In a teaching for the CAC’s Living School, Dr. Barbara Holmes (1943–2024) invites the students to reflect on Jesus’ prophetic tasks:
What did Jesus the prophet do? As a prophet, Jesus performed miracles, exercised authority over nature and spiritual entities, walked on water, and turned water into wine. As a prophet, Jesus healed. As a prophet, Jesus fed the hungry. As a prophet, Jesus taught prophetically.… He sat at the feet of elders, but he also taught with his heart: he heard the whispers of the Holy Spirit and allowed it to speak through him. If teaching is not anointed by the Spirit, it is just the ego strutting and repeating information. Teaching prophetically goes beyond facts and material. It reaches into the unutterable and allows silence and Spirit to do the teaching.
Jesus also exercised spiritual gifts.… Prophecy is a spiritual gift. Paul wrote about the gift of prophecy in his letter to the Romans. He said, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us … prophecy in proportion to faith” (Romans 12:6). Although prophecy is mentioned more than any other gift in the Bible, it’s also stated that prophecy will pass away, and the only thing left will be love.… Prophecy comes to life as love. Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world.…
As Christians, Jesus is the prophet who guides us. This is what I want to share with you. You don’t have to eat locusts [John the Baptist] or lay on your side in rags [Ezekiel]. Perhaps all it requires is the willingness to offer your life as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God” [Romans 12:1]. All we have to do is recognize that the time has come to make full use of our gifts, and that we are the embodiment of a new order. We’re following the example set by the prophet Jesus. During his time, Jesus was the embodiment of a new order, he was a fulfillment of the prophecy of those who had gone before.…
Jesus has come and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, and he beckons us to do likewise. The system says things like, “It can’t be done. You cannot walk on water. Gravity wins.” The system says things like, “Religion is of no use except to placate the people, and you’d better put your money in growth mutual funds.” Jesus says there’s another way, the prophetic way. Even now Jesus beckons, saying, “Step out on the water, come.”
You may be thinking, “How am I going to walk on water? I don’t even know how to swim.” We offer our gifts to God and our neighbors—that’s how we walk on water. Your gift may be prayer or art or business or teaching, but the prophetic call will hone your gifts so that your very lives are a prophetic witness to the world.
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| Roger Williams: Father of Religious Freedom |
 The word secularism is scorned by many Christians today. They associate it with the marginalization of faith and the desire to erase religion from the culture, but they forget that devout Christians were the first to invent and advocate for secular government. For example, I believe James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States, did a great favor to the Christian faith when he wrote the First Amendment, excluding any government involvement in religion. Madison understood that in order for true faith to thrive, for people’s affections to be stirred for their Creator, they needed freedom. Freedom from state coercion. Freedom of conscience. Freedom of practice. Freedom of speech. Freedom to accept religion or reject it.But these ideas were not original to James Madison, and the United States was not the first secular government to enshrine religious freedom. Madison was deeply influenced by Roger Williams, a Puritan who had lived a century earlier. In seventeenth-century England, many Puritans, like Williams, resented the way civil authorities interfered in religious matters and were particularly upset with having Catholic ideas imposed upon them. With a desire to practice his faith freely, Williams left England in 1630 and was among the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but what he discovered there troubled him greatly. The government of Massachusetts had copied the English model of combining civil and religious authority, only this time it was the Puritans imposing their beliefs rather than the Catholics. This meant citizens of the colony could be fined or imprisoned by the government for breaking the sabbath, not attending worship, or questioning doctrine. Although a devout Puritan himself, Roger Williams understood that when religion, and particularly faith in Christ, is mandated by the state, it inoculates the population from the power of the gospel. It lulls them into thinking they are truly of Christ when they are not. As he said, “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.”Instead, Williams advocated a “wall of separation” between civil authority and religious authority. Referring to the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, Williams said the government should have no voice regarding the “first table”—commands about the individual’s relationship with God, but only the “second table”—laws about social order, including murder, adultery, stealing, and lying. For this belief, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 and cast into the wilderness during a January blizzard. He survived through the compassion of Native Americans who welcomed him into their camp. Experiencing the cruelty of so-called “Christians” and the compassion of so-called “savages” solidified Wiliams’ belief in religious freedom. Rather than conquering those of different beliefs, he saw the importance of a government that allowed each person, even Native Americans, to worship according to their conscience. This was a revolutionary and deeply unpopular idea at the time. Critics said separating civil from religious authority would lead to chaos and social disorder. To prove them wrong, Williams and other outcasts established a small oasis of religious tolerance. Rhode Island became the first secular government in history. And not only did the new colony not descend into chaos, but religion there thrived.Today, many Christians are trapped in a culture war mindset, believing whoever possesses political power can, and will, impose their values and beliefs on society. This echoes the fruitless and bloody battles Roger Williams witnessed 400 years ago, and he also discovered the best way out of them—tolerance. He understood that true faith cannot be imposed, enforced, or policed. As Christians, we cannot, and should not, demand that everyone share our beliefs. But we can, and should, demand that everyone share our freedom. Because where this freedom exists, we know that Christ will be lifted up and draw people to himself. DAILY SCRIPTURE LEVITICUS 19:33-34 1 THESSALONIANS 2:1-13 MARK 6:7-13 WEEKLY PRAYERfrom Desmond Tutu (adapted from an original prayer by Sir Francis Drake) Disturb us, O Lord when we are too well-pleased with ourselves when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, O Lord when with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the water of life when, having fallen in love with time, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim. Stir us, O Lord to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas where storms show your mastery, where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes and invited the brave to follow. Amen. |
