Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
The eye of the beholder …
The right angle …
The perspective …
It’s all in how we look at it …
Someone sees a tree … the leaf catches their eye … or the trunk and its rough bark … the shape of its limbs … or maybe just the location, and all the other trees … and how pleasant it is.
It’s all in how we look at it …
Some see possibility … others see defeat …
Angry people see everything that’s wrong …
People of good cheer walk on the sunny side of the street …
Frightened people jump at their own shadow …
People of worry conjure up futures that will never happen …
Artists see color and lines …
Musicians hear sounds and rhythms …
Chefs taste the seasonings …
Moses sees the Promised Land …
Paul, the beloved community …
I’m all of these people and then some … from day-to-day, and time-to-time.
I can be a person of worry …
I can be angry … I can be frightened … I can be sad.
I can be a man of great faith, hope and peace …
I can love much, and love deeply …I can see the Promised Land … the beloved community …
And, then, sometimes, none of it … my spirit is cold, my soul limps along, my faith collapses … I’m in the shadows!
When I’m in the shadows, I have to haul myself back to the light of my life …
I rehearse the words of faith … Come thou fount of every blessing … tune my heart to sing thy grace …
I read Scripture … The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want …
I think of all the people who have walked the ways of faith before I ever showed up, the cloud of witnesses, my spiritual ancestor.
Women and men of good cheer and faith, who struggled with life, just like I do.
Teachers and ministers who taught me the ways of Christ, and good friends who still teach me the things of God.
Call them prophets …
Moses said to the people: The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet …
Prophets are human beings … frail, fragile - they can lose it and get lost …
Jonah ran away.
Samuel got frustrated.
Moses smashed the “first edition” of Ten Commandments.
A prophet is someone who stands in the middle of a busy intersection … there are no traffic lights … everything is moving fast.
Intersection of time and eternity … the world and God’s love … the visible and the invisible … life and death, goodness and evil … despair and hope … holding it all together … like a traffic cop, waving first to this car, and then to that car … keep the traffic flowing, keep it safe.
Think of the Cross of Christ … a vertical beam connecting heaven and earth … the horizontal beam embracing the world.
Christ at the intersection … holding it all together …
Who are your prophets?
They have their finger on the pulse of the day … they do their homework, the speak well-formed thoughts, grounded in real data, and information, they love, they dream, they hope!
It could be just about anyone …
A novelist … historian … politician …
For me, Jacqueline Winspear and her Maisie Dobbs detective series … Heather Cox Richardson with her brilliant analysis of American history … or FDR and the New Deal.
It could be:
A musician/composer/lyricist … an artist … a 4th grade teacher …
a poet … a dancer … a comedian …
A grandparent, a neighbor, a stranger on the street, or your best friend.
When I lived in Detroit, I often had Sunday morning breakfast at Samson’s Coney Island, on the corner of Five Mile Road and Middlebelt … he opened at 6:00 AM, and sometimes I was the first customer, rewarded with a glass of his homemade grappa (what a way to begin a Sunday morning) …
When I left his restaurant, he would always say: “Be happy, be heepy," whatever that meant … nevertheless, it cheered me, and I called him, “my preacher!”
I left his restaurant fortified in body and soul.
Who are your prophets?
Whose voice do you find compelling and liberating … on a more serious note, those two words - compelling and liberating - must go together, if it’s going to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth …
A voice may be compelling, but not liberating …
Lies can be compelling!
Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, compelling, but not liberating;
Abraham Lincoln of the Union, compelling AND liberating;
Governor Faubus of Arkansas, compelling, but not liberating …
Martin Luther King, Jr., compelling AND liberating …
Let my people go. Says Moses to Pharaoh.
The truth will make you free. Says Jesus our LORD.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Says the Apostle Paul!
Freedom - freedom for ALL … not a select few, not the privileged and the powerful … nor white Protestants living in Nebraska … but all people - the great American dream … from sea to shining sea … often beaten down and trampled upon by those who would restrict the broad reach of freedom for their own interests.
Let me put this way: if freedom for all is missing from what’s being said and done, it’s not the truth … no matter how loudly it’s shouted … no matter how often it’s repeated … no matter how many people believe it.
If freedom for all, liberation for everyone, is missing, it’s just another lie.
As the guardian Knight said to Indiana Jones:
Choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you
Who are you prophets? And what is the truth they speak?
Courtney was a student chaplain at a public hospital in downtown Atlanta. A hard place to work.
She walked into her first hospital room wearing her chaplain badge as she had been taught. “Hi, I’m Courtney,” she said to the older couple in the room. “May I spend some time with you?”
The man looked up at her with contempt in his eyes and said, “Little girl, this is my wife of 62 years. I’ve spent every single day with her. I’m 84 now, but she stopped recognizing me. If you can tell me why God allowed this, you can stay. If not, move on.”
As Courtney recounted the story, she said:
“I wanted to move on, but when I tried to, my feet were stuck.”
All she could think of, she said, was her grandparents — and how much they had loved each other. As she looked at the elderly man, she saw how much he adored his wife.
Unable to think of anything to say, she began to cry, watching her tears drop on the floor of the room. When she looked up, the man had tears streaming down his face as well.
He reached out his hand to her and said, “Chaplain, I’d be honored if you stay.”
That’s when Courtney’s feet moved. And for the next 45 minutes, she held their hands and cried with them.
Sometimes prophets - just hold our hands and cry with us.
Amen and Amen!
