Pastoral or
Prophetic?
November 19, 2024
I belong to a group of four people ordained in the United Church
of Christ that meets weekly via Zoom. Two of us, including me, are fully
retired. One is transitioning to retirement. One isn’t sure whether she is
retired or not. We call ourselves a lectionary group, and most weeks we get
around to talking about one of more of the readings for the upcoming Sunday
from the Revised Common Lectionary. We also “check in,’ that is, we share what’s
going on in our lives. Our doing so is sometimes helpful, sometimes not, but we
keep doing it week after week. We’ve been doing it for years. I like and, more
importantly, respect the other members of the group, and, as far as I know,
they respect me. The group must be meaningful for all four of us or else we
wouldn’t keep meeting the way we do. Which doesn’t mean we agree with each
other on everything. We come from different backgrounds. We have different
strengths and different interests. Still, we meet online and talk, and that is
a good thing.
We met this morning, and as we did a difference between the
other three members of the group and me became perfectly clear to me. I’ve
noticed it before, but it was screaming at me this morning. It is a difference
in what we believe ourselves called to be doing these days. In terms of
Christian ministry, it is the difference between charity and justice. Put
another way, it is the difference between being pastoral and being prophetic. It
is the difference between primary focus on the personal or primary focus on the
societal or political. It is indeed a significant difference.
It came up this morning because I am scheduled to preach at
a local UCC church this coming Sunday. I am using part of one of the readings
for that Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary. It is 2 Samuel 23:3b-25a: “One
who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of
morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land. Is not my house like this with
God?” NRSV. The “my” in question here is King David. The “my house” refers to him
and his descendants as kings of Israel and Judah.
A couple of my Zoom friends and I drew very different
lessons from these words. One or two of my colleagues wanted to dismiss them as
meaningless to us because they refer to the house of David. There hasn’t been a
house of David for over 2,500 years, and no descendant of David, of course, has
ever ruled over our country. I said no. These ancient biblical texts are still
alive for us because they have broader meanings that transcend their narrow,
technical meaning. I didn’t say, but I understand, that that doesn’t mean you
can read anything you want into them. You have to stay true to the text as you
seek meaning in it. But that’s not hard to do in the case of these verses.
These verses are about the blessing of just rulers whether they be individual
people or governmental institutions. Just rule is a great blessing for the
people. That meaning is clearly there in these few words. Conversely, these
words also at least imply that unjust rule is a curse for the people, which
indeed it is.
Whereupon one of our group in particular started talking, as
he usually does, about taking care of individual people in need right where we
are. He has a great history of doing that. He has worked with unhoused people
in the greater Seattle area for years. He has done great work with them. He has
aided individual people, and he has advocated for the homeless at the state and
local level. I respect him greatly for that work. It is work of vital
importance, and this man has done more of it than just about anyone I know, myself
included.
This kind of work is what we can call “pastoral.” Most of us
ordained folks are or at one time in our lives have been called to pastoral
work. That work is often the work of being a parish pastor to a local church,
but it can include other things too. Pastoring is the work of caring for
people. It is sacred work. It is standing with Christ’s people both
individually and collectively, helping them in whatever way we can in whatever
is going on in their lives.
We can also call this kind of work, or at least some of it, “charity.”
It is giving of what we have to people in need of it. It is often the giving of
money to charitable institutions, but it can be other sorts of giving too. It
can be giving of one’s time. It can be what may seem to be very little, like
simply sitting with someone who is in need, something that is far more powerful
than most of us realize. Charity can be using whatever skills, talents, and
abilities we have to help others. President Jimmy Carter has famously done that
working with Habitat for Humanity. There is no question but that God calls all
of us to do as much charity as we can.
But charity is not all that God calls us to. God also calls
all of us to be prophets. At Numbers 11:29, for example, Moses says: “Would
that all the Lord’s people were
prophets.” Now, to understand what that means, we have to understand what a prophet
is. In common parlance, a prophet is often understood to be one who can
accurately predict the future. That, however, is not the primary meaning of the
word in the Hebrew Bible, where the biblical prophets mostly appear. Yes, the
prophets of ancient Israel did sometimes accurately predict the future,
especially when they said that the Hebrew kingdoms of Judah and Israel would be
destroyed because of their sinfulness. A prophet, however, was, and is, someone
who speaks the truth of God to the people, which may or may not include
predicting the future. The Hebrew prophets often say that God has given them a
word to proclaim to the people, and that’s what they did.
I have a personal experience of God calling me to be in
effect if not in title a prophet. In 1994, I was a lawyer trying to run my own
law office. I was not succeeding at it, and I was finding it nearly impossible
to make myself do the little bit of legal work I had to do. So one day I
cleared my mind as much as I could and asked myself: Why am I having so much
trouble practicing law? From somewhere deep inside me the answer immediately,
instantaneously came: “You’re not a lawyer!” Which was of course ridiculous
since I was actually a lawyer; but when I argued with the answer, the answer
just kept coming: “You’re not a lawyer!” So I asked myself: “So what am I?”
Again the answer appeared in literally no time at all: “You’re a preacher!”
Which was of course also ridiculous because at that time I was nothing of the
sort. So I ended my psychospiritual exercise and went back to trying,
unsuccessfully, to practice law. Years later, of course, a preacher is
precisely what I became.
Now, my inner voice, which I now understand to have been the
voice of the Holy Spirit, said I was a preacher not that I was a prophet. But
what is preaching? Is it not proclaiming, to the best of one’s ability, the
truth of God? Is it not attempting, to the best of one’s ability, to bring
divine truth to the people in ways that are meaningful to them? One way to do
that is to be pastoral, and I am arrogant enough to believe that I have been a
good pastor for the people of the churches I served.
But the call to be a preacher is also, necessarily and unavoidably,
a call to be a prophet. Or at the very least, I am convinced in the depth of my
soul that my call to be a preacher included a call to be a prophet. Of course,
I’m no Moses. I’m no Isaiah or Jeremiah or Amos or Micah. I am, however,
someone with an understanding of as much of God’s truth as I am capable of
having. And I am someone with a certain skill with language both written and
spoken. At least since I did that exercise thirty years ago in which God told
me I’m a preacher, I have been convinced that I have truth to tell that the
world desperately needs to hear. It’s not my truth. It is God’s truth as I
understand it, truth that I have discerned over the entire course of my life
but most especially since I started seriously to study the Bible and good
Christian theology many, many years ago. It is truth I have learned from
Tillich, Hall, Borg, Crossan, and other great theologians and popularizers of
good Christian theology. It is not truth that God has revealed exclusively or
especially to me. But it is truth of which I am quite sure, and it is truth
that I truly feel called to proclaim. I truly believe that God calls me to be a
prophet to the limited extent that I am able to be and within the narrow
confines within which I may have any influence.
Two weeks ago today, my country, the United States of
America, elected the American fascist Donald Trump president for the second
time. It gave Trump’s cult of personality called the Republican Party control
of both houses of Congress. In other words, my country put itself in the hands
of American fascists. Donald Trump is following a well known fascist handbook
of telling lie after lie after lie and of stirring up public rage at innocent
people while telling the public that only he can deal with those horrible peope
effectively. That’s what Hitler did with the Jews. It’s what Trump is doing
with immigrants.
Now, tragically, Trump will soon be in a position of power
from which he can, and will, unleash immense amounts of harm on this country
and on God’s world. He will give the selfishly wealthy even more control over the
country than they have had before, which was already far too much. He will
destroy as many governmental programs that actually care for people as he can. He
will at least attempt to do with people who have immigrated to this country
what Hitler originally wanted to do with the Jews, namely, not kill them but
deport them. Nothing but harm will come from the upcoming Trump presidency, and
about that there simply is no doubt.
So, what does God call us to do today? To do charity of
course. There have always been far too many people in this country who need
charity. The need for charity is one of the primary things the American
political and economic systems create. The upcoming Trump administration will
make even more people poor. It will discriminate in new ways against people
Trumpists don’t like, people like transgender folk. We are in for hard times,
harder times, indeed, than this country has faced at least in decades and in
some ways has faced ever. And some of us are in for harder times than others of
us are.
Therefore, we must be prophetic. We must speak up. We must
speak out. We must speak truth to the people. We must speak truth to power. Can
any one of us actually defeat the Trump administration? No, of course not. But
that truth does not relieve us of the obligation to speak out. To proclaim God’s
truths of love, justice, and peace to an aching world. We simply have no choice
but to do it.
Now, I just mentioned “peace.” Peace is of course a kingdom
value, and I mean in no way to diminish that truth. But during my Zoom
lectionary group meeting this morning, one of us spoke of us pursuing “the ways
that make for peace.” When I heard that I thought: No. Pursuing the ways that
make for peace is not what we are called to do today. In 1933, the Nazis were
in the process of taking over the government of Germany. Hitler became chancellor,
the head of the government, by legal means in January of that year. But he had
no intention of retaining power by legal means. He intended to create a fascist
dictatorship grounded in violence, hatred, and fear. The German people were not
called to work for peace with the Nazis. Rather, God called them to denounce
the Nazis. God called them to be prophets. Prophets for peace, yes; but not
peace with the Nazis. Peace opposed to the Nazis. The bringing of peace by getting
rid of the Nazis.
Some German Christians got it, but most didn’t. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was an anti-Nazi prophet, though we can disagree over whether or not
he was justified in joining a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Far too few
Germans got it about Hitler, but God was calling all of them to resist. To
resist nonviolently I suppose, but still to resist. To be prophets. To speak
God’s truth in the face of the diabolical lies the Nazi regime was feeding
them.
Far too few Germans got it about Hitler, and far too few
Americans get it about Donald Trump. Trump has already begun to create an
administration intending to destroy the American government rather than build
it up as a source of justice for the American people. He’s doing it because he
is a fascist who wants to be an American dictator; and fascist dictators cannot
have healthy governmental institutions functioning the way they should, for
such institutions get in a dictator’s way. Fascist dictators like the one Trump
wants to be need personal loyalty not professional competence. In Nazi Germany,
soldiers and civil servants signed the Hitler oath in which they pledged
allegiance to Hitler not to the German constitution. Trump and his people will
swear an oath to support and defend the US Constitution, but they won’t mean
it. Trump is loyal only to himself. His people are loyal only to him. Will he
introduce an explicit Trump oath and require all American soldiers and civil
servants to take it? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Or not just wait and see. Rather, be God’s prophets in the
dangerous, threatening atmosphere Trump is creating and will continue to create
in our country. Speak God’s truth every chance we get. Proclaim God’s word of
justice for the poor, the weak, and the marginalized every change we get. Speak
God’s truth to everyone we know. Speak God’s truth in public every chance we
get. Speak God’s truth to power strongly and without ceasing. Will our doing it
change anything? Perhaps not, but we know one thing for certain. Our failing to
heed God’s call for us to be prophets will only ease Trump’s path to the
dictatorship he so wants to create. So let’s be prophets, shall we? It’s the
least we can do.