Sunday 1st February 2009 - Some Thoughts

So far this morning, thoughts have been diverse… acknowledgement that the age of prophets is not past… and acknowledgement that silence remains powerful.  I wish simply now to flag a few, further issues and questions.

• The author of Deuteronomy makes clear that we should be listening for, and to the prophets.  Do we do it?  The idea of ‘active listening’ is a popular one at present; we know that listening is more than hearing – and the idea of active listening presupposes that true listening can never be passive.  Listening involves an openness which presupposes the possibilities of profound personal change.  This is difficult.  I repeat, this is difficult: for us, it is about proper spiritual discipline and expectation.  The life of faith is never casual; indifference in the face of the prophetic is not an option.
• Deuteronomy 18 scares and humbles me: all this talks of prophets is not about the ones who are far off.  Prophets are not always gargantuan figures on a 50” plasma TV screen; they are not always those who grab bold, black, banner headlines.  Here, the author writes that the Lord will lift up as a prophet, ‘one of our own people’.  Dilemma.  Jesus knew to his cost that, ‘the prophet is not without honour except in his home town’.  Who are the prophets raised up here?  How do we honour them?
• Deuteronomy also raises the difficult issue of accountability: ignore the true prophet at your peril – and presume to be a false prophet, or dire consequences may fall.  This is not a word to church members and paid ministers respectively.  We must foster discernment as to the one through whom God speaks – and we musn’t assume a divine mantle to dress up the espousal of a personal agenda.  Necessary cautionary notes.

• Talk of the ‘prophetic’ in the OT leads us to ponder the ‘authoritative’ in the NT.  Not everybody’s favourite word… authority.  There are those, we are told, who rebel against authority; some institutions set themselves up as authorities… government, police, censors, armed forces.  The list goes on – and this in itself is significant.  Here, Jesus impressed others precisely because of his authority.  It wasn’t simply a question of confidence or clarity or rhetoric; here was teaching rooted demonstrably in solid foundations.  We are used to pondering, ‘testing and finding wanting…’; what about, ‘testing and finding right?’
• Recognition of Jesus and this authority can come from unlikely places: here, from a profoundly disturbed man in the synagogue. Sadly, we are still not always comfortable with this reality, but if we take seriously NT teaching on the reality of the Spirit, then we can be led to no other conclusion: the most significant insights may yet come from those who appear to be enemies of the faith.  We sacrifice openness to the God who surprises at our peril.
• Yet the authority of Jesus is such that even the most intractable people and situations can be transformed beyond all recognition.  We do not often act as though we believe this… yet if this is not at the heart of our faith, then it is reduced to the status of mouth-eaten security blanket, rather than exalted to something which penetrates indifference and sheds light and hope in those people and places which seem all-too-dark.