February 26, 2006: Too White To Be Natural
2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9; Psalm 27
Eileen Parfrey, pastor - Springwater Presbyterian

One of my friends, raised by ardent atheists, finds Biblish a foreign language. She's very bright, but one day as we talked about prophets-how to recognize them- she baffled us when she said, "I don't get what all this God-talk has to do with whether or not you make any money." Ah! "P-H-E-T. Not F-I-T." Geek that I am, I went off on a mental trip about what I'd learned in seminary about the importance of Hebrew prophets for Christians. The expected Messiah was to be a prophet, priest, and king, the combination of Law and Prophets. This theology is why Protestants put Transfiguration Sunday at the end of Epiphany season. Since Christmas, we've been unpacking implications of the Incarnation of God in Jesus and what it means to be called by him. We end that series with God's Messiah on top of a mountain (like Moses the law-giver and Elijah the prophet who hears God in the still, small voice). The prophet/priest/king Messiah on a mountain with his three closest friends and two guys who've been dead hundreds of years, while his clothes turn a white brighter than even Clorox can make it.

These signs were as obvious a message to 1st-century Jews as black-and-orange or yellow-and-green are to Oregonians in the fall. We know what team you're rooting for in your orange socks! Jews knew that mountain tops meant God-present, gleaming white clothes meant judgment and the end of the world, and Moses and Elijah meant the Law and the Prophets. No wonder the liver is scared out of Peter. Don't just stand there! Look busy!

No wonder Jesus tells them to hush. Dunderheads though they were, they could read the signs. They just had no clue as to the sign's implications. Sometimes we have experiences that reverberate in our lives for years. The child hearing a violin for the first time. Or the mid-life adult running into a high school sweetheart. Attending an art class. The disciples thought they were experiencing Jesus as a political Messiah-king. Today, we unpack implications of the "prophet" Messiah.

The way Elijah left the earth-not literally "died," just left-meant that Israel expected him to return at some point, and they linked that return to the coming of the Messiah. Prophets in Israel were more often ostracized and sawn in half than they were welcomed with open arms, because their message was never a comfortable one. The prophetic dimension of our baptisms-because we are promising to try to be like Jesus the Messiah, prophet/priest/king-is one Protestants are just beginning to reclaim.

Prophet, by the way, isn't a name, it's a role. A prophet is a bridge. In the Hebrew prophets, it was sometimes hard to know whether the prophet was speaking with God's voice or the people's voice. Not fortune telling, exactly, but foretelling a future implied as the consequence of present actions if they don't straighten up. The future foretold by folks like Jeremiah, Elijah, Micah, Huldah was not a comfortable one. Sometimes they did this by prophetic actions -weird object lessons meant to interpret God's message. Prophets are not just in the Bible. Hildegard of Bingen, Archbishop Romero, Francis of Assisi were considered prophets, and they too were shunned, imprisoned, murdered, ridiculed for having the bad luck to be God's messenger.

It takes courage to be a prophet. A hallmark of being a legitimate prophet is that you don't want the job. Sometimes, as with Jeremiah, God's gotta threaten them with worse if they don't deliver. Prayerful people, prophets must be willing to do what it takes to get themselves out of the way of the message. Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days. Bonhoeffer in academia. Martin Luther King in jail. Simone Weil obscure in a factory. A prophet is an ordinary human. An ordinary human, with a sacred message, connecting to other humans through the message. A prophet can sometimes be institutions as well as humans.

Yesterday at the Leadership Fair, I went to the workshop on the Emergent Church. There are lots of buzzwords going around these days as the Church is in ferment. Emergent churches are a post-modern response to the evangelical movement, post-Christendom version of "the church reformed, always being reformed." Because, deeply tied to the "under the Word of God" portion of that motto, where the truth comes from is less important to them than it is to encounter it. Deeply Trinitarian, deeply rooted in Jesus Christ as savior, the emergent church is not so concerned about personal salvation as they are about being missional-going out¸ bringing about God's kingdom. Mission is the one thing that unites and shapes them, just as worship is the one thing that unites and shapes mainline churches. Embracing ancient church tradition, emergent church worship styles vary considerably, because experiencing God, authentically encountering God, being themselves the here-and-now incarnation of Jesus, is what they are all about. Their missional motto seems to be, "Do it small and do it now." If it works, great, help it grow. If it doesn't work, let it die. That's prophetic. Ordinary humans to ordinary humans, finding the sacred, listening for God, not focused on "what do I get out of church" but "how can we authentically experience God." And this scares the liver out of most Presbyterians. Which is why the workshop was so full. Emergent church is a faithful, cultural response of orthodox Christianity, a response that is more about the breadth of God than it is about "getting it right."

The prophetic message is always about justice, peace, hope. What makes the emergent church so different from most Christian churches-mainline or mega-church evangelical-is the emphasis on conversation and relationship. Prophets act in community. My Namaste class came up with a list of modern prophets that included Desmond Tutu, Jim Wallis, Gustavo Gutierrez, Elie Wiesel, Jimmy Carter, Dorothy Day. We've heard of them because they are famous, but they are ordinary people breaking open the mystery of God. Not unlike the prophets in our lives. My friend Sheila, a spiritual director who manages the office of the holocaust survivor's speaker's bureau. And sees the sacred message in that, as well as in her church's social justice committee and the Hispanic center where she empowers women migrant workers. Or my seminary teacher, a French Protestant imprisoned and tortured in South Africa during the break up of apartheid as she worked to support the blacks. She now helps other torture survivors to heal as she brings them to spiritual life.

Christians today can reclaim the prophetic element of our baptismal vows. Not in isolation. The prophetic role must be in community as we prayerfully listen for God's word, as we get our selves out of the message. As Springwater lives into the exciting new mission statement that has emerged over the last year, perhaps we can reclaim the prophetic element of our baptismal vows. In community, as we find the sacred in the ordinary of our lives, in relationships with each other. As we together listen for God's message of peace, justice, and hope. Gathering in prayers. Listening in community. Getting out of the way. Going out. That could be a prophetic role. That could be our prophetic role.