Being a Prophet
based on Mark 6:14-29; Amos 7:7-15
by Rev. Karen A. Goltz

            What does it mean to be a prophet?  What does it mean to prophesy?  What does it mean for a prophecy to be fulfilled?

            John the Baptist is generally understood to be a prophet.  I know he didn’t call himself a prophet, but most people agree that that’s pretty much what he was.

            And what did he do, that makes his identity as a prophet so clear?  Well, he was the forerunner of Christ.  His first quoted words in Mark’s gospel are, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” (Mark 1:7)  He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4)  In Matthew’s gospel he’s telling off the religious leaders who came to be baptized, basically telling them to change their ways or else they’ll seriously regret it. (Matthew 3:7-10)  He’s doing all this even as Jesus himself arrives for his own baptism.  And not only did John condemn the religious leaders for their actions, today’s gospel lesson tells us he also condemned a king for his actions.

            So John was a guy who got right in people’s faces, getting into their private business and publicly rejecting the things that were common practices in his day, because they were against the will of God.  And how did John know what was and was not the will of God?  What gave him the right?  He knew the scriptures.  The religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, were trusting in their lineage for their salvation.  They were descendents of Abraham, and that’s all they thought they needed.  Never mind God, or the ten commandments, or the Shema.  The Shema is the section in Deuteronomy (6:4-5) that begins: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  The Pharisees and the Sadducees had no love for God, no respect for the spirit of the commandments.  They had the right bloodlines, and John called them on their hypocrisy. 

            And what about King Herod?  What gave John the right to condemn his actions?  Again, John’s knowledge of the scriptures gave him the right.  And John applied the scriptures to Herod’s life.  The full story is that Herod had been married before, and he cast off his first wife for Herodias.  Herodias had also been married before, to Herod’s brother Philip, and had cast him off so she could marry Herod.  This violated several of the commandments, and caused a lot of hurt feelings and animosity on the part of the discarded spouses, not to mention the tension it must have created between the two brothers.  And the commandments’ whole purpose is to help people to be in better relationship with each other and with God.  Herod and Herodias destroyed many relationships for the sake of their own.

            Maybe you’re feeling a little uncomfortable right about now.  I know I am.  This scenario I just described is a very common one today.  Two people find each other and fall in love, whether they meant to or not, and realize they’d rather be married to each other than to the people they’re already married to.  That’s exactly what happened with my paternal grandparents.  Grampa Grimes met a woman he worked with who was also married, and they fell in love.  My grandfather divorced my grandmother, Helen divorced her husband, and the two were married.  And by all accounts theirs was a much healthier union than my grandparents’ had been.  But my grandmother never recovered.  When she died forty years later she was still suffering from the shock, and the betrayal.

            Divorce is a part of our culture.  It’s an accepted part of our culture.  It’s an expected part of our culture.  Divorce is just a part of life.

            But does that make it right?  Does that make it part of God’s will?  I’ll be honest; I don’t like talking about this.  There are so many valid reasons to get divorced; it’s hard to know what’s a valid reason and what’s not.  It’s complicated.  And it’s private.  It’s a private issue between the man and the woman involved, and it’s no one else’s business.

            But as we saw with John’s words and actions, and as the rest of the Bible repeatedly tells us, there is no area in our lives that is none of God’s business.  Everything is God’s business.  I quoted the beginning of the Shema a little bit ago.  The rest of it says, “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)  Those are the times when we are to keep the words of God before us.  So when are we allowed to forget them or disregard them?  We’re not.

            Herodias had a pretty common reaction to John’s pronouncement.  She didn’t like what she heard, so she wanted to shut him up.  She felt criticized by John, so she had her husband send his soldiers to arrest him and have him locked away in prison.  She even wanted him killed, but Herod recognized the truth of John’s words, recognized that he had not spoken from his own sense of morality but simply spoke the will of God as witnessed by the scriptures, and Herod would not allow John’s execution.  Herod liked to listen to John, even though he was perplexed or disturbed by what he heard.  He heard the criticism, and he accepted it, but he didn’t do anything about it.  And when he was trapped by his own boasting, and was faced with the choice of defending John, whom he knew to be of God, or caving in to what was popular and ‘expected’, Herod caved.  And John was killed for speaking a truth that people didn’t want to hear.

            Today we also heard about another prophet who was asked to be quiet because he was saying things people didn’t want to hear.  Amos was a shepherd, called by God to prophesy to the people of Israel.  Amos, too, wasn’t speaking from his own ideas of right and wrong, but from the words of God he was given then and there, all of which conformed to the will of God as witnessed by the books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament.  “The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,” he said.  “And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and God will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”  And before making that proclamation, in the chapters before this verse, God through Amos explains why.  There is no justice in the land.  There is no peace.  The poor are trampled and exploited so that the rich can get richer.  There is no concern for the neighbor.  The people have rejected the blessings given them by God to pursue material satisfaction.  They perform the rituals and sacrifices to God as prescribed in the books of Moses, but they do not keep the commandments, they do not keep God’s words in their hearts.  Needless to say, the people aren’t happy to hear what Amos has to say.  He’s asked to leave.  The king’s ‘official’ prophet tells him, “Go away and prophesy somewhere else.  We don’t want to hear that kind of talk here.”  A reaction very similar to that of Herodias.

            It’s no surprise.  None of us like to be criticized.  None of us like to hear that what we’re doing is wrong, or unacceptable.  In today’s society, the concept of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is practically nonexistent.  With so many different beliefs, there is no one recognized authority, no one source of guidance about what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.  Live and let live is the common philosophy, and, under the guise of respect for others we tend to just accept the beliefs of others as common and acceptable practice, no matter how they may violate the beliefs we have through the witness of scripture.

            And respect for the beliefs of others is a good thing.  There will always be people who do not believe as we do, and those differences are not a license to do harm or practice hatred.  Our beliefs instruct us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and every single person on this earth is our neighbor, to be treated with dignity and respect no matter who they are, where they live, what they’ve done, or what they believe.  But somewhere along the line ‘tolerance’ became a bad word, and was replaced by ‘affirmation.’  I think that’s a tragedy.  The dictionary defines ‘tolerance’ as “The capacity for or practice of recognizing and respecting the opinions, practices, or behavior of others.”  To ‘affirm’ is “to declare positively or firmly; maintain to be true.”  I’m fairly certain that I can tolerate most anything in regards to others’ actions, beliefs, and behaviors.  But I can’t affirm them all; I can’t maintain them all to be valid or true.  And I can’t compromise my own beliefs in order to affirm the beliefs of others.  I will tolerate the beliefs of others; I also expect others to tolerate my beliefs.

            It’s not easy to be a Christian in this day and age.  We’re called upon to hold every aspect of our lives accountable to the will of God as witnessed by the Bible.  The most recent writing in that Bible is roughly one thousand, eight hundred and fifty years old.  There are a lot of people who believe it’s outdated, antiquated, and irrelevant to modern life.  Many of us are willing to turn to it for comfort and affirmation when we need it, but we tend to skip over the hard truths, the parts we don’t like.  We’re like Herodias and we tell people to mind their own business, including God.  We’re like Herod and we cave in to what is popular and expected, even when we know it’s wrong.  We’re like the Pharisees and Sadducees that John encountered, taking the forgiveness of sins part, but conveniently forgetting that repentance part.  And then the intrusion of the prophecies we heard today doesn’t make it any easier.  Amos could have been describing today’s United States, as well as most other developed countries in the world.  John condemned something that about 50% of today’s married couples go through.  Who wants to claim that as part of their belief system?

            If that were all there is to it, I’d say let’s just chuck this whole Christianity thing and live and let live.  But there’s so much more.  The final verses of Amos read, “I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.  I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.” (Amos 9:14-15)  The prophecy of Amos was meant to bring the people towards a time of peace and prosperity for all, a situation that did not exist when Amos was sent by God.

            And John’s primary function was to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, in order to point the way towards Christ.  In Luke’s gospel John even gives some very practical advice.  He tells the crowds that anyone who has two coats should share with someone who doesn’t have any, and to do the same with food for the hungry.  He tells the tax collectors not to collect any more than they are supposed to, and he tells the soldiers not to intimidate anyone in order to extort money.  (Luke 3:10-14)  Share what you have, don’t cheat, and don’t bully.  All pointing the way towards the peaceful and just lives that God wants for us, rather than the self-serving lives we usually choose for ourselves.

            And then there’s one last prophet I want to talk about.  Islam recognizes him as the greatest prophet who lived before Mohammed.  Christianity recognizes him as the Son of God, as Christ our Savior, as the One we killed for speaking the ultimate truth, and the One whose resurrection frees us from the captivity of our own self-serving tendencies.

            Jesus held the people of his day accountable to the will of God as witnessed by the scriptures.  By doing so he offended a lot of people, and challenged the validity of a lot of the social norms of his day.  And he was doing it not out of his own personal human view of morality, but because he knew, better than anyone, that God has a better plan for us than we could ever possibly come up with on our own.  And living that plan, experiencing it in our own lives, begins with being accountable in every aspect of our lives to the will of God, as witnessed by the scriptures.  And living according to God’s will is not an unfair, restrictive burden, but a liberating freedom, a divine gift of grace.  We have the Spirit to guide us and strengthen us in the way of truth, and we have the atoning sacrificial love of Christ to forgive us when we stumble and fall.

            As Christians we are all expected to be prophets.  What does it mean to be a prophet?  It means to be one who keeps the will of God as witnessed by the scriptures as the focal point of your life, the standard by which you evaluate everything.  What does it mean to prophesy?  It means to speak the truth of your own Christian faith in the face of all the other beliefs out there; even as you tolerate those many different beliefs, you still affirm your own.  And what does it mean for a prophecy to be fulfilled?  It means the bringing of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and participation in the ultimate vision of peace and justice, the divine will of God, a privilege we have because of the grace and love of Christ our Lord.