The Prophet Sets It Off

Considering Jesus’ prophetic actions, Rev. Erica Williams disrupts our tendency to hear the gospel through tired ears by using the modern phrase “set it off”:  

The phrase “set it off” means to start a fight, or to get into it. We see in Jesus’s inaugural message in Luke 4:18–21 that he boldly declares he came to do just that. 

In this passage, Jesus has a sankofa moment: a moment of going back to the past to retrieve what is useful for today. He reflects on his own lineage of freedom fighters when he declares he is here to get in on what Isaiah prophesied!… Luke 4:18–19 is referring to the prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–3, which foretells that a Messiah will come to restore the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity. Announcing the good news is a theme throughout Isaiah. The people have been promised that they will be set free, and Jesus wants his people to know that he has been sent to bring liberation to them and to all people. 

Jesus was a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who grew up in Nazareth, a town that was poor and marginalized, ruled and militarized by the Roman Empire.… Peasant societies were marked by an enormous gulf between rural peasants and urban ruling elites. They were politically oppressive, economically exploitative, and religiously legitimated.

Jesus confronts unjust systems and demonstrates in word and deed what God’s love looks like:  

Jesus, who was a peasant himself, saw all of these things happening to his people. He knew that he could not be a chaplain of the empire but was sent to be a prophet of God—one anointed by God and the people to do the work of love, justice, and liberation.  

We see Jesus set it off in a nonviolent way during his ministry: he gives sight to Bartimaeus [Mark 10:46–52], and he stops a woman from being stoned to death for adultery by telling her accusers that anyone without sin could be the first to throw a stone (John 8:7). In Jesus’s final week before being crucified (during the Passover, which celebrates the Jewish people’s defeat of slavery), Jesus goes into the temple. There he sets it off by flipping the tables of the money changers and declaring that God’s house is a place of prayer and not a den of thieves [Mark 11:15–17].  

A man considered a nobody set it off by showing radical love and revolutionary compassion and by speaking truth to power. Jesus turned the world right side up. The empire thought it had shut Jesus down by lynching him, but all it did was plant a seed.  

That seed has produced a great harvest of freedom fighters such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Josephine Baker, Septima Clark, and Martin Luther King Jr.… Each of us is being called to set it off. It does not matter what your pedigree is: God is calling you to stand for truth and justice.

Jesus as Prophet

Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 

This week’s meditations focus on Jesus as prophet. Albert Nolan (1934–2022) was a South African theologian and anti-apartheid activist inspired by Jesus’ prophetic identity.  

In their speculations about who Jesus was, his contemporaries agreed that, whatever else, he was a prophet (Mark 8:27–28; Luke 7:16). Some might have thought that he was a false prophet, but he clearly spoke and acted like a prophet. And that is surely how Jesus saw himself (Luke 4:24). He does not seem to have ever contradicted anyone who referred to him as a prophet. In its basic inspiration, therefore, Jesus’ spirituality was like that of the Hebrew prophets.…  

Jesus spoke, as most prophets do, for or on behalf of God. In fact he seems to have done so more confidently and boldly than any other prophet.… Where did Jesus derive this unshakeable assurance that he could speak so directly for God?…  

Prophets experience not only a special calling from God, but also a special closeness to God that enables them to understand God’s “feelings” and “thoughts” about what is happening or will happen in the future. It is this mystical experience of union with God that enables them to speak on God’s behalf.  

In reading the gospels, the general impression we get is that Jesus was very much a man of action: preaching, teaching, healing, and confronting the religious and political leadership. What we do not always notice is that behind, and in support of, all these activities was a life of constant prayer and profound contemplation. 

Nolan points to the contemplative spirituality that infused Jesus’ prophetic action:  

Jesus seems to have taken every possible opportunity of getting away to a quiet and lonely place for prayer and reflection. “In the morning, while it was still very dark,” Mark 1:35 tells us, “[Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (see also Mark 6:46 and Luke 4:42). Luke 5:16 says he did this regularly. Before choosing his twelve apostles, he spent the whole night in prayer, we are told (Luke 6:12).… 

What interests us here is the powerfully simple way in which prophecy and mysticism form an inseparable whole in the life and spirituality of Jesus.… Traditionally … prophets were mystics and mystics were prophets. Any idea that one could be a prophet calling for justice and social change without some experience of union with God was unthinkable. Equally unthinkable was any idea that one could be a perfectly good mystic without becoming critically outspoken about the injustices of one’s time. 

Nolan views Jesus as ultimately calling all of us to be prophets.  

Anyone who wishes to take Jesus seriously would have to be prepared to become a prophet and a mystic. In the history of Israel before Jesus, prophets were rare individuals. Jesus’ aim was to open up the spirit of prophecy to everyone.… Then too we can all become courageous enough to speak out like prophets.  

Prophecy Is Love Manifested

In a teaching for the CAC’s Living School, Dr. Barbara Holmes 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, 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: hearing the whispers of the Holy Spirit and allowing it to speak through him. You know teaching, if not anointed, is just the ego strutting and repeating information. Teaching prophetically goes beyond facts and material, and 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. And he said, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us … prophecy in proportion to faith” (Romans 12:6). And 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. And 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 “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, 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.…

Because Jesus has come and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, he beckons us to do likewise. You see, the system says, “It can’t be done. You cannot walk on water. Gravity wins.” The system says that “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, and even now Jesus beckons, saying, “Step out on the water, come.” 

Now, you may be thinking, “How am I going to walk on water? I don’t even know how to swim.” Well, 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.

Father Richard describes how the prophet’s truth, message, and authority come from an experience of the heart of God:

What the prophets were doing was creating an alternative consciousness. Now, that isn’t easily created. Most of us are formed, and our thinking is formed, by the dominant consciousness. We are shaped by the way everybody thinks, by the way the culture thinks. What the prophet dares to do is step into the middle of the dominant consciousness and create an alternative, a new set of possibilities. There’s a different way of looking at this. And of course, what the prophets presume is that the way they are sharing with us is the way that God looks at it.

We have to accept the premise that the prophet truly believes they are speaking for God. That’s an extraordinary thing. The prophet believes that they speak for God, and they dare to say it again and again, as a very bold statement: “Thus says the Lord.” They say, “The Lord says this to Zion,” and “The Lord says this to Jerusalem,” and whatever else it might be. The prophet is speaking to the culture, and yet is not afraid to stand against it, to present the people with an alternative, God’s alternative.

All this is based on the prophet’s belief that they have somehow entered into the experience of God. They have entered into the heart of God. So when the prophet sees non-compassion, when they see a hard heart in the hearts of the people, the prophet says: “I know for certain that you do not know God, because the heart of God is compassion. If you do not live with compassion, then you have not entered into the heart of God, because I’ve been there, and I know the heart of God is compassion. You are hard-hearted, therefore, and your word is not the word of the Lord, because I know God.” How bold and how beautiful, that the prophet can speak with that kind of authority and that kind of assurance.

The prophet claims that they have had an experience of the heart of God, and therefore they judge human reality on that basis. And that’s what makes the prophets such absolutists. They are not afraid to generalize. They are not afraid to make sweeping allegations. From our limited and finite perspective, we say to ourselves, “Well, come on, Amos. You’re overstating your case. It’s not that bad.” We always want to say that to the prophets, don’t we? When we’re reading, we think, “Come on, cool it a little bit.” We don’t have the boldness, the assurance, and the inner authority that the prophet seems to have. They dare to believe and even know, that they are speaking for God. I guess if we had that kind of assurance, we’d speak with boldness, too. We’d say, “This is it.” That’s why it’s hard to listen to the prophets.

_________________________________

Sarah Young

Approach each new day with an awareness of who is truly in charge of your life. When things go wrong, be looking for Me as I may be leading you to surrender. Do not try and figure out what is happening, simply trust Me. Surrender, connect with Me and live your day from there.

Isaiah 55:9-11 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways. and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Truth-telling can be a very difficult journey on the way to freedom.
—Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love

CAC friend Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes about the ways both prophetic and personal truth-telling challenge us and the systems to which we belong:

In my faith tradition we call that speaking the truth—in love. As a clergyperson, I have many truth-telling strategies. Sometimes I’m gentle, needing to take good care of the one who is listening. Sometimes I’ve got my fists in the air while marching for the truth, for justice and liberation. Always my intention is to free up the energy that’s caught in the story, to liberate myself and the other with whom I’m in relationship to find a way forward. Can we win this action? Will the politician change policy or give in to demands? Will the congregant or colleague hear my point of view, and can I hear theirs? Can I change the story in the public square in a compelling way and open eyes, hearts, and minds to new worldviews? Will [my husband] John and I become stronger because of this difficult talk? Telling the truth is an act of love, an act of resistance, an act of courage. Its end is liberation, freedom, and, if possible, reconciliation. But there can be no reconciliation without truth.…

The historian Howard Zinn wrote, “The most revolutionary act one can engage in is […] to tell the truth.” [1] Indeed! I think the revolutionary part of truth is that it can free us and those around us to live with greater certainty about what is real, even when it hurts, because we are no longer shackled to the energy lying requires of us. Lying demands the continuation of the lie and the amplification of the lie to keep the truth hidden.… Telling the truth creates ripples of authenticity that change the world.…

I believe truth is revolutionary; it’s part of the work of fierce love. Truth makes a personal, spiritual, ethical, and moral demand upon us. It wants to be said, known, told. It hurts and it’s inconvenient, but it’s essential to our well-being. It cleanses our spiritual palate and restores our souls. Truth is a drink of water to a parched traveler. It lubricates relationships. It liberates us from bondage. It builds trust and connections. It’s the beginning of authentic living and joy. Truth eludes us at times, and we have to pursue it. Truth invites us to be honest about who we are, about our flawed-but-beautiful, broken-but-healing selves. Truth leads to reconciliation and peace; without truth, there is no peace. In the light of truth, we are able to honor our journey and love ourselves. Truth-telling is a spiritual discipline that requires practice. We must not lie to others and, as Fyodor Dostoevsky suggested, we mustn’t lie to ourselves. Being honest with ourselves about ourselves is to love ourselves unconditionally, to love ourselves fiercely.

_____________________________

Sarah Young

Seek My face and you will find more than you ever thought possible. Let Me displace worry at the center of your being.

Surrender, connect and live out of that by expanding your focus to include Me in all your moments, and experience peace that passes understanding.

Psalm 27:8 My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

Unpleasant Truths

For theologian Megan McKenna, the biblical prophets carried a painful burden on behalf of truth and justice:

The prophets ached over injustice and were torn to shreds by it. They had no life but God’s honor—which was the only hope of the poor. They were reminders in the flesh of that honor—painful, angry truth-tellers who knew what was wrong. They made people nervous, sick to their stomachs, vicious, and self-righteous. Or worse, after all the reactions, the prophets were ignored—the people didn’t change, didn’t convert. And then the prophets’ words came to pass: the warnings, the threats, and the punishments that were the natural consequences of people’s behavior came about.…

The prophets’ vocation is to cry out—to God, to the air, to any open heart; they cry out on behalf of God and on behalf of the poor because no one is listening except God. They cry out for those no one heeds, except maybe in passing in lip service.…

The prophets often see us as nearsighted, meaning we can only see what is immediately under our noses, connected to our own lives. We have lost sight of the vision of hope, of the future that God intends, while we have been concentrating with total self-absorption on our own immediate desires. We are like drivers lost in a fog of our own obsessions, unable to see the road clearly. And so we need the prophets, the far-seeing ones, the dreamers in broad daylight, the long-distance high beams that show us glimpses of where we are going and what the outcome of our choices and lifestyles will be. One way to define a prophet is a person who sees so clearly what is happening in the present moment that he or she can tell us what is going to happen if we don’t change immediately and radically.

McKenna tells of the transformational wisdom behind the prophet’s dramatic messages and methods: 

The prophet uses every resource at his or her disposal. Weeping, raging, crying out, criticism, blessings and curses, storytelling, singing, dramas acted out, possessions and even cities destroyed, food eaten or left to rot, ingenious set-ups and insults—all serve only one purpose: the conversion of heart and the doing of restitution to rebalance and heal the world again. However prophets may prophesy, their integrity is shown by the way in which they give up their very lives as testimony and witness as they side with the forgotten and the lost ones and loudly proclaim that God, who is aware of their pain and feels their suffering as [God’s] own, will not allow that pain and suffering to continue. God is not indifferent to or far from anyone’s life, but rather draws near to those who know pain because of the sin and indifference of others. The prophet loudly insists that God is not impartial and that God will not allow anyone who professes belief in the Holy to harm another.

Anger Does Its Work

Prophets are often known for their anger against injustice. CAC teacher Brian McLaren makes a connection between anger and love:  

I think about things I love … birds, trees, wetlands, forested mountains, coral reefs, my grandchildren … and I see the bulldozers and smokestacks and tanks on the horizon.  

And so, because I love, I am angry. Really angry.  

And if you’re not angry, I think you should check your pulse, because if your heart beats in love for something, someone, anything … you’ll be angry when it’s harmed or threatened.  

To paraphrase René Descartes (1596–1650): I love; therefore, I’m angry. […]

Anger makes most sense to me through an analogy of pain. What pain is to my body, anger is to my soul, psyche, or inner self. When I put my hand on a hot stove, physical pain reflexes make me react quickly, to address with all due urgency whatever is damaging my fragile tissues. Physical pain must be strong enough to prompt me to action, immediate action, or I will be harmed, even killed.  

Similarly, when I or someone I love is in the company of insult, injustice, injury, degradation, or threat, anger awakens. It tells me to change my posture or position; it demands I address the threat.

McClaren shares scriptural passages that urge us not to react in anger, and describes how contemplative practice can direct our anger into loving action:  

Don’t be overcome with evil. Overcome evil with good. (See Romans 12:21).  

When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek. (See Luke 6:29).  

Do not return evil for evil to anyone. (See Romans 12:17).  

Bless those who persecute you. Bless, and do not curse. (See Romans 12:14).  

In each case, we’re given alternatives to our natural reactions, alternatives that break us out of fight/flight/freeze, mirroring, and judging. In the split second when we take that long, deep breath, we might breathe out a prayer: “Guide me, Spirit of God!” We might pause to hear if the Spirit inspires us with some non-reactive, non-reflexive response. […]

Anger does its work. It prompts us to action, for better or worse. With time and practice, we can let the reflexive reactions of fight/flight/freeze, mirroring, and judging pass by like unwanted items on a conveyor belt. Also, with practice, we can make space for creative actions to be prompted by our anger … actions that are in tune with the Spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22) … actions that overcome evil with good and bring healing instead of hate.  

So, yes, you bet I’m angry. It’s a source of my creativity. It’s a vaccination against apathy and complacency. It’s a gift that can be abused—or wisely used. Yes, it’s a temptation, but it’s also a resource and an opportunity, as unavoidable and necessary as pain. It’s part of the gift of being human and being alive.

Disrupting the Status Quo

Richard Rohr describes how speaking truth to power is an essential part of the prophet’s mission: 

One of the gifts of the prophets is that they evoke a crisis where one did not appear to exist before their truth-telling. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. was blamed for creating violence—but those who had eyes to see and were ready to hear recognized, “My God, the violence was already there!” Structural violence was inherent in the system, but it was denied and disguised. No one was willing to talk about it. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and others said, “We’re going to talk about it.”

Prophets always talk about the untalkable and open a huge new area of “talkability.” For those who are willing to go there, it helps us see what we didn’t know how to see until they helped us to see it. That’s how we begin to recognize a prophet—there is this widening of seeing, this deepening of a truth that was always there.

Prophets generate a crisis, so it’s almost understandable why they’re usually called troublemakers and so often killed. They generate the crisis because while everybody else is saying the emperor is beautifully clothed, they are willing to say, “No, he’s naked.” We’re not supposed to say that the emperor has no clothes!

It’s the nature of culture to have its agreed-upon lies. Culture holds itself together by projecting its shadow side elsewhere. That’s called the “scapegoat mechanism.” René Girard, Gil Bailie, and others have pointed out that the scapegoat mechanism is the subtext of the entire biblical revelation. It’s the tendency to export our evil elsewhere and to hate it there, and therefore to remain in splendid delusion. If there isn’t a willingness to be critical of our country, our institution, and ourselves, we certainly can’t be prophets. [1]

When the prophet is missing from the story, the shadow side of things is always out of control, as in much of the world today, where we do not honor wisdom or truth.

It seems the prophet’s job is first to deconstruct current illusions, which is the status quo, and then reconstruct on a new and honest foundation. That is why the prophet is never popular with the comfortable or with those in power. Only a holy few have any patience with the deconstruction of egos and institutions.

The prophets are “radical” teachers in the truest sense of the word. The Latin radix means root, and the prophets go to the root causes and root vices and “root” them out! Their educational method is to expose and accuse with no holds barred. Ministers and religion in general tend to concentrate on effects and symptoms, usually a mopping up exercise after the fact. As someone once put it, we throw life preservers to people drowning in the swollen stream, which is all well and good—but prophets work far upstream to find out why the stream is swollen in the first place. [2]

Big Picture Thinkers

In a 2006 CAC conference, Richard Rohr identified the prophet as one who places issues in the context of the “big picture”:

What is a prophet? Let me try this as a definition: one who names the situation truthfully and in its largest context. When we can name the situation truthfully and in its largest context, it cannot get pulled into interest groups and political expediency. I was preaching in Atlanta, and I went for the first time to the Martin Luther King Jr. exhibit. It’s so obvious that he was a biblical prophet. I stood there and heard the addresses right in his very church, Ebenezer Baptist Church, where they play his preaching constantly. I realized how he was always putting racism and segregation in the big context of the kingdom of God. And then he kept going and came out against the Vietnam War. He is said to have lost at least one-third of his own followers because he placed the issue in too big a frame.

We don’t want the big frame. No one wants the big picture. I’m convinced that Jesus’ metaphor and image for what we would simply call the big picture is the reign of God, or the kingdom of God. That’s Jesus’ way of describing a phrase we used to say in Latin [sub specie aeternitatis] which means, “In light of eternity.” To consider things in light of eternity is a great clarifier. Maybe it comes to us on our death bed, when we think to ourselves, “Is this going to mean anything? Does this really matter? Is this little thing we’re upset about now and taking offense at going to mean anything in light of eternity?” The prophet or prophetess speaks truthfully and in the largest context. [1]

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, he spoke from the “big frame” to call for a revolution of values based on love: 

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all [humankind].… When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.… If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and [God’s] love is perfected in us” [1 John 4:7–8, 12]. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. [2]

For Father Richard, God shows us our soul’s calling through spiritual practice and letting go of the ego’s drive:

Our age has come to expect satisfaction. We have grown up in an absolutely unique period when having and possessing and accomplishing have been real options. They have given us an illusion of fulfillment—and fulfillment now—as long as we are clever enough, quick enough, and pray or work hard enough for our goals or rewards. [1]

I am convinced that the Book of Jonah can best be read as God moving someone from a mere sense of a religious job or career to an actual sense of personal call, vocation, or destiny. It takes being “swallowed by a beast” and taken into a dark place of nesting and nourishing that allows us to move to a deeper place called personal vocation. It involves a movement from being ego-driven to being soul-drawn. The energy is very different. It comes quietly and generously from within. Once we have accepted our call, we do not look for payment, reward, or advancement because we have found our soul gift.

I have met many people who have found their soul gift, and they are always a joy to work with. It’s apparent they are not counting the cost, but just want to serve and help. Benedictines have a group they call oblates, which means “those who are offered.” To come with our lives as an offering is quite different from the seeking of a career, security, status, or title. Even the [retired head of the] Vatican’s office for bishops dared to admit publicly [his] worries about rampant careerism among bishops worldwide as they sought promotion to higher and more prestigious dioceses. [2] It sounds like we still have James and John wanting to sit at the right and left sides of the throne of Jesus (Mark 10:37). Maybe young people need to start there, but we can see why Jonah has to be shoved out of the boat. Otherwise, he never would have gotten to the “right” Nineveh.

We must listen, wait, and pray for our charism and call. Most of us are really only good at one or two things. Meditation should lead to a clarity about who we are and, maybe even more, who we are not. This second revelation is just as important as the first. I have found it difficult over the years to sit down and tell people what is not their gift. It is usually very humiliating for individuals to face their own illusions and inabilities. We are not usually a truth-speaking people. We don’t speak the truth to one another, nor does our culture encourage the journey toward the True Self. The false self often sets itself up for unnecessary failures and humiliations. [3]

_____________________________________________

Sarah Young

Try to view each day as an adventure. Do not try to program your day(s) according to your will, instead surrender your day(s) to Me.

Thank Me and trust that I am with you each moment. Surrender, connect and live your days in eager expectation, expecting surprises and difficulties, while you are being held safely in My arms.

Psalm 118:24 “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Isaiah 41:10 “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

1 Peter 2:21 For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. 

Richard reflects on what it means to respond to God’s call of love and justice for the common good:

What, then, does it mean to follow Jesus?

History is continually graced with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest and for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by a power larger than their own. Consider Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, Martin Luther King Jr. Add to them Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, César Chávez, and many unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world. Most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many lesser-known persons who exhibit the same presence. I can’t say how one becomes such a person. All I can presume is that they were all called. They all had their Christ moments, in which they stopped denying their own shadows, stopped projecting those shadows elsewhere, and agreed to own their deepest identity in solidarity with the world. 

But it is not an enviable position, this Christian thing. 

Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. 

To allow what God for some reason allows—and uses. 

And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally. 

Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God—beyond the fact that God is love itself. 

Those who respond to the call and agree to carry and love what God loves—which is both the good and the bad—and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves, these are the followers of Jesus Christ. They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world. The cross, then, is a very dramatic image of what it takes to be usable for God. It does not mean they are going to heaven and others are not; rather, it means they have entered into heaven much earlier and thus can see things in a transcendent, whole, and healing way now. 

Saints are those who wake up while in this world, instead of waiting for the next one. Francis of Assisi, William Wilberforce, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Harriet Tubman didn’t feel superior to anyone else; they just knew they had been let in on a big divine secret, and they wanted to do their part in revealing it. 

God is calling every one and every thing, not just a few chosen ones, to God’s self (Genesis 8:15–17; Ephesians 1:9–10; Colossians 1:15–20). To get every one and every thing there, God first needs models and images who are willing to be “conformed to the body of his death” and transformed into the body of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). These are the “new creation” (Galatians 6:15), and their transformed state is still seeping into history and ever so slowly transforming it into “life and life more abundantly” (John 10:10).

________________________________________

Sarah Young

Let Me prepare you for your day. not try to anticipate your day or the issues of your day. You can best prepare by spending time with Me. My abiding presence is the best road map available to you. Surrender your day, moments and plans to Me. It is the best roadmap available.

Exodus 33:14 “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 

John 15:4-7 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine

Initial Conversion

Father Richard Rohr describes the confidence that characterizes the voice of the prophets: 

What characterizes the prophets, and it’s still a bit of a shock to the rest of us, is an immense self-confidence that they speak for God. Where does this come from? How can they be so sure? “Thus says the Lord,” they begin with, and “Hear the word of the Lord.” They describe their call, and if we look at the conversion of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or even Moses who was called the first of the prophets, we can see that it’s their initial transformative experience that names the rest of their insight. We see the same in Paul, where Paul’s conversion experience (Acts 9:1–19) takes place after hearing Jesus say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (9:4). At first Paul defends himself, as if to say: “I wasn’t persecuting you Jesus, but these people.” Ultimately, Paul comes up with this marvelous doctrine of the mystical body of Christ: there’s an inherent communion or union between Jesus and his people. What you do to one, you do to the other. Until we understand that, we don’t understand Paul at the ground level. Everything proceeds from that.

Richard affirms that a prophetic call comes to each of us in our own unique way: 

It’s the prophets’ initial theophany, their initial parting of the veil that seems to become the nature of how they henceforth see reality. I want you to see that because I’d like you to look at your own spiritual autobiography and see how you were formed, how and where you were led when God showed God’s face to you. It’s at that level that you know—and you know that you know. Your prophetic charism comes from your own conversion, a transformation into the mystery of God.

Paul knew that the only way this realignment would take place was through an ego-stripping experience that tears away our false and fabricated self and leads us to a new self (Ephesians 2:15; Galatians 6:15), where all contradictions can be absorbed and overcome. It had happened in him and now he saw his life as “handing on this reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18), which was always through the coincidence of opposites called the cross.

The cross, even geometrically, is a collision of two opposing lines. Paul knew by his unwarranted election that God had not eliminated or expelled his former self, but instead had “incorporated” it into the Christ Self. He knew that he was still a mass of contradictions and inconsistencies, which is exactly what is written all over the pages of his letters. Yet his absolute confidence was not in his personal wholeness, but in Jesus, the one who had grafted him onto the Wholeness of God. This is the total basis of Paul’s joy, his love, his daring self-confidence, and his impassioned desire to have everyone else experience the same transformation and ecstasy.

Guided toward Excellence

Presbyterian author and theologian Eugene Peterson reflects upon God’s challenging questions to the prophet Jeremiah at a pivotal point in his ministry:

Every one of us needs to be stretched to live at our best, awakened out of dull moral habits, shaken out of petty and trivial busy-work. Jeremiah does that for me. And not only for me. Millions upon millions of Christians and Jews have been goaded and guided toward excellence as they have attended to God’s word spoken to and by Jeremiah.…

There is a memorable passage concerning Jeremiah’s life when, worn down by the opposition and absorbed in self-pity, he was about to capitulate to … a premature death. He was ready to abandon his unique calling in God and settle for being a Jerusalem statistic. At that critical moment he heard the reprimand: “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5).… Biochemist Erwin Chargaff [1905–2022] updates the questions: “What do you want to achieve? Greater riches? Cheaper chicken? A happier life, a longer life? Is it power over your neighbors that you are after? Are you only running away from your death? Or are you seeking greater wisdom, deeper piety?” [1]

Peterson imagines the conversation between God and prophet: 

Life is difficult, Jeremiah. Are you going to quit at the first wave of opposition? .… Are you going to live cautiously or courageously? I called you to live at your best, to pursue righteousness, to sustain a drive toward excellence. It is easier, I know, to be neurotic. It is easier to be parasitic. It is easier to relax in the embracing arms of The Average. Easier, but not better. Easier, but not more significant. Easier, but not more fulfilling. I called you to a life of purpose far beyond what you think yourself capable of living and promised you adequate strength to fulfill your destiny. Now at the first sign of difficulty you are ready to quit. If you are fatigued by this run-of-the-mill crowd of apathetic mediocrities, what will you do when the real race starts, the race with the swift and determined horses of excellence? What is it you really want, Jeremiah, do you want to shuffle along with this crowd, or run with the horses?.…

It is unlikely, I think, that Jeremiah was spontaneous or quick in his reply to God’s question. The ecstatic ideals for a new life had been splattered with the world’s cynicism. The euphoric impetus of youthful enthusiasm no longer carried him. He weighed the options. He counted the cost. He tossed and turned in hesitation. The response when it came was not verbal but biographical. His life became his answer, “I’ll run with the horses.” 

In this sermon, noted pastor, theologian, and mystic Howard Thurman (1900–1981) describes the faith of the Hebrew prophets:

The prophets of Israel were intimately tied up with the movements of the periods in which they lived. They were involved in the social process, which is very important to remember. They interpreted Israel and its relationship to God … as a primary and personal covenantal relationship. And it is very important to hold that in mind that, for reasons that we cannot quite understand even to this day, in some strange and fascinating and yet miraculous manner this group of people regarded themselves as being [in] some initially unique relationship with the Creator of their own lives and their little world and their little state….

Now fundamental to this concept … is a philosophy which to read it says that God is inside the historic process: that [God] is not outside of it manipulating it or unmindful of it.

Prophets view God as actively involved in our lives, and Thurman challenges us to respond to this dynamic intimacy:

How do you interpret the events of your life? How do you measure them? Do you live your life on the basis that all that there is to you and what you do is wrapped up in the movement, the isolated, circumscribed movement, pulse beat of your little life? Now, if you do, then you know, you see, that the very nature of life is of such that it is fixed … it is finished, it is complete, and you know you can’t do anything about anything anyway so you don’t try….

Now there is another point of view, and this is the point of view of the prophet. And that is that human life, as well as the lives of nations, takes place within a context that is dynamic. That always when I am in the presence of any event, I am caught in an encounter with a series of potentials that spread out in the widest possible directions and with the most amazing variety of variation. So that if I am alert in the presence of the event, I seek to deal with the event in terms not merely of what it says, what it looks like, but in terms of what seems to me to be the dynamics of the event, the potentials of the event.

Do you deal with events of your life in that way? Do you believe that life is really dynamic? That it isn’t quite finished yet? That not only are you involved always in a circling series of potentials, but that you are potential. You, potential. And no time band, no time interval is able quite to contain you and the dynamics of your life and your situation. Do you believe that?

__________________________

Sarah Young

You can achieve the victorious life by living dependent on Me. Successful people tend to depend on themselves or their resources. But those with constant failures and problems tend to rely on Me.

Your continual failures create dependence. Surrender, connect and live out of that.

Psalm 34:17-18 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. 

2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.