Sermon
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
January 8, 2017
“The world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes. The world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us, and we can’t quite see the shape of it.”
This quote describes the experience of many Americans right now, whether this feeling motivated their vote in the election, or whether the results of the election caused them to feel this way, or whether they have felt this way for some time.
This quote is from Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann as he talks about the writings of the Hebrew prophets, shared by Jews and Christians. He says that, like the people of that time:
The world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes. The world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us, and we can’t quite see the shape of it.
WAKE UP
The Hebrew prophets, like many prophets, were those who told us not to accept our current reality as normal and acceptable.
They told us: Do not sleep. Wake up!
If you follow the news, it can be tempting to check out… to go back to sleep. There are so many things happening in our country and our world that go against our belief in the inherent dignity and worth of all people, our care for the interdependent web, our values of reason, respect, responsibility… Much is at risk, yet some are saying: “Wait and see” or “It won’t be as bad as we fear” or, even “It will be bad, but I just don’t know what can be done.”
This is a time to be a people of prophecy.
The typical understanding of prophecy is future-telling. But this is a narrow view.
A VISION
Prophets cast Visions.
Prophets see deeply into reality, and can call forth what theists would call God’s hope for the world, and what nontheists could call Hope for a world better than we can even imagine.
As Unitarian Universalist Richard Gilbert says in The Prophetic Imperative,
Prophecy in the Bible does not concern itself primarily with FOREtelling future events. It deals rather with FORTHtelling the intuitively felt will of God…Prophets were not so much predictors of the future as they were its architects.
Prophets cast Visions. Think of Martin Luther King Jr and his speech: “I have a dream.”
Prophets cast paradigm-shifting Visions that push us beyond the status quo.
Prophetic visions are two part, sometimes simultaneously: JUDGMENT and HOPE.
JUDGMENT
Here is an example of judgment from the Prophet Jeremiah. Hear these words for our time:
My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain!
Oh, the walls of my heart!
My heart is beating wildly;
I cannot keep silent;
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
the alarm of war.
Disaster overtakes disaster,
the whole land is laid waste.
…
For my people are foolish,
they do not know me;
they are stupid children,
they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil,
but do not know how to do good.”
I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
(Jeremiah 4:19-20, 22-26)
Prophets see and say, they judge and lament.
Because of their sharp critique, prophets are those who make us uncomfortable.
In fact, if we have become comfortable with a prophet, we have probably selectively adopted only their teachings which come easy to us. As Parker Palmer says:
Avoid the bad habit of domesticating the prophet of your choice, turning [them] into a cheerleader for your way of thinking and way of life. Remember that all the great prophets were courageous and outrageous folks who railed against the powers-that-be, challenged [the] self-satisfied, threatened the prevailing social order, and would find you falling short in some significant ways.
Because they offer such critique, prophets are often on the margins, and often not even recognized or appreciated until after their death.
As Cornel West says,
A prophetic person tells the truth, exposes lies, bears witness and then, usually, is pushed to the margins or shot dead.
HOPE
Prophets are cast out not only because they critique but because they cast visions must of us cannot fathom – they are so beyond our current world.
Perhaps you have heard before these verses from Isaiah:
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
…
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 2:4; 6:9)
Prophecy is a vision of both judgment and hope – a vision of a radically different and wonderfully possible world.
A hopeful vision can lead a people, in the same way that we Unitarian Universalists strive to be guided by the vision of Beloved Community.
Despite how dangerous the world feels, how bleak the landscape, how small our efforts seem, how great the stakes, how embedded the disease…the Vision tells us we must not settle for anything less than our greatest hopes, even if we do not live to see them realized.
If we give up, if we fall asleep, if we normalize what should never be allowed, then that vision – that possible reality – will surely be cut off from us because we won’t even recognize the opportunities, the resources that may emerge.
It says in Isaiah:
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
(Isaiah 43:19)
But if we are asleep, we cannot see the new thing; if we become cynical and hardened, we lose our flexibility for new ways.
ON THE OUTSIDE EDGE OF THE INSIDE
One of the most powerful images I have encountered to describe the location of the prophet is Richard Rohr’s concept of living on the outside edge of the inside.
At the edge, you have not renounced the world, nor are you blindly loyal to the world. You have one foot in and one foot out. Or perhaps both feet in but leaning out. Or both feet out but leaning in. Or coming and going, tending the doorway between.
On the edge of the inside, Jesus was a Jew critiquing Judaism. Buddha had awakened from the world but remained within it, teaching king and beggar alike the Middle Way between the two extremes of indulgence and asceticism.
In our history, Unitarians and Universalists were always on the edge of the inside because of their Christian heresies: That all are saved, that God is good, that divinity is within us. And now Unitarian Universalist churches are full of doubters and questioners who nonetheless show up to church – on the outside edge of the inside.
Many of you probably know what it feels like to be on the outside edge of the inside …
…Circles you navigate where you don’t quite fit in, but you can’t quite give up on them completely. …The teacher trying to transform the educational system from the inside. The consumer trying to minimize their ecological footprint and question the system itself. The citizen in an imperfect democracy working to fix it by protest, by voting, and by organizing. The artist who learns the rules to break them, and then puts their work where those who most need to see it, see it.
Richard Rohr says:
[The prophet] is always on the edge of the inside. Not an outsider throwing rocks, not a comfortable insider who defends the status quo, but one who lives precariously … It is a unique kind of seeing and living, which will largely leave the prophet with “nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 21:16-17). … You can only truly unlock systems from within, but then you are invariably locked out. When you live on the edge of the inside, you will almost wish you were outside. [But] Then you are merely an enemy…a persona non grata, and can largely be ignored or written off. But if you are both inside and outside, you are the ultimate threat, the ultimate reformer and the ultimate invitation.
It takes courage and strength to live on the edge of the inside.
All prophets said “Why Me? Who am I to do this? What if I get it wrong? What if they don’t listen? Choose him/her instead.”
But they do it, because they are called by God. For nontheists, imagine this calling as a longing, a knowing, a fire in the belly, a gnawing at your conscience, a spark in your mind… and then an acting on it.
We all have the power to be prophetic.
Or at the least (and this is not small), to do our part to support prophets.
Unitarian Universalist Rebecca Ann Parker says:
It is a mistake to see [the prophet] as an isolated, heroic individual. It is better to see him/her as the crest of a wave.
We – as individuals and as a church – can be part of that wave.
If we do our part to stay awake, to question, to act up, who knows what great prophecy – what great vision – might rise to the top of our collective wave?
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
