Ezekiel 37:1-14, Mark 6:1-13
July 5th, 2015
FBC|WJ
Will you pray with me?
God of the
prophets and saints, God of the martyrs and the sages, speak to me, speak
through me, if necessary, in spite of me. Always beyond me that in everything
you may be glorified by your Son Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit
lives and reigns forever. Amen.
They say
that the fireworks of the 4th of July can cause trauma for those who
are experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. So much, that this year, there
was a social media campaign to remind people to be considerate of those who
have experienced emotional or physical trauma after being sent out to war and
have to come home to hear bombs bursting in air.
I’m sure the prophet Ezekiel and
the twelve that were sent out far and wide were feeling a little bit of
emotional trauma or even PTSD after what happens to them in our lessons today.
Ezekiel is told he is a prophet, and must go and prophesy to the dead dry bones
of Israel. And likewise in Mark’s Gospel we hear of the disciples going out and
taking nothing with them and proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand. This
is a really great definition of a prophet: challenging the comfortable and
comforting the challenged, proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand.
This got me
thinking a little bit this week about what a modern day prophet might look
like. When I say the word prophet or prophecy I immediately as you might go to
the Left Behind series or people standing on the street with placards across
their chest saying that you’re going to hell in a hand-basket unless you say
the sinner’s prayer three time each Tuesday morning before tea-time. When we
hear the word prophet we think of someone or some concept that is dare I say a
little off their rocker.
But then we
mention the prophets of old, when we think of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi,
Ezekiel, Amos, we see respect and dignity because these people heard the voice
of God and acted. So let me propose to you that being a prophet requires three
things.
The first
thing being a prophet requires is tough skin, ask any preacher who proclaims
the word of God and then gets negative feedback after a sermon and they will
tell you that to be a proclaimer of the Gospel message you have to have tough
skin. To be a prophet in this day and age requires you to be able to take
things for a grain of salt. It requires that you stand for what you know to be
true about God and the community of faith and that you listen to the voice of
God some times in spite of what the community around you is saying. We see this
best in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus said, “If a place will not welcome you and
they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake the dust off your feet as
testimony against them.” Friends we need a few dusty prophets in our midst. At
my home church of Broad Street United Methodist in Statesville there’s this one
church lady who when I was interning there and was very obviously frazzled
before the service would remind me to, “Wipe it away.” Don’t let anxiety over
your message threaten what God might do through you.
The second
thing a prophet must possess in our day and age is soft skin. You might say to
me, now preacher you’re getting a little off your rocker there yourself. You
just said that prophets must have tough skin and now you’re saying that to be a
prophet you must have soft skin? Why yes, dear friends, I am saying that to be
a prophet in our time you must have soft skin. You must possess vulnerability
and a soft-spot for the people who need it most. You must be willing to meet
people where they are and prophesy to their dry bones. For in so doing you are
offering them an encounter with Jesus Christ. You are reminding them that there is nothing in death or life, in the world as it is, or the
world as it shall be, nothing in all creation that can separate us from the
love of God. Now that requires you being willing to admit to the people that
you have touched the wounds of Christ as Thomas wanted to, and Christ has
touched your wounds. It requires you being honest about who you are and whose
you are. It is imperative to be a prophet that you lay everything on the line,
even if it risks you being an outcast, a social pariah, or even death itself.
Finally, the third and possibly most important thing that
being a prophet requires of you would be as Bishop Michael Curry would say,
“You have to be a crazy Christian.” Bishop Curry, who was elected this past
week as the 27th presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church has this
to say about being a crazy Christian, “We need Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real and
that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the Gospel. Crazy
enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil
and death. Crazy enough to believe, as Dr. King often said, that though “the
moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward justice.” We need some
Christians crazy enough to believe that children don’t have to go to bed
hungry; that the world doesn’t have to be the way it often seems to be; that
there is a way to lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside; that
as the slaves used to sing, “There's plenty good room in my Father's kingdom,”
because every human being has been created in the image of God, and we are all
equally children of God and meant to be treated as such.” You see Bishop Curry
is on to something. If we’re going to speak with the authority of Elijah or
Ezekiel we need the craziness of King David dancing or Daniel believing that
prayer could shut the mouths of lions. If we’re going to heal, preach, and
teach like Moses did in the dessert or like Jesus did in the Gospel then we’re
going to have to be crazy enough to believe it to be true. You see being a
prophet is more than prophesying to dead bones, it’s about believing in the
resurrecting power of a God who can cause life to come to those dead, dry,
bones. I mean those bones were really dry, they were dead and gone, yet the God
of life and death can bring forth the beauty of life from even the driest of
bones.
This prophet stuff had me thinking
of a prophet of modernity who called out the powers at be and said that they
must change. The man had tough skin, yet was vulnerable to the weak and the
enslaved: A man by the name of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was a
former slave who became a black abolitionist and African Methodist Episcopal
Zion preacher during the 19th century. You see on July 5th,
1852, 163 years to the day, Frederick Douglass gave a speech entitled, “What to
the Slave is the 4th of July?” In his speech he categorically and
singlehandedly tells a crowded group of New Yorkers a prophetic word about the
church, this is what he said, “But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the
wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made
itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American
slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights
of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to
the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave;
that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an
escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the
Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for
Christianity.” Now if you were a Christian sitting in that room 163 years ago
you would feel the sting of those words no doubt, Douglass goes on to say, “Let the religious press, the
pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical,
missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers
against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood
would be scattered to the winds.” You see what Douglass did? He called them out
with tough skin, pleaded to them with a crazy notion and finally ends with
vulnerability here at the end of his speech, “Allow me to say, in conclusion,
notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the
nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which
must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not
shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I
began, with hope.”
Dear people of God that’s what it
means to be a prophet. It means laying down the sword and shield down by the
riverside. It means calling for an end to the sins of this world and of the
church. It means that in our time and our place we are called to be Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Peter, Paul,
Andrew, Thomas, even a representation of Jesus himself. This, my friends is our
solemn duty, and one we must not take lightly.
In the Episcopal tradition there is
a book entitled, Holy Women, Holy Men that
commemorates the work of those well-known saints who have gone on to glory.
Each person honored in that book has a prayer, and I’d like to pray the prayer
that praises God for the work of Frederick Douglass as we close. May we pray
together?
Almighty
God, whose truth makes us free: We bless your name for the witness of Frederick
Douglass, whose impassioned and reasonable speech move the hearts of a
president and a people to a deeper obedience to Christ. Strengthen us also to
be outspoken on behalf of those in captivity and tribulation, continuing in the
Word of Jesus Christ our Liberator; who with you, and the Holy Spirit dwells in
glory everlasting. Amen.
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