A sermon offered by The Rev’d Dr Ann Edwards
7th December 2024
St Mark’s Anglican Church
The Gap
Prophets © 2024 by Ann Edwards is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
“Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.”
1 Corinthians 14:1
A prophet speaks on God’s behalf, much like a herald for a king, communicating what God wants people to hear. The formal prophetic books of the bible – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets are a bit like anthologies of key moments and realizations of God’s call over time, warnings of judgment, looming destruction, and the path to God’s promised salvation that were mostly ignored. They’re tricky to read, and one scholar suggested that prophets’ words only became cherished when the people realised, too late, that they were right.
The prophetic voice also features in the stories of people like Abraham, Miriam, Moses, Samuel, and today – Zechariah. Individuals who listened to God and spoke God’s truth about the state and future of Israel—sometimes needing God to sort them out first.
Prophecy wasn’t a task people sought out – God’s word can leave people disbelieving, and defensive and angry…
Zechariah sang today’s prophetic song after first being struck voiceless.
Moses made excuses, and asked God to send someone else, anyone else, to speak to Pharoah and lead the people.
Jeremiah said he had to speak the prophetic word because he felt it burning him.
Jonah, of course, did try to run from God’s call to speak… Only to be swallowed by a fish.
The prophets were given dangerous and costly truths to bear, to hold, and to speak for God.
Difficult messages required them to use creative and often shocking methods to capture attention – God had them speak in vivid poetry and enact dramatic stunts—laying in the dirt, building models of destruction, or walking naked—to illustrate their messages.
The prophetic voice was also illustrated in personal sacrifice: some married unfaithful partners as an example, gave their children startling names, and many endured humiliation.
The ancient prophets looked far more like Extinction Rebellion than they did a GPS Debating team.
Uncomfortable? Am I being too political?
Good. That’s the point.
The Good News is political and I am deliberately provoking you with uncomfortable truths because that is the biblical tradition.
Just be grateful no one is walking about naked or cooking over cow dung.
Ok – now I have your attention
These methods – at God’s direction – confronted people, breaking through complacency to point to God’s truth. Prophets painted pictures not for their own ends, but to show an urgent need to avoid a looming disaster in memorable ways that couldn’t be ignored.
Prophecy is still a sacred calling for all God’s people to speak God’s truth in love, knowing the cost.
Prophets discern the whole truth. God’s truth.
The ancient prophets spoke to nations and kings – whole societies – about sin. They called out societies where kings believed their own press, turned their people to idols for their own advantage, and turned away from God’s just rule. The prophets didn’t kick the marginalised individuals and groups who were already on the fringe – they went in to bat for them. They saw the big picture, the crushing inequities that result when we turn from God’s justice, the ways in which people were kept from their share of God’s abundant provision. The ancient prophets implored the kings to lead, and the people to live together, in a way that honoured God in humility, looking after the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, and the outcast.
Today – we all have access to quality information about inequities and injustice in our world, and we all hear the voices of people who tell us the ways in which they have been left behind and are suffering in our society.
And like it or not, God hears those cries too. In the end – good is good. Truth is truth. Fair is fair. Mercy is mercy. Forgiveness is forgiveness.
Prophets speak to the truth of our society, showing the way back to God that will lead us to salvation and life. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Jesus made God’s way crystal clear in the great commands. First, love God. Then – love your neighbour as yourself, as you have been first loved by God.
If we look at how Jesus followed the prophetic tradition, he creatively illustrated God’s message in story and parable, through works of healing, and in memorable acts like flipping tables. His death itself spoke prophetically – it remains an unforgettable witness to the depravity of the civil and religious structures and their crimes against God.
How do we follow Jesus in these creative acts, compelling stories, works of care and healing, actions of protest, and sacrificial example today?
Remember that the harshest rebuke was for Israel’s leadership. Individuals were met by Jesus with love, an invitation to come and see, truth that was difficult to understand, and patience as they struggled. People written off by the religious leaders as sinners or as unclean were upheld, healed, forgiven and welcomed – each one’s need met with compassion.
How do we meet those Jesus calls today, with that same acceptance and welcome.
Love God, love your neighbour as yourself, as you have been loved by God.
Today, our society loves a scapegoat, someone to blame, while whitewashing the systematic failures that are crushing people. Our world teaches us to love our neighbour after we take care of ourselves, and only if it doesn’t really cost us.
As a result…
Loneliness is a crisis, and is increasing. Homelessness and rental stress is rampant while houses and buildings sit empty. A third of First Nations households live in a property with a major structural flaw. People can’t afford to live where they work. Families can’t afford the computers, excursions, and uniforms in our state school system. There is twice the proportion of developmentally vulnerable children in lower socioeconomic areas than there are in higher socioeconomic areas, and these kids are struggling in our one-size-fits-most mainstream schools.
And in just one example of this society’s shocking sin against God –
The kids most affected by these inequities are the most likely to offend and be imprisoned, and these same kids are now going to be judged and punished as though they were adults from comfortable families who were educated, housed, valued, encouraged, loved, fed, and nurtured by their neighbours.
Most children in detention have experienced violence within their homes, poverty, homelessness or the absence of a safe place to call home, or exposure to alcohol and other substance misuse.
They are set up to fail and then blamed for failing.
But there is evidence stretching back to the 1960s that investing in quality early education reduces youth and adult crime rates.
Recent Queensland data collected over decades shows that children who received an enhanced early years curriculum had a better start to school, were more able to participate in class – “behave appropriately” – and were 56% less likely to be involved in serious youth crime by the age of 17. When their families also had culturally appropriate support, the rate of offending in that group dropped to zero.
Did you hear any of that data in the last state election? It was there, with much more evidence, but you had to go looking for it.
Love, forgiveness, and community trumps punishment and marginalisation every single time – because that’s how God loved us first. That’s what Jesus gave his very life to give us: love, forgiveness, community. Salvation.
What is it going to take for truth, justice, and mercy to be heard?
The prophetic voice reminds us that God is calling us to make things right with our world, not to judge the people the world has failed.
Prophets point people back to God’s promises, offering hope and showing the path to reconciliation.
The prophetic voice calls us to live in creative ways that reflect God’s truth—to visibly and memorably love God and love others sacrificially. It speaks what is true and makes all people thrive – there is no motivation to tell people what they want to hear or will pay to read or will cause them to vote. Prophets show Christ’s way by example, they invite people in, one by one, and favour the least, and sing praises of the God who restores justice, forgives sins and brings peace.
That’s the thing about prophets — without fail, they always speak words of hope in our faithful God. Prophecy assures us that no matter how broken the world appears, God’s promises endure and Jesus is setting things right. Now, that is Good News.
In the name of Christ,
Amen
Jeremiah 20:9
Hosea 1:2-8, 9:3
Isaiah 20:3
Jonah 1: 3-17
Exodus 4:13
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/social-determinants-of-health
https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/speeches/social-determinants-and-health-indigenous-peoples-australia
https://www.qfcc.qld.gov.au/sector/monitoring-and-reviewing-systems/young-people-in-youth-justice/raising-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility
https://www.aic.gov.au/crg/reports/crg-2701-02
https://www.aic.gov.au/crg/reports/crg-26-19-20