An Unpopular Business

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 4:21-30

On the evening of the fourth of April, 1967, one year to the day (almost to the hour) before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. walked into Riverside Church in Manhattan and delivered a speech that was among his lea= st well known, yet most controversial.

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” he said, “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” The speech w= as an eloquent, full-throated denunciation of the war in Vietnam= , one of the earliest public critiques by such a high-profile American. Silence in t= he face of the horrors of that war, said Dr. King, amounted to a “betrayal.”

The speech unleashed a hurricane of criticism. Even the NAACP complained about = King stepping out of his perceived area of expertise, civil rights, to raise his voice against the evil of war. The Times headlined an editorial, “Dr. King’s Error.”

Those words were written by Bob Herbert of The Times reflecting on the way in whi= ch we recently celebrated a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. while giving only lip service to many of what Herbert called “the crucial lessons that he spent much of his life trying to teach us.”

In recent years Dr. King has been honored as one of the ‘prophets’= of our time --- but honored by many Americans only from the safe distance of a= few decades. By biblical standards, a ‘prophet’ is one who sees ---= not into crystal balls --- but into the meaning of things. ‘Prophets̵= 7; are those rare people who have what poets have called “second-sightedness” --- an ability to see ‘The Big Picture,’ to connect the dots of what’s going on in the world of their day and to understand where the course of events will end up. They sometimes speak a message of warning on God’s behalf when things are headed in the wrong direction. . .

By 1967 King was seeing a direct connection between billions of dollars being spent on war and increasing cuts in social programs for the poor. He saw th= at, in the end, it was an issue of social justice every bit as important as desegregating lunch counters and city buses in the South. And as the dead bodies of American military personnel started coming home from Vietnam in ever-greater numbers, King was awakened to how many of those bodies were pe= ople of color and disadvantaged youth who couldn’t afford the draft deferm= ents offered by colleges and universities. He saw that, in the end, it, too, was= an issue of social justice along with the integration of schools. <= /span>

In a quote that would be good for all of us to put on our refrigerators, King proclaimed that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Mu= ch to the dismay of others in the Civil Rights Movement who feared a loss of supp= ort by connecting their agenda to a war that was dividing our country, King proclaimed from the pulpit of = Riverside: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on milit= ary defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Prophets aren’t very popular in most circles, especially among those in power = and with people of influence who benefit from keeping things the way they are. Among other things, prophets are called to ‘speak truth to power̵= 7; --- and the biblical prophets often did.&n= bsp; They ‘tell it like it is’ when we want to go on assuming= or pretending that things are as we want them to be. Inevitably, those in power don’t want to hear it. Arguably, Jimmy Carter’s controversial b= ook may be a good example.

In our Old Testament lesson we find the account of Jeremiah’s calling to= be a prophet of the Lord. It’s said that “Jeremiah lived during a = time of great upheaval in the Middle East. The Assyrian empire was coming to an end after two centuries of domination and = the Babylonian empire was on the rise. Despite Jeremiah’s warning to a se= ries of kings, urging them to stay out of other peoples’ wars and be more concerned with letting God’s Law rule in their hearts, the leaders of Judah refused to heed the prophet and got their nation involved in internat= ional affairs on the side of those who were being swept away by the flow of histo= ry. In 587 bc. Jerusalem was destroyed and the Hebrew people were forced into exile in Babylon. The Book of Jeremiah would be a good book to read for those who think relig= ion should have nothing to do with politics.

Given our heritage as God’s faithful people we believe that God always has = the last word concerning human history because we, like the faithful of Jeremiah’s time, have a Lord who creates us and walks with us through= our entire journey. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, the young prophet-to-be was told. The Hebrew word translated as “formed” usually refers to the modeling of pottery and, indeed, God is elsewhere in = the biblical literature referred to as a potter. While still in the womb, we’re told, Jeremiah was consecrated --- set aside for some divine mission. Like other prophets when initiated, his lips were divinely touched= as a sign that the words henceforth coming from his mouth would be God’s Word..

Since Judah’s fate was intermingled with that of its neighbors and the empires that fought for con= trol of the Middle East, it’s not surpr= ising that Jeremiah was commissioned as a prophet to other nations and kingdoms as well as to his own hard-hearted people. With such a heritage, one would thi= nk that by 2007 we would have figured out that all nations are, indeed, inter-dependent upon one another; and that the common bond of our human-nes= s, shared with all people on Earth --- past, present and future --- is not something we need to create, only recognize.

One of the ways in which we might understand Jesus’ observation in today’s Gospel, that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown, is that we in the church who claim him as Lord seldom think of hi= m as a prophet. He’s thought of in many other religious traditions as a special “prophet” sent by God. Most Christians, however, would describe Jesus as a healer extraordinaire and a teacher whose revelations of God and wisdom about human relationships and sacrificial love are signs of = his special relationship with a Power beyond us.

Beneath everything Jesus did and said was his prophetic ministry. If even just a sq= uint at the start, those whose eyes were opened to see the meaning of what Jesus= was doing; and those whose ears were unstopped to hear what hard-hearted people didn’t want to hear were rewarded by sensing the presence of God̵= 7;s kingdom right in the midst of them, right here ‘on earth as it is in heaven,’ right in the spaces within and between us all.

Jesus’ healings and other acts of kindness prophetically pointed us to a God of mercy. Jesus’ teachings= about living in right relationships with others and not take advantage of one ano= ther prophetically pointed us to a God of justice. Warnings that bad things can happen to us along life’s way, but we have access to a strength beyond ourselves to help us through prophetically pointed us to a God of compassio= n. Acts of self-giving love, to the extent of even dying for us, prophetically pointed us to a God of unconditional love and assured us that our future, as well as our past, will be gently held in the hands of One who is always preparing new place for us to go.

Most of the time, of course, it seems we just don’t get it. We’re tu= ned out. We miss opportunities to be the hands, or feet, or voice, or touch of = the Christ whose body we are supposed to be. We miss --- or misunderstand --- offers by others to be the presence of Christ to us in our moments of need.= We miss those “kingdom moments.”

In today’s Gospel reading, folks from the synagogue in which Jesus grew = up had a variety of reactions to the hometown boy’s first sharing of prophetic insights, as recorded in Luke’s Gospel. Biblical scholars differ in t= heir understanding of how many were saying: “Wow, this is Joseph and Mary’s son, the kid we watched grow up. And it’s rumored that he has supernatural powers to heal people. Maybe he’ll do some of that around here!” --- and how many were saying: “Is this guy seriou= s? I’ve know him a long time. He’s Joseph’s son, that snot-n= osed little kid that grew up with my boy. And now he claims to be somebody special?”