St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday,
December 4, 2005
Prophets for Our Time – Rev. David Mundy
Isaiah 40:1-11 Mark
1:1-8
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Do you know this face? Even if you don’t listen to popular music, it is
very famous one. The rock band this man is part of may be the most popular on
the planet with concerts drawing huge crowds everywhere they go.
His name is Bono (it’s B-aw-no, not B-oh-no, the late husband of Cher),
and while he was born in Ireland he is definitely a global citizen. He has been quoted as
saying that his goal is to change the world and he acts as though he means it.
In the last decade he has worked steadily for causes that will bring about
change for the poor and the marginalised in developing countries and he has
used his popularity as a rock star to gain audiences with world leaders.
He has spoken with, and persuaded, and admonished American presidents
Clinton and Bush, as well as British Prime minister
Tony Blair, and our PM, Paul Martin. Bono even met with the late pope, John
Paul the Second on several occasions to speak about the Christian response to
poverty and disease, particularly AIDS.
There is a great story about one of those meetings. The pope gave Bono a
rosary, a set of prayer beads, and the singer’s response was to take off his
trademark sunglasses and give them to the pontiff. John Paul put them on and
broke into a big grin. A number of photographers caught this event on film but they were quietly asked to
relinquish it before they left, with concerns that this didn’t fit the image
for a pope.
Bono has had a fair amount of success in his efforts. Earlier this year
he and his longtime friend Bob Geldoff
persuaded the G-8 leaders to relinquish forty billion dollars worth of loans to
African nations in the midst of the Make Poverty History campaign and
concerts. And in the late nineteen
nineties he was an active spokesperson and advocate for the Jubilee
debt-reduction campaign which was based on biblical principles.
Actually it may surprise many of Bono’s fans
that he is a person of faith who prays daily and reads his bible. He is
reluctant to speak out too much about religion because to use his words “ you
know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company
most of the time” An
evangelical Christian men’s magazine recently named Bono as its “man of the
year” even though he looks every inch the stereotypical rocker and tends toward
salty language when he is keen to make a point.
Would we go so far as to say that Bono is a prophet for the new
millennium, in the tradition of biblical prophets? That might seem sacrilegious given what he
does for a living, but the job description says that a prophet is a “voice
crying in the wilderness, ” the phrase we heard in
both our passages this morning. A prophet calls us to look and truly see what
we would just as soon ignore in the way of injustice. A prophet says, lift up your head
and see what is around you and respond as though you are one of God’s people –
now, before it is too late. There is nothing to suggest that the biblical
prophets set out to be contentious, and some of them were extremely reluctant
to respond to God’s call, yet their messages often challenged the status quo,
the accepted ways of being in the realms of religion and politics.
Some of the ancient prayers or
collects for this Advent season speaks of being rattled and shaken: “Stir
up, we beseech thee, thy power, O Lord, and come . . . "
"Stir up our hearts O Lord, to make ready the way of thine only-begotten Son . . . "
And during this season of Advent we hear the
voices of the prophets of Israel such as Isaiah. This morning we also heard
about a man who was a contemporary of Jesus and could be called a prophet. He was actually a relative of Jesus, named
John, who created a stir in his time, calling people to repentance, and
baptizing them for the forgiveness of sins in the muddy waters of the Jordan
River. Of course there was no media coverage of what John was doing but somehow
people got word and went out to the remote spot, well away from Jerusalem and
Jericho. Even the religious leaders left the safety of the city to see what was
happening and according to two of the other gospels, John the Baptist endeared himself to
them by calling them a brood of snakes. No one ever said that prophets had good
people skills!
John tells the crowds that even though he is
baptizing them as a symbolic U-turn in their lives he is not the main event.
Someone is coming – Jesus is coming – and he will be the powerful wind of the
Holy Spirit in their midst. How did John know this? Had Jesus and John talked
through the years? We could speculate all we want, but what we hear is that
John says that he is not worthy to bend down and untie the sandals of Jesus. He
is preparing the way for the Messiah, the Christ.
It is important to hear the prophetic voices
from the past. Are there prophets for our time? Perhaps you wouldn’t choose a
millionaire rock star who flies around in a private
jet as your example of a modern-day voice crying in the wilderness. Then again,
the God we worship is full of surprises.
Of course not every person is meant to be a
prophet. Most of us spend our lives doing fairly sensible and predictable
things, establishing families and making what we hope will be decent livings
and, if we are people of faith, trying to follow Christ in the events of every
day. Many ministers would prefer to be pastors or shepherds of the flock rather
than prophets who stir up controversy. There is no sin in this.
Still, it is necessary to listen to those who
call us from the conventional and the status quo so that our way of living from
Monday to Saturday is consistent with our way of worship on Sundays. One of my
colleagues has a rather vivid image of the role of the prophets in our
midst. He says that the prophets and
visionaries climb up to the very tops of the trees and while they are swaying
dangerously back and forth in the breeze yell down “I think I can see where
we want to go from up here!”
Those of us who stay sensibly on the ground
tend to shout back “get down from there before you hurt yourself!”And when we do that, it’s a sin.
When we ignore or even silence the prophets we are attempting to ignore and
tame the God who will not be tamed. Only a few will be called as prophets.
Every one of God’s people is called to recognize the prophets of our time and
of times past.
Perhaps you wonder how the message of the
prophets, old and new, fits with the theme of peace for this Sunday. We need
the reminder that the peace of God is not a cocoon. Peace is not a substitute word for passivity
or self-protection. The word for peace in Hebrew is shalom. It means bringing harmony and balance to
the lives of humans and to all of creation in the peaceable kingdom. And in this season when we tend to focus on
the birth of the baby Jesus we need to remember that he was put to death because
he was the Way of Shalom, the Prince of Peace, one who would bring down the
mountains and fill in the valleys which separate us from one another. Jesus is
the saviour of the world and he will not let us rest until the unfairness and
the inequities which are all around us are made right.
So, we come to understand that it is not peace
if we are able to live to old age while the average lifespan of a person in the
African nation of Malawi is thirty six years and a woman dies of AIDS in Africa
every thirty seconds. It is not peace if we can turn up the thermostat on cold
winter days while the victims of an earthquake in Pakistan shiver in the cold
of winter. It is not peace if we can spend a loonie
for a cup of coffee without a blink while more than a billion people on
God’s earth live on less than a dollar a day.
It’s not that we must be mired in guilt for our
abundance, and we aren’t expected to individually fix a world that is bent and
broken in many places. We can choose to be the shalom-makers that Jesus calls
us to be, both as individual Christians and as the community of Christ. Rather
than turning away in despair we make the day-to-day decisions which will
demonstrate our faithfulness to Christ and make a difference.
And every once in a while the prophetic voices
will be heard and honoured and acted upon. You might remember that a couple of
years ago I suggested that the Canadian environmental activist, Elizabeth May,
was a prophet for our time, working tirelessly for thirty years, bringing attention
to virtually every major environmental issue.
Ms May is an Anglican, but we can be generous
and count that as a Christian. In a conversation years ago she told me that her
faith has sustained her when she felt as though she was a voice crying in the
wilderness. It was wonderful to see a couple of weeks ago, when another pop
star, Shania Twain was getting all the attention for her Order of Canada, that
Elizabeth May received one as well.
I will conclude today with words from a
contemporary song and an ancient one. In one of the band U2's hits we find the
enigmatic words
I believe in the kingdom come Then all the colors will bleed into one Bleed into one Well, yes I'm still running You broke the bonds And you loosed the chains Carried the cross Of my shame Of my shame You know I believed it But I still haven't found what I'm looking for But I still haven't found what I'm looking for But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
The message is that we haven’t arrived yet, which is part of the message
of Advent. Scripture promises that the day will come. The other song is the
psalm for today, psalm eighty-five, which
tells us that our yearning for justice will be fulfilled and we will
turn to God in our hearts and then: “Steadfast love and faithfulness will
meet: righteousness and peace will kiss each other. “
We thank God for the prophets of every age.