The Reluctant Prophet

The Reluctant Prophet

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

Scripture: Exodus 3:1-4:17 Isaiah 6:1-8, Jeremiah 1:4-10

What is a prophet? We’ve all heard of such a thing, haven’t we? There are prophets mostly in the Old Testament. Some of them have books named after them—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, and others. We’ve heard of them, but do we really know what a prophet is? Frankly, I don’t think so. See, prophet today has come to mean someone who predicts the future. If we say someone has been prophetic we probably mean that she or he has correctly predicted some future event. Maybe we even think that that’s what those Old Testament prophets were mostly about. Jeremiah, for example, prophesied that the Babylonians would conquer Jerusalem and Judah. The Babylonians did precisely that. So Jeremiah is a prophet because he predicted that that would happen. Right? Well no actually, not right. Correctly predicting the future is not what those Old Testament prophets, or any true prophets for that matter, are primarily about. We can get a glimpse of what they are primarily about by looking at how three of the greatest of those Old Testament prophets tried so hard to get out of God’s call to them to become prophets. We’ll look at the call stories of Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. I think those stories will tell us a lot about what it really means to be a prophet.

I’ll start with Moses. In chapter 3 of Exodus Moses is tending his father-in-law’s sheep out in the Sinai desert. He comes to Mt. Sinai, except that Exodus here calls it Mount Horeb. Same thing. Just why Moses would drive his father-in-law’s sheep deep into the desert of Sinai isn’t clear, but never mind. Moses sees a bush that is burning but is not burned up. Weird, right? Moses goes over to check it out. Then things get even weirder for poor old Moses. God speaks to him out of the burning bush. Moses, God says, go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. I can easily imagine a standup comedian having fun with that one. I imagine that comedian having Moses say “Yeah. Sure. Right. You’re kidding right? You can’t be serious. Knock off the practical joke. There’s no way I’m going to Pharaoh to tell him to let your people go or anything else for the matter.” Actually all Exodus has Moses say is “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Exodus 3:11 Maybe Moses was thinking I can’t go to Egypt. I killed an Egyptian who was abusing Hebrew slaves and had to flee the place. See Exodus 2:11-15. If I go back they’ll arrest me for murder and execute me. Or maybe he just didn’t think he was up to the task somehow. Whatever. Moses tries to get out of God’s call to him by minimizing himself: “Who am I…?” God’s having none of it. So Moses tries again. What am I to say if the Israelites there ask me the name of the God who supposedly sent me? That’s when the divine name if revealed: I am who I am, or simply I am. God still isn’t having any of Moses’ attempts to get out of this go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go business. So Moses tries again. I’ve never been eloquent, he says. I am slow of speech he says. God brushes this attempt of Moses’ off with assurances that God will help him speak. Or that God will send Moses’ brother Aaron with him and Aaron can do the talking. Eventually Moses gives up and accepts God’s call to be the prophet who would bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

Then we come to Isaiah. His call story is in chapter 6 of the book with his name. There Isaiah reports having had a vision of being in the throne room of God. It’s a terrifying scene. Flying beasts called seraphs. Smoke. The building shaking. Isaiah is terrified. He says Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, but I’ve seen God. He meant by that “now I’m going to die” because the ancient Israelites believed that no human could see God and live. Isaiah wants none of this immediate contact with God because he considers himself a sinner. That’s what “a man of unclean lips” means. Again, God’s having none of it. God sends one of those seraphs to touch Isaiah’s lips with a hot coal. That, it seems, purified Isaiah of his sin. God says “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah answers: “Here I am. Send me.” He tried to get out of being a prophet, and again God was having none of it. So Isaiah gave in and became one of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets.

Then there’s Jeremiah. He reports God coming to him and saying that before Jeremiah was born God had anointed him to be God’s prophet. Like the other two prophets we’ve looked at, Jeremiah tries to get out of it. He says surely you don’t mean me for “I am only a boy.” And again like with those other two prophets God is having none of it. God says Do not say I’m only a boy. You must do what I tell you to do. And God says that God will be with Jeremiah and will protect him. So like the others Jeremiah gives in and becomes one of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets.

What’s going on here? Why do these guys try so hard to get out of God’s call to them to be prophets? I mean, wouldn’t it be a great honor if God came to you and said be my prophet? After all, being one of God’s prophets is a pretty big deal. Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah lived many, many centuries ago, but we still respect and even revere them as true men of God. We still read the books with their names on them and find some great wisdom there. We think of true prophets as great people, don’t we? So why do these guys try so hard to get out of being a prophet of God?

The answer to that question lies in what it actually means to be God’s prophet. God did not call Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah to predict the future. God called them to speak God’s truth to the powers of the world. That’s explicit in the case of Moses. God says Go to Pharaoh and tell him…. Go speak truth to power. It’s less explicit with Isaiah and Jeremiah, but look at what those two actually did. Isaiah went into the northern kingdom of Israel and preached judgment against the kingdom and its rules because of their faithlessness. Jeremiah preached a coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians as God’s judgment of the people’s faithlessness. The king didn’t kill Jeremiah, but he locked him up in a guardhouse and threw him into a dry cistern. All three of these great prophets were called to be prophets by speaking God’s truth to power. That’s what they all did. That’s what a prophet really is, someone God has called to speak God’s truth to power.

And no wonder prophets usually try to get out of it. The powers of the world in ancient times didn’t want to hear God’s truth. God’s truth was always a judgment against them. The true prophet calls them out for oppressing people, for worship false gods, for leading immoral lives, for whatever it is that the powers are doing that is wrong. Worldly powers are always doing something wrong, and worldly powers never like to be told they’re doing something wrong. They always fight back. I mean, Pharaoh came after Moses and his people with his whole army. Trust me, being chased by Pharaoh’s army is not where you want to be. Being a true prophet of God is dangerous business. It was dangerous in the ancient world. It got Jesus crucified. It is dangerous business in our world too. It gets people like Saint Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy murdered. It’s gotten lots of other people killed too. That’s why the prophets so often try so hard to get out of being a prophet. Being one might be an honor, but it is an honor that might well get you killed.

But of course if the only truth here were that some true prophets get killed it wouldn’t mean that much to most of us. Most of aren’t MLK, Jr. None of us is Moses. But the truth is that even being a much less prominent prophet than that is dangerous business too. Take being a local church pastor for example. The role of a pastor has traditionally been defined with three ps. The pastor is called to be priest, pastor, and prophet. The priestly role is leading worship and presiding at the sacraments. The pastoral role is caring for the people of the church. Most church people don’t have too much problem with their pastor filling those roles. They may complain about one thing or another, but it is rarely those roles that gets a local church pastor in trouble with her or his congregation. But then there’s the prophetic role. Every pastor is called to speak God’s truth to the congregation, and time and time again pastors get in a world of hurt when they do.

See, people in power don’t much like to hear God’s truth, but far too often the people in the pews don’t either. God’s truth so often contradicts people’s long-held beliefs and prejudices. God’s truth so often challenges them. It upends their world. It threatens to change their lives. People don’t like that. People outside the church don’t like that, but neither do most people in the church. So they accuse the pastor of “preaching politics,” as if the Gospel of Jesus Christ weren’t political. Like people in one church I served, they may go so far as to say “we don’t want the world coming into the church.” Well, the only way a preacher can never say anything political, can never bring the world into the church, is never to preach the full Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is never to be prophetic, and when a pastor isn’t prophetic that pastor is failing to carry out one of his or her primary functions. Truly being prophetic, truly speaking God’s truth, sometimes gets pastors fired. Or maybe it just gives them no choice but to resign. Getting fired or forced to resign of course is nothing like being killed; but it’s no fun, and it can cause significant difficulties in the pastor’s life. So even at the level of a modest local church pastor being a prophet is a dangerous business.

No wonder so many of the great prophets of the Bible tried to hard to get out of it. A lot of us who have experienced a call to pastoral ministry tried to get out of it at first too. I know I did, and I know that many of my colleagues did too. Yet for all that the truth remains: If we mere mortals don’t speak God’s truth to power, or even to the people of our congregations, that truth just won’t get spoken. And just as God would have none of Moses’, Isaiah’s, or Jeremiah’s excuses for avoiding their calling, God will have none of any of us avoiding God’s call to us to speak God’s truth in the world either. Doing so can be exhilarating, but it can also be dangerous. Like those great prophets of scripture we may be reluctant prophets, but we must be prophets none the less. We must speak God’s word of peace and justice to a violent and unjust world. Yes, that’s dangerous. We need to do it anyway. So let’s get on with it. Amen.