Revd Rowena Francis, Moderator, Northern Synod, The United Reformed Church
Mk 6: 1-13
Ezekiel 2:1-5
2 Cor 12:2-10
A prophet is not welcome at home
Where is the transporter, the beam me up Scottie of Star Trek fame that can avoid congestion and CO2 emissions and move me from one place to another? Where are the brochures for holidays or moving to the moon on a colony in order to relief the pressure on the earth’s resources? In my childhood it was obvious such things were on their way; they were promised. Now it’s the C21st and still no transporters or possibility of moving to the moon in spite of all the wonderful technology around us that can be used for good or bad. I’m a bit disappointed.
Imagine how the folks in Nazareth felt when they heard that an anointed prophet, maybe even the messiah, was coming to town. They went to synagogue that morning with great anticipation but they were disappointed too. “Where is this Messiah? They promised us a Messiah? That person’s no messiah. He’s a common carpenter. That’s Mary’s Son and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. Aren’t his sister’s still living right here with us today?”
If I had been there, I too, would have been disappointed. My line of questioning would have been the same: What gives him the right to stand up in church and teach us? After all, he’s no different than me.
A prophet finds it difficult on home territory. Prophets are often experienced as a thorn in the flesh, a right pain by the community; well at least by those closest to them – family and friends, neighbourhood and local town; before they are dead that is. Then it may be good for a blue plaque to be put up and for them to be claimed as a P.R. exercise. Why are prophets difficult – because they will not shut up! They are in your face. Like, in a family that is entertaining visitors when the child keeps going on and on about why is the house clean, why do we have to wash our hands, say grace – we never do that? So a prophet keeps reiterating the will of God – the need for justice, the need to follow God in obedience, the reality of life through death and not taking after other God’s such as materialism or capitalism or any of the other ‘isms’. A prophet keeps going on about expecting great things and believing in God that the will of God may be realised.
We are disappointed and made uncomfortable by Prophets amongst us. They can be the thorn in the flesh of the community, who will not let us sit back on our laurels and daily live our comfortable lives. Instead they challenge and provoke us with what God desires and seeks; what God wants from us. A prophet is one who speaks by divine inspiration, one through whom God’s will is spoken. ‘This is what I desire. This is what may happen. This is how I, the Lord your God relate to you my beloved creation.’
Most of us are called to be prophets at some point in our lives, but for some it is a more consistent calling and gift. The consequence of the call to prophecy is often isolation and rejection from those who are closest, our family. Cousin Bernie can’t be a spokesperson of God, how presumptuous that she might think she could be!
Jesus Christ was a prophet who not only spoke the will of God, but lived it in his very person, by being willing to die on the cross in order that God’s will of being reconciled with humanity might be brought about. Many people, including his family rejected him. His family wanted to put him away quietly. Those with authority in the community found him to be a right pain and wanted rid of him. Even his disciples misunderstood him and could not grasp the nature of his Messiahship, of dying and rising rather than victorious conquest.
It is all too easy to assume we, in the church, respond well and eagerly to the prophets amongst us today. It is easy for us to assume we, in the church, are the prophetic voice of God now. Yet our gospel reading challenges us to take heed. It is those who are kin and from Christ’s own house who reject him. Anyone who does the will of my Father says Jesus is my mother, my brother and sister. So we as disciples today are part of Christ’s family. There is a great risk that we limit Christ’s power amongst us by our over familiarity with him; that in the church as in Jesus’ home town it is more difficult for the Spirit of Christ to be shown in power; except for the occasional healing. And for Jesus even now to be amazed at our unbelief.
Jesus being very familiar with scripture may well have taken this teaching in our gospel reading ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house’ (Mk 6v4) from its roots in the Ezekiel passage we also shared today.
Ezekiel was called to be a prophet and this is what he was told, ‘Whether those rebels listen to you or not, they will know that a prophet has been among them’. We must speak out God’s word, for we are sent by God, we can expect to be rejected and scorned, to be treated as a pain, but the truth of the message of God will still touch folk and they will know a prophet has been present. Shaking the dust from our feet we are to put time in with those who are responsive and put less energy and resources into those who are fixed and turned away from the call of God at this time.
Prophets may be experienced as a thorn in the flesh but often they also experience one. The apostle Paul had a weakness that brought him to his knees many times. He pleaded with God for healing but it was not to be. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, his weakness was also his strength. For it made Paul aware of his dependence on God and not on himself. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth ‘I am most happy then, to be proud of my weaknesses, in order to feel the power of God’s protection over me. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’
This was true for many other prophets too; Hosea with the weakness of being married to a temple prostitute who was regularly unfaithful to him, Ezekiel whose visions were so pronounced that today we might well diagnose him as schizophrenic. For most of us seeking to speak out God’s message within the world we have a weakness, a thorn in the flesh, a hardship or two, which counterbalances the strength of inspiration by God and enables us to recognise the power of God, the love of God, the majesty of God over and around us. When we face difficulties this enables us to work and speak inspired by the Spirit of God rather than relying on our own strength.
Those who are prophets who speak out God’s will within the world are often rejected and experienced as a pain in the flesh to others, particularly those in leadership positions. Also prophets often experience a thorn in the flesh, a weakness which makes them aware that they can not speak in their own strength alone but must be fed and inspired by God. And thirdly prophets also often have an experience of the awesome nature of God, that overpowering transcendent overwhelming sense of the beauty and grandeur of God.
For Ezekiel at the point of his call he has a vision of the bronze person, shining with a bright light, reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. This dazzling light showed the presence of God. Isaiah had a vision in the Temple of flaming creatures, who cleansed his lips so he could speak God’s word. Paul had the experience of the Damascus Road, a blinding light of the presence of the Risen Christ. Jesus at his commissioning at his baptism experienced the affirmation of the Holy Spirit descending on him as a dove and a voice saying ‘This is my son with whom I am well pleased.’ Occasionally as we come to know what must be said and done as we follow God known in Jesus we too are overwhelmed and have a picture, a glimpse of the grandeur of God. It is part of the prophetic call to have an awareness and experience of the greatness of the one Holy God.
When we come to church, when we worship in garden, or hallowed space at home do we expect to encounter the Holy God? Are we awe-struck and overwhelmed by God’s glory? Just occasionally we may be and when we are it will probably be a challenge to prophecy, to speak out to others what God would have us be and do. But in that call to prophecy there is potential rejection, and probably weakness. But God inspires it and is present within it.
I end with Gerard Manley Hopkins expression of it in his poem God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
This is the inspiration of prophets down the ages and is our inheritance today.
Amen.
