Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Advent 3 Year B
Deacon Richard Buhrer 

I think there is something constitutional about remote controls and males. My 11-month-old great nephew, Branden, the light of my life, like other males I know enjoys nothing more than playing with the remote control for the TV. This doesn’t always create an effect desirable to his older brother or sister. I think there is indeed some correlation between the Y chromosome and remote control use. I was channel surfing myself the other day and came across a snippet of a program dealing with Michael de Nostradamus, describing how he had predicted the assassination of President Kennedy and 911 and was therefore a “prophet.” I switched to another channel and there was a program discussing the scientific basis behind the claims of psychics. They mentioned Jean Dixon, who was credited with correctly predicting the assassination of John Kennedy. She later also predicted the assassination of Jimmy Carter, which of course hasn’t happened yet, (but then she claimed when Anwar Sadat was shot in Egypt, that she had simply misidentified which president was at risk).

But whatever else Nostradamus and Jean Dixon and any number of other like them are, they are NOT prophets. But if they are not prophets, then what is a prophet?

In Hebrew, the word traditionally translated as prophet is nabi or nevi, which likely means "proclaimer". The meaning of nevi is best described in Deuteronomy 18:18, where God said, "I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him." Thus, the nevi was thought to be the "mouth" of God. The root of the word in Hebrew comes for a word meaning hollowness or openness; to receive transcendental wisdom, one must make oneself “open” or “empty” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet, accessed on December 11, 2005).

Has prophecy come to an end? Do we still have prophets among us who can call us to be the people God calls us to be? The rabbis taught that prophecy came to an end with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. But I am of the opinion that the gift of prophecy persists in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, that we are surrounded by prophets (and are in fact called to participate in prophecy ourselves). St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians recommends the gift of prophecy as the proper ambition of all members of the church.

 But in today’s epistle he also tells us: “Do not despise the words of prophets, 21but test everything.” So how do we “test” the words of the prophets that God sends us in our time?

There are some principles that we can use: legitimate prophecy always come from below, by which I mean, that it comes out of the perspective of the poor and the powerless. It does not arise from the rich and powerful; it is always free of ego and self-aggrandizement; and at its best, it is rooted and arises from the fellowship and community fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Persecution is a theme which has formed the backdrop for he last two Sunday’s readings; it is is also the foreground and background of our readings today. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer has taught in his Letters and Papers from Prison: A “reading from below” is possible only when we “learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune”.

All of today’s readings are situated in a context of persecution and suffering. When St. Paul tells the Thessalonians to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” The circumstances he is referring to is the persecution of the church. It is also important to note that it is not the circumstance that is the will of God in Christ for us but the giving thanks!

The passage from the prophet Isaiah that we read today is also situated in the loneliness and alienation of the Jewish people living in exile in Babylon, struggling to maintain their identity in a hostile culture and longing for a return to their homeland. Isaiah proclaims: “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.

The “year of the Lord’s favor” here is the Jubilee year from the ancient Hebrew law: The Law required the Israelites to leave their fields fallow every seventh year. At the end of the seventh of these Sabbaths of years, the Law required a Jubilee year where all slaves were freed and all property that had been sold reverted to its ancestral owners. The prophet is announcing a Jubilee year. Parenthetically, the practice of Jubilee is not, shall we say, very compatible with capitalism, but we are called to practice it in whatever ways we can from our own exile.

So prophecy will always come from below. Prophecy will also be without ego. In the gospel we read from John today, all of the stories of John the Baptist are left behind. There is no discussion of how he lived, how he imitated the prophet Elijah, nor of his miraculous birth and his blood relationship with Jesus. John the Baptist in the gospel of John, is simply John the voice, proclaiming in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord!”

Incidentally, just for the record: The Jews of Jesus’ time were accustomed to taking ritual baths to purify themselves. The baptism of John arose from that custom—being dipped in water to remove the burden of sin. It is from that custom that our own sacrament of baptism is born with an additional dimension of being united with Christ in his death and resurrection.

So if there are prophets among us, they can be known by the fact that they do not seek their own power or status or glory. Usually they are called to accept graciously powerlessness and persecution and yet remain faithful to their call. Televangelists are not, therefore, prophets.

Finally, Christian prophecy, at its best, is the work of the gathered community. We are called to be the Kingdom of God manifest in this time and place. Within this community, all of the hierarchical distinctions of race and class and gender and sexual orientation and status and wealth and power and office and even ordination are meant to be utterly eradicated. We are called to be filled with the Holy Spirit and thereby to be one with one another and one with Christ and one with the Father in bringing life to the world.

What then, does all of this have to do with Advent? Last week in the collect, we prayed: “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, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ.” And today we prayed, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us

One genius of this season is its call to us to be open to prophecy—to hear the words of promise, to hear the call to repentance and reformation of life—so that we may embrace with joy the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ. Let us pray to be able to hear and to speak and most importantly to live the words that God gives us, to be hollow and empty so that the Spirit may blow through us to warm the cold wintery world and bring the light of Christ into the darkness of our sins.

AMEN.