher. But at the very moment when they were
bursting with hometown pride, he had to correct this misunderstanding. Awkward.
Having returned to my
hometown eight years ago, I've had the awkward experience of receiving praise
from old friends who have misunderstood the purpose of my new ministry in
Mobile. With kindness toward me and with an understanding of Christianity that
is limited by their experiences, some have said to me, in effect, "Well, I
don't necessarily agree that women should be preachers, Ellen, but when your
mother told me you were starting a church, I thanked God that you'd be bringing
more people to Christ." Others have
whispered something along the lines of: "Ellen, I understand your church
invites, um, gay people to worship with you. Well, I'm praying for you. I believe
God can use you to convert them." Sigh.
Sometimes it just hasn't seemed possible for me to try to explain to Mrs.
So-and-So the finer points of Open Table's mission statement or our Open and
Affirming statement--while she and I are standing in the checkout line at the
Winn-Dixie. God forgive me, I've sometimes let some souls live with the illusion that I'm out saving sinners from hell
fire, and I've accepted their praise or prayers under false pretenses.
But Jesus had more courage
and scruples than I. When his former
neighbors and third cousins applauded his performance in the synagogue, Jesus
realized he'd been misunderstood and immediately made it painfully clear to
them the difference between their expectations of his ministry and his intentions. He was out to change some things.
And he was not going to be staying in Nazareth. No. Prophets weren't usually welcomed or effective
in their hometowns. No. He'd be taking
his ministry elsewhere as, he explained, the prophets of old had done. Elijah went to Sidon and there saved a widow
and her son from starvation even though there were plenty of starving widows
and orphans in Israel. Likewise, Elisha went to Syria to heal Naaman from
leprosy even though many right there in Israel suffered from that same disease.
No. “It's been nice visiting y'all again,” Jesus said, “but I'm taking my
ministry elsewhere. That stuff about
good news for the poor and captives and blind and oppressed--well, that's for
the poor and captives and blind and oppressed somewhere else because they are not beyond God's reach."
So that sermon did not go
well. Maybe it was a case of TMI. I’d have advised Jesus just to say, "Thanks
for your vote of confidence" and move on quietly, no forwarding address.
Of course, not even a prophet could have predicted that clarifying his more expansive mission would enrage them so. Luke's gospel
says the congregation "drove him out of town"--and it doesn't mean in
a limo. Fresh from worship, a murderous phalanx jostled him and shoved him and
pushed Jesus to the edge of town and almost over a cliff.
Identifying with the
Hebrew prophets of some 700 years earlier, Jesus should have expected as
much. Jeremiah, who (as we read earlier)
reluctantly agreed as a boy to become a prophet, was nearly killed years later
by the priests of Anathoth who felt threated by his preaching. Prophets had then--and have still today--a
dangerous job.
The danger comes from their
role as change makers and because prophets are both agents of
social change and instruments of spiritual transformation.
Richard Rohr believes the
early Hebrew prophets played a significant role in reuniting two diverging
strands of Judaism: "Very early in the Judeo-Christian tradition there is
a split between the Exodus tradition, . . . the mainline and original tradition
of full liberation [that defies the pharaohs of this world], and the tradition
that develops in Leviticus and Numbers, which is called the ‘priestly’
tradition, which seems more concerned about how to organize and control
and perpetuate the [religious] experience.”
He continues: "About
eight centuries before Christ we finally meet the spiritual geniuses—the Jewish
prophets—who tried desperately to link two traditions: inner God experience and
outer work for justice and truth. That linkage is forever needed and yet
forever resented and avoided to this day. We continue to have halfhearted religious
divisions in the form of Right or Left, liberal or conservative, establishment
or disestablishment, contemplative or activist. They really do need one
another, but in most of history the priestly tradition has been in control and
defined religion. We always and forever need the prophets, who are invariably
pushed off to the side."
Prophets risk getting
"pushed off to the side," Rohr says.
Or pushed nearly off a cliff, as the Gospel of Luke says.
We've had a chance earlier in
the service to name modern day prophets.
King and Gandhi seem to fit Rohr’s definition especially well to me
because they were both concerned with spiritual as well as social goals.
But let’s now consider that a
congregation might collectively be a prophet, might together bear prophetic
witness to the human/divine capacity for transformation. I believe, friends, we at Open Table have a calling
and a capability to be a Prophetic Church.
In fact, in the heart of our mission statement, printed on the front
page of every worship bulletin, is a reminder that we are trying to follow the
ways of Jesus through spiritual and social transformation. We're trying to do what Rohr says is the work
of a prophet--pulling together two religious tasks by journeying both inwardly
and outwardly. Because to do one form of
transformation without the other gives too much power either to our own ego or
to a religious system. To emphasize societal change to the exclusion of the
inner life can create an ideologue more concerned about a cause than about
living beings. To emphasize spiritual transformation
to the exclusion of addressing systemic problems in the culture can create a
religious fanatic or an emotionally detached navel gazer.
As I've thought about it this
week, sharing together this prophetic work has its challenges but also makes
good sense. Some of us prefer the adventure
of social reformation; others the adventure of spiritual transformation. When we come together as a diverse faith
community, we can draw from both the liberation and priestly traditions we've
inherited. At times our diversity may seem to threaten our ability to move
forward together. But we can appreciate this difference, by which I mean we can
both recognize these differences within Open Table and be thankful for them.
How might you classify your
primary or favorite way of engaging at Open Table? How would you describe your way of following
Jesus’s way? Does church give you a way
to engage in some action that contributes to some systemic change in our
world--or does it primarily deepen your experience of God ? So here’s a self-quiz: Would you rather spend
a night hosting families through Family Promise, demonstrating for LGBT rights in
the We Do Campaign, writing your legislators to supporting immigration reform, planning
a tutoring project for at risk children, etc.?
Or would you rather take time to participate in a worship service, find some quiet
time for meditation or introspection, read a book that triggers inner
examination, attend or lead a class or discussion session with religious
content, write in a spiritual journal, take a walk on a beautiful day like
today with gratitude in your heart, etc.?
A few of you will be pulled
equally between both of these responses to God.
Others will feel much more at home in either the first category (as a
liberator) or the second category (as a priest). But when we combine our gifts and goals as a
faith community, we have a chance to do what the Hebrew prophets and Jesus were
trying to do: bring both social and
spiritual transformation together in a recursive and mutually reinforcing
process.
So let’s hear one another’s
diverse perspectives as we make decisions together, recognizing our individual
tendency toward either social or spiritual change and remembering our favored
means of achieving change through either action or contemplation. Some of us,
for instance, will urge the rest of us to take to the streets and worry that
we're worshiping in a pretty space far from the neediest places in our city.
Others will focus on inviting visitors and offering more programs and worry if
we are not planning and organizing well for our future.
When someone offers a
different perspective, let’s see it as a necessary counterpoint to our
own. As we move forward with decisions,
large and small, let’s value our differences while remaining united around a
common mission to follow in the ways of Jesus. We do so not believing it’s his
way or the highway. But we look to Jesus’s
life as a picture of how we can love others, create social and spiritual
change, extend hospitality, value inclusion, and worship—together.
There will be times when
others—within or outside our faith community—are angered or afraid of a
prophetic stance. We will try to hear different voices, remaining humble that
we may be wrong. But if someone wants to
be angry about a position we’ve taken, we’ll remember we’re called to love
others, not to be loved by others. Although I don’t expect we’ll be driven out
of town, if we’re being prophetic, we will not always be loved and admired and
understood.
The story of Jesus’s short
and not so sweet sermon ends with him at the edge of cliff. Being on the edge
of a new thought or action is exactly where a sermon should take
us. But Luke says that Jesus, at the edge of the cliff, then “passed through the midst
of the crowd and went on his way.” We
don’t know exactly how Jesus escaped the mob, but in the midst of the
accusations, the disappointment, the anger—he went on his way, a way that was
always a way of peace and justice.
PRAYER:
God who works in action and
stillness, grant us the wisdom and courage of the prophets. Amen
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