By Mother Rebecca
Each summer, after celebrating 50 days of Easter and Pentecost, we enter “ordinary time”, the long season in which we wear green vestments and in which our lectionary readings focus on what it means to live out our Christian faith in our ordinary, daily lives. The lectionary provides two choices for readings for Sundays in ordinary time. The readings in Track 1 take us on a journey through a semi-contiguous portion of the Old Testament, while those of Track 2 (like our readings in other seasons) are chosen because they relate thematically with the week’s Gospel. For the last two summers, we have followed Track 1. In 2023, we journeyed through Genesis and Exodus, hearing the stories of the ancestors of our faith. In 2024, our readings from Samuel and Kings taught us about the rise of the monarchy in ancient Israel. This summer, we will once again follow Track 1, which will take us through the Bible’s prophetic writings.
This summer we will hear lots and lots of:
prophecy (prof-uh-see), a noun that refers to a message from a prophet,
from people who
prophesy (prof-uh-sigh), a verb used to describe the action of a prophet giving such a message.
I cannot stress the importance of this distinction strongly enough. If you serve as a lector at Transfiguration, please refer to this pronunciation guide throughout the summer to avoid seeing your clergy like this: 🤦🏽🤦♀️🤦🏽♂️.
Perhaps an illustration would help (or, at the very least, be fun).
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … born to those who have thrice defied him .. born as the seventh month dies … and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives … the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies.” [1]
Of course, we will not be reading Harry Potter this summer. Rather, we’ll be reading the writings of the biblical prophets. Which might beg the question: what’s a prophet?
Our Godly Play children can begin to answer this question, for they know that “A prophet is someone who comes so close to God, and God comes so close to them, that they know what God wants.”[2] Biblical prophets are sent by God to deliver messages to others that are designed to generate responsive action from the listeners. Walter Brueggemann, one of the most important theologians of our time (who died earlier this month) has written extensively and powerfully on biblical prophecy. In his book, The Prophetic Imagination, he says: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”[3]
It is often said that God sends prophets to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Prophets comfort the afflicted when they speak to those suffering oppression, violence, and powerlessness at the hands of the dominant culture. So it is that Isaiah is sent to God’s people in exile in Babylon, with the message:
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins (40:1-2).
More frequently, however, God’s prophets are sent to afflict the comfortable. Prophets point out our failures to love God and love our neighbors, warn us of the consequences of continued failure, call us to repent, and speak words of hope for all who truly turn back to God. Gods prophets remind us that “the world is the arena of God’s faithful governance” and that this premise radically changes the way life must be lived.[4]
A word of warning: it is not fun to be on the receiving end of this sort of prophecy. Prophets do not mince words; their messages cut right to the heart of matters, shining light on darkness within our souls in a most painful and grueling way. It is not fun, but it is essential to our souls. So, I encourage us all, myself included, to allow the prophets to identify us as members of one or more dominant cultures, to cut into our hearts as they identify our failures, to call us to repent, and to open our souls to the light of Christ. In response, we’ll together engage in the hard work of repentance. This summer, the prophets will help make meaning of our present circumstances and, if we let them, will deepen our walk with God.
See you Sunday, friends,
Mtr. Rebecca
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[1] Rowling, J. K., & GrandPré, M. (2004). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Scholastic, Inc.
[2] See, e.g., the Godly Play Story: The Story of the Prophet Isaiah, which you can watch online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_6GtjDUsmI.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Second Edition), 2001 Augsburg Fortress, 3.
[4] Brueggemann, Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes, 2002 Westminster John Knox Press, 161.