7 Pentecost

July 7, 2024

 

2 Corinthians 12.2-10; Mark 6.1-13

+ Sometimes, when you engage Scripture on a daily basis, when engagement with scripture is a big part of your job, like it is to me, I sometimes don’t give things a second thought.

 

I’ll give you an example.

 

Prophets.

 

We hear a lot about prophets and prophecy in Scripture.

 

We read from their prophecies, we hear the stories of how prophets were often despised and hated.

 

And we heard about the danger of false prophets.

 

And if we think prophets—legitimate or false—are things of the past, we are happily living in our wonderful Episcopal bubble, because in the world of American Nationalist evangelicalism, there are so-called “prophets” out there right now, claiming lots of prophecies about our country, our country’s leadership and the world.

 

Look them up only for entertainment value.

 

Because it’s pretty easy to see how false prophets are alive and well, here in the United States right now.  

 

But I have always found prophets interesting.

 

I find it fascinating that God chose particular people, to speak to in a very clear and distinct way.

 

And how, as wonderful as that may sound, being a prophet is an inglorious profession.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus coming to his hometown and people taking offense at him because they know he is special, he is different, because he has a special communicative relationship with God.

 

He seems to shrug that off with a simple, “‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house

 

And to a large extent, that is the truth.

 

Legitimate prophecy can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing.

 

It depends on where you end up on the receiving end of prophecy.

 

But we need to be very clear here:

 

Prophets are not some kind of psychics or fortune tellers.

 

Yes, they see things and know things we “normal” people don’t see or know.

 

They are people with vision.

 

They have knowledge the rest of us don’t.

 

But, again, prophets aren’t psychics or fortune tellers.

 

Psychics or fortune tellers tend to be people who believe they have some kind of special power that they were often born with (if we believe in such things)

 

Prophets, as we see in scripture again and again, aren’t born.

 

Prophets are picked by God and instilled with God’s Spirit.

 

God’s Spirit enters them and sets them on their feet.

 

And when they are instilled with God’s Spirit, they don’t just tell us our fortunes.

 

They don’t just do some kind of psychic mumbo jumbo to tell us what our futures are going to be or what kind of wealth we’re going to have or who our true love is.

 

What they tell us isn’t just about us as individuals.

 

Rather, the prophet tells us things about all of us that we might not want to hear.

 

They stir us up, they provoke us, they jar us.

 

Maybe that’s why we find the idea of prophets so uncomfortable.

 

And that’s what we dislike the most about them.

 

We don’t like people who make us uncomfortable.

 

We don’t like people who stir us up, who provoke us, who jar us out of our complacency.

 

Prophets come into our lives like lightning bolts and when they strike, they explode like electric sparks.

 

They shatter our complacency to pieces.

 

They shove us.

 

They push us hard outside the safe box in which we live (and worship) and they leave us bewildered.

 

Prophets, as much as they are like us, are also unlike us as well.

 

The Spirit of God has transformed these normal people into something else.

 

And this is what we need from our prophets.

 

After all, we are certain about our ideas of God, right?

 

We, in our complacency, think we know God—we know what God thinks and wants of us and the world and the Church.

 

Prophets, touched as they are by the Spirit of God in that unique way, frighten us because what they convey to us about God is sometimes something very different than we thought we knew about God.

 

The prophet is not afraid to say to us: “You are wrong. You are wrong in what you think about God and about what you think God is saying to you.”

 

Nothing makes us angrier than someone telling us we’re wrong—especially about our perception of God.

 

And that is the reason we sometimes refuse to recognize the prophet.

 

That is why the prophet is not often accepted in their home town or among their own kin.

 

That is why we resist the prophet, and resist change, and resist looking forward in hope.

 

We reject prophets because they know how to reach deep down within us, to that one sensitive place inside us and they know how to press just the right button that will cause us to react.

 

And the worst prophet we can imagine is not the one who comes to us from some other place.

 

The worst prophet is not the one who comes to us as a stranger.

 

The worst prophet we can imagine is the one who comes to us from our own neighborhood—from the very midst of us.

 

The worst prophet is the one whom we’ve known.

 

Who is one of us.

 

We knew them before the Spirit of God’s prophecy descended upon them.

 

And now, they have been transformed with this knowledge of God.

 

They are different.

 

These people we know, that we saw in their inexperience, are now speaking as a conduit of God’s Voice.

 

When someone we know begins to say and do things they say God tells them to do, we find ourselves becoming very defensive very quickly.

 

Certainly, we can understand why people in Jesus’ hometown had such difficulty in accepting him.

 

We would too.

 

We, rational people that we are, would no doubt try to explain away who he was and what he did.

 

But probably the hardest aspect of Jesus’ message to us is the simple fact that he, in a very real sense, calls us and empowers us to be prophets as well.

 

As Christians, we are called to be a bit different than others.

 

We are transformed in some ways by the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives.

 

In a sense, God empowers us with the Spirit to be conduits of that Spirit to others.

 

If we felt uncomfortable about others being prophets, we’re even more uncomfortable about being prophets ourselves.

 

Being a prophet, just like hearing the prophet, means we must shed our complacency.

 

If our neighbor as the prophet frightens us and irritates us, we ourselves being the prophet is even more frightening and irritating.

 

The Spirit of prophecy we received from God seems a bit unusual to those people around us.

 

Loving God?

 

Loving those who hate us or despise us?

 

Being peaceful—in spirit and action—in the face of overwhelming violence or anger?

 

To side with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized when it is much easier and more personally pleasing to be with the wealthy and powerful?

 

Or BE the wealthy and powerful!

 

To welcome all people as equals, who deserve the same rights we have, even if we might not really—deep down—think of them as equals?

 

To actually see the Kingdom of God breaking through in instances when others only see failure and defeat?

 

That is what it means to be a prophet.

 

Being a prophet has nothing to do with our own sense of comfort.

 

Being a prophet means seeing and sensing and proclaiming that Kingdom of God—and God’s sense of what is right. 

 

For us, as Christians, that is what we are to do—we are to strive to see and proclaim the Kingdom of God.

 

We are to help bring that Kingdom forth and when it is here, we are to proclaim it in word and in deed.

 

Because when that Spirit of God comes upon us, we become a community of prophets, and when we do, we become the Kingdom of God present here.

 

Being a prophet in our days is more than just preaching doom and gloom to people.

 

And let me tell you; we’re hearing plenty of doom and gloom right now.

 

It’s more than saying to people: “repent, for the kingdom of God is near!”

 

Being a prophet in our day means being able to recognize injustice and oppression in our midst and to speak out about them.

 

And, most importantly, CHANGE those things.

 

Being a prophet means we’re going to press people’s buttons.

 

And when we do, let me tell you by first-hand experience, people are going to react.

 

We need to be prepared to do that, if we are to be prophets in this day and age.

 

But we can’t be afraid to do so.

 

We need to continue to speak out.

 

We need to do the right thing.

 

We need to heed God’s voice speaking to us, and then follow through.

 

And we need to keep looking forward.

 

In hope.

 

 And trusting in our God who leads the way.

 

We need to continue to be the prophets who have visions of how incredible it will be when that Kingdom of God breaks through into our midst and transforms us.

 

We need to keep striving to welcome all people, to strive for the equality and equal rights of all people in this church, in our nation and in the world.

 

So, let us proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst with the fervor of prophets.

 

Let us proclaim that Kingdom without fear—without the fear of rejection from those who know us.

 

Let us look forward and strive forward and move forward in hope.

 

I don’t know if we can be truly content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, as we heard from Paul’s in his epistle today.

 

But having endured them, we know that none of these things ultimately defeat us.

 

And that is the secret of our resilience in the face of anything life may throw at us.

 

Let us bear these things.

 

With dignity.

 

With honor.

 

Let us be strong and shoulder what needs to be shouldered.

 

Because, we know.

 

In that strange paradoxical way we know that whenever it seems that we are weak, it is then that we are truly strong.