Deuteronomy 18.15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8.8-13
Mark 1.21-28

We have just heard the words of Moses establishing the institution of the prophet.

A lot of people presume to speak for God. In my first draft I added the word “lately” to that, but really, speaking for God has been the world's second-oldest profession¹, closely allied with the first. You are probably familiar with both the silly and the sinister pronouncements of well-known preachers, in this regard. I have heard a number of such theories about why hurricane Katrina caused so much destruction, for example. On my website, you can still find an interesting interchange between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson interpreting the meaning of the 9/11 attacks. Apparently some people believe that articulating these ideas is an important part of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not.

I, myself, take quite seriously the admonition in the words relayed by Moses, “But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak--that prophet shall die.” Notwithstanding the fact that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps are still with us. Are the words that I speak today going to help or injure?

For hundreds of years, there were prophets in the land. There were the ecstatic prophets, not the prophets Moses was talking about. There were court prophets like Nathan, an advisor to King David. Nathan had the temerity to tell the king things he did not want to hear, that what he did to Uriah the Hittite was wrong. King David, to his credit, listened to the rebuke. There were other court prophets, like Hananiah, who opposed Jeremiah in time of crisis, and gave a rosy outlook. (By the way, the book of Jeremiah, chapter 28, verse 17 records, “In that same year, in the seventh month, the prophet Hananiah died.”)

I can't say that the classical prophets flourished. A brief reading shows that they had two characteristics in common. First, none of them really wanted the job, but were in fact compelled by the Lord or by the message to deliver it. Jonah was not unique in being unwilling. Second, their message was often really really unpopular. Speaking truth to power often resulted in the death of the messenger.

But after the return from the Exile, prophecy went into decline. After all, what could be threatened? Military conquest? The destruction of the temple? Famine? It was a time of despair.

The reading from Mark should be familiar to all of us. We all remember how people were astonished that Jesus was speaking with such authority. Very familiar. But I think now that we have been done a disservice by a lackluster translation. The word used to describe the reaction of the people to Jesus' words is ’εκ-πλησσω. The English, “amazed”, is a mild translation.² My little lexicon gives definition 2 as, to strike with panic or shock, to amaze, astonish. The synonyms given are translated variously as to terrify, agitate with fear; to fear, the general term; and to shudder.

The people were struck with panic at his teaching. If you think this is overdrawn, consider that Luke reported that in a similar situation the people were so enraged that they tried to kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff.

What was preaching like then? Frankly, I think that, unfortunately, it was something like it is today. Our standards are so low. On Tuesday, for example, I heard part of a religious radio program devoting a lot of attention to “intelligent design”. I think the speaker cited fireflies as an example of something that can only be explained by positing the supernatural intervention of a designer. This is classic “god of the gaps” theology. Is our faith so immature and fragile that it must be based on finding gaps in our understanding of how the universe operates where God can find a home? As each of these gaps is filled, does God then face a housing crisis? What happens to the believers who rest their faith in God upon such a poor foundation? This is not the Gospel, is it?

When people gathered on the Sabbath to devote themselves to the reading and the study of the law and the prophets, what was it like? Were cultural presuppositions and values ever challenged? Did the talk revolve around which party, the Pharisees or the Sadducees or the Essenes, had the best program for fulfilling God's will? Or were there larger issues involved? Did anyone question the temple sacrificial system, for example? Or slavery? Or war?

What was that authority with which Jesus proclaimed his message? I believe it was the message itself. The message was so powerful and so right that it demanded a hearing. But it was also a message that people absolutely did not want to hear. It threw them into a panic. What was in that message? Probably the same things that throw us Christians into a panic today, like we should love our enemies and pray for them.

In the hundreds of years after the return from the Babylonian captivity, the unity of Judah was the paramount virtue, while exploitation and corruption were unchallenged. Who was there to condemn the mistreatment of the stranger, of the Samaritans? They, too, had been conquered by Babylon and had been sent into exile. Who was there to challenge the edict that Jews had to divorce their foreign-born wives? Who was there to shock the people, rulers and priests of Judah into justice? Apparently there was no one until Jesus came along.

Similarly, today, national unity is a paramount value. The national slogan is the much-abused, “United we stand.” But national unity is the source of the greatest evil, including the religious wars of the 1600s and the Shoah. I am so ashamed of the history of Christian churches adopting wholesale the values and worldviews of the cultures in which they find themselves. The denomination in which I grew up was a pro-slavery remnant of a split at the time of the US Civil War. My denomination owed its existence to the fulfillment of Reinhold Niebuhr's ironic observation that when war clouds gather, it is nothing short of miraculous, the way most Christian churches align themselves with the war effort. But when the full Gospel is preached, there are exceptions. An example far enough away that can be looked at with objectivity is that when the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for the Argentinean victims of the war over the Falklands, Parliament was struck with shock and threatened the Church of England with disestablishment. Another is the observation that if we truly follow Jesus, then everyone is a brother or sister in Christ, not just other Christians or not just the subset of Christians who believe exactly what I believe.

If we come to church month after month and don't get offended by something, that should be taken as a danger sign. It is, after all, extremely unlikely that some human culture is 100% aligned with the will of God, and even more unlikely that we just happen to be living in that culture. Controversy is not a legitimate cause for schism. Rather the lack of controversy is an indication that important parts of the message are not getting through or that it is not taken seriously. Controversy is an opportunity for brothers and sisters in Christ to discover the truth together. Just remember that when we get on to our community meeting after worship.

In times like these (and all times are times like these), we should look to find the people thrown into a panic wherever the actual Gospel is preached. In fact, we should welcome it.

Footnotes

¹ This is not what you may think, as is illustrated by the following story: Three men were sitting in a bar drinking and discussing their workday. Then the topic turned to which of them had the oldest profession. Well, said the physician, in Genesis, it tells how the Lord took a rib from Adam and fashioned the first woman, Eve. [Of course, Biblical literacy takes you only so far; as we all know, the first woman was Lileth,] Surely that was a medical procedure. Yes, said the civil engineer, but before that, it tells how God fashioned Heaven and Earth from chaos, and that was certainly a feat of engineering. Well, said the politician, don't forget that first there was chaos.

² That was the NRSV. The New Jerusalem Bible used the phrase, “made a deep impression upon”. After handing out the other readings, I had only the New Jerusalem for the Gospel reading. I decided not to swap books, since this would underscore my point about the wimpy translation.

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© Copyright 2006 John Stewart.
Last modified: Sat 4 Mar 2006