Prophetic voices

 

Luke 4: 21-30
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 30, 2022

Photo of a boat compass, heading 240 degrees west

When Jesus says that this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing of it, it’s important to know what that scripture says. He’s reading from a scroll from the prophet Isaiah. Luke quotes it like this: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”



This is how it reads in Isaiah: “The Lord’s spirit is upon me as the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives, to the prisoners, release, to proclaim a year of favor for the Lord (the year of jubilee)” and the rest of the verse that’s missing from Luke, “and a day of vengeance for our God to comfort all who mourn.” (Alter, Isaiah 61: 1-2)



We don’t know why Luke’s version of Isaiah is different. The story as a whole sounds apocryphal; at the least, embellished from what Matthew and Mark wrote. In their versions we don’t hear what Jesus says or if he reads from scripture. The congregation is offended by his teaching rather than calling his words gracious. And yet no one tries to throw him off a cliff; Nazareth is not built on one. The one thing that all three versions agree on is that a prophet is not welcome or accepted in their hometown.

"When we avoid difficult conversations,
we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction."

Peter Bromberg

Prophetic voices often are misquoted, misinterpreted, taken out of context, or used to suit a purpose other than what was intended. Many politicians and organizations that actively work against what Dr. Martin Luther King lived and died for quote him on his birthday for their own gain. For example, on MLK’s most recent birthday, and not for the first time, the FBI tweeted one of his quotes as a means of pointing toward themselves: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” followed by “Everybody can be great because anyone can serve.” This was done with no preamble or apology or even irony about how in 1964 the FBI sent an anonymous letter to King telling him he had 34 days to kill himself or face a sex scandal. How they surveilled him and painted him as a Communist, a liar, and dangerous. It is said that former FBI director James Comey kept a framed copy of the wiretap request on his desk as a reminder of how power is capable of doing wrong. And yet until recently, the FBI designated Black civil activists as “extremists”.



Who remembers the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and former pastor to the Obamas? In 2003 he preached a powerful sermon in which he said the words “God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!” In 2008 during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Dr. Wright’s words were resurrected as a means of damning not only Obama but anyone who agreed with Dr. Wright. Wright was castigated as an extremist rather than a prophetic voice that spoke the very truth to power. A Black preacher who lives closer to the gospel than most Whites do and yet he was condemned as a hater and a racist who deals in violent rhetoric. He touched a mighty tender nerve.

How did you feel when you heard what he said? I can remember feeling proud that Obama was part of the United Church of Christ but then disappointed when he distanced himself from Dr. Wright and the UCC. I also remember feeling embarrassed, confused, and shocked by what Dr. Wright said. It sounded like so much hyperbole but then that betrayed my ignorance, my privilege, and my unconscious proximity to power.

"But what we must bear in mind that what's good news to one person
is bad news to another. While you sit here today knowing that you 
have come to hear good news, you must realize in advance
what's good news for you might be bad news for somebody else.
What's good news for the sheep might be bad news for the wolf."

Malcolm X, July 16, 1959

Prophetic voices can give comfort to the oppressed, but they provoke those with power. Prophetic voices are a balm for the weary, but they sting those who thrive while others suffer, because others suffer. Prophetic voices sound like nothing we want to cozy up to. They don’t keep us warm at night; in fact, they make sleep difficult and gazes in the mirror uncomfortable. The reason the people of Nazareth were ready to toss Jesus off a cliff wasn’t because these prophets Elijah and Elisha blessed Gentiles but because Jesus wouldn’t bless them, these insiders who thought they knew him. He knew himself to be immersed in the Spirit, that Spirit that filled John the Baptist with fiery words, that made Dr. King a drum major for peace and justice, that put a firebrand in the heart of Dr. Wright no matter who was listening. Jesus did not want to be heard as gracious in his hometown when he knew the good news would disrupt the elite and powerful in his own tradition. The prophetic words he read from Isaiah were originally intended to comfort exiles rather than those at home in empire. Jesus intended to start a movement of liberation for those at the very bottom.



Each month at the Coordinating Committee meeting, as a good spiritual practice instituted by the most recent interim pastor, we ask ourselves about our prophetic voice. And yet if we are to heed the warning in this gospel lesson, it is that we are closer to power than the gospel to know if we are a prophetic voice. In our affluence, in our nation’s culture, in UCC culture, we are more like insiders than outliers. If Jesus was a Black, brown, Palestinian Jew/immigrant/refugee who hung out with sex workers, gluttons, and drunkards, then the White cisgender heterosexual Church is the rich man who went away sad because we are holding on tight to many things and not about to let go.

"I believe Jesus began a movement...a movement that we have witnessed
has the ability to bring about significant change in the world for the better.
And we, flawed human beings, created the institution so that we can box
that movement in and we have then used it to control and oppress people.
So we are now tasked...we have the responsibility of breaking that movement
out of the box and releasing back into the world."

The Rev. Timoth Sylvia, Newman Congregational Church, UCC, Rumford, RI

When was the last time we as Church said or did something that made folks want to throw us off a cliff because we had touched a tender nerve with mighty truth? We either need to change our relationship to and with those in power or we need to change our relationship to and with those who are excluded from power, who are victims of power. When the Church joined with Empire, it traded its birthright for some pottage, institutional survival for its true mission: liberation.



What if the Great Commission had been, rather than a call to baptize and make disciples, to increase numbers, had been instead a call to action like these words from Isaiah? What if each of us and our community of faith knew itself to be goaded by the Spirit to bring material good news to the poor, to proclaim release to those who are held captive by the powerful, recovery of sight and vision to those who refuse to see, to let those oppressed by government and bigotry go free, to proclaim the year of jubilee when debts are forgiven and the enslaved are set at liberty?



So, let’s keep asking ourselves about our prophetic voice but let’s add to the question, are we being faithful to the Way of Jesus, to his movement of liberation? The White cisgender heterosexual Church has had its fifteen centuries of comfort and then some. As another prophet said, the late Rep. John Lewis on the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 2020, “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America.” And redeem the soul of Church too.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


The Incarnate One reveals their truths
through ordinary bodies and everyday flesh, creaturely and human alike.
Seeking the enfleshed divine, let us pay attention
to the messages of our own beating hearts,
to the Spirit goading us to action,
to the hungers and desires of our neighbors,
and to the earth’s groaning, surviving, and teaching.
All we need, God has already provided.
Go in peace, open to every encounter with truth.