Who Are the True Prophets?
Dr. Standish
Luke 4:14-24
January 24, 2010
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town.
Do you have a favorite heirloom? I have one in my office that is one of my prized possessions. You may not be surprised to know that it is a book, but what book may seem kind of odd in light of the values of our modern age, where only new ideas, new products, and new fads seem to have credibility. This book is a collection of writings by an obscure, 6th-Century monk named Dorotheos of Gaza.
Dorotheos lived outside the city of Gaza, which today is the main city of the Gaza Strip. Back then the area he was in was a desert. Before becoming a monk, Dorotheos lived a privileged life. He came from a wealthy Christian family who taught him to read and write at an early age. This was a rarity in those times when only 20% of the population could read or write. He eventually became a professor of rhetoric at a school in Gaza, and became a man of great prestige. It was in the midst of this that he made the decision to become a monk. No one is sure why, but it seems that it may have happened after his parents were killed in a great earthquake. Dorotheos was wealthy himself, but gave away his wealth so that he could become an impoverished monk. As a monk, he quickly distinguished himself as a deeply spiritual and faithful man, a man whom others—both lay people and monks—sought out because of his wisdom. After his death, his writings were collected, copied repeatedly by hand, and passed on for a thousand years because of their wisdom. For the past 500 years his writings have been printed and passed around. His writings have touched millions of people for over 1500 years.
During his lifetime he was considered a sage by many, but not so much by the monks in his own monastery. He was a prophet unknown in his own hometown. The monastery he lived in was not like those of today. Back then monks often lived in a large, makeshift dormitory where they slept, ate, and prayed. They had little food, and all were devoted to eking out an existence. They were in the desert, so during the summer they lived in extreme heat, and in the winter extreme cold. When a particular monk was considered to be more spiritually adept, he would be given a small hermitage to live in. These were very small, one-room huts with little more than a mat inside to sleep on. The elements were barely kept out. Often they shared their huts with snakes and scorpions that made their way inside.
The attention Dorotheos garnered caused some of this other monks to become jealous. They criticized him for talking to so many people, rather than praying all the time. They criticized him for being popular or sought out. There was a period of time when the monks treated Dorotheos very poorly because of his popularity. They tormented him by spreading their garbage around his hut and shaking their mats out before his doorway. So what? What’s the big deal about that? The big deal is that in the desert the small pieces of food attracted all sorts of insects, many of which were stinging insects. For a number of years, Dorotheos woke up every morning covered with bumps and welts from all the insects that had shared his hut. It was how he reacted that makes him so special. You see, Dorotheos believed in being radically humble, and it’s these ideas that really impacted me.
Let me share with you what Dorotheos taught about humility. First, he taught that humility begins with recognizing that neither you nor I are great. It begins with recognizing that we are not the center of the universe. As we become more humble, we recognize that God is the canter. And so we are able to dedicate ourselves more and more to living how God wants us to live, not as we want. Through this we begin to bear God’s fruit and share blessings.
He used a metaphor for humility, saying that in the Middle East there are a certain kinds of trees that when they grow naturally bear little or no fruit as long as their branches remain upright. In order to bear fruit, they must have stones tied to their branches so that they hang low to the ground. He says that the lower the branches go, the more fruit they bear. We are similar. The lower we are, and the more humble, the more fruit we bear in our lives, and this fruit nourishes others.
He also used to say that the nearer a person is to God, the more he or she sees himself or herself a sinner. That’s not the way we think it should be. We think that the more we grow spiritually, the more we should escape sin. But Dorotheos says that it’s the opposite that happens. Once, when he taught this, a prominent citizen of Gaza challenged him. Dorotheos responded with some questions of his own. He asked the man how he sees himself in relationship to others in Gaza. “Why, as a master of the first rank,” the man responded. Then Dorotheos asked him how he would see himself in Caesarea, which was a major port for the region. The man responded, “Well, certainly as one of the more important citizens.” And if he was visiting Antioch, one of the most important cities in the Roman Empire? “I would see myself as one of the common folk.” Finally, Dorothoes asked him how he would see himself if he went before the emperor in Rome. The man said, “I would see myself as one of the poor.” Dorotheos then said, “This is what I mean when I said that the nearer a man gets to God the more he sees himself a sinner.” When we come close to God, we see our faults and our flaws in God’s light. We see ourselves as we really are, and it causes us to ask God to lead and transform us even more. This is what humility is all about. Dorotheos was an amazing Christian thinker, but he wasn’t always appreciated in his own home.
Dorotheos easily could have said what Jesus said in our passage for today, which was, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” It’s amazing that a man whose words were copied by hand for over 1000 years, and were sold for the past 500 was dismissed in his time. But that’s often the way it is with the great ones—with prophets.
What’s funny about prophets is that pretty much as a rule they had a small following in some circles, but were ignored by the world. In fact, most of the prophets we know of in the Old Testament would have been considered failures in their times. Often they were ignored, persecuted, and every once in a while, killed. We have a misconception about prophets. We tend to think of them as people who see the future. They really didn’t see or foretell the future. In fact, the few passages from the prophets that speak about the future are very sketchy. What prophets did was to tell about the present. They always spoke to people about their present situation, and how it reflected their relationship with God. The prophets tell people what God is saying now. Because they told the truth, the powerful of the day often hated the prophets.
Why are prophets typically so reviled when they’re alive, and so revered once they die? The answer is that prophets speak truth, and as Anthony de Mello once said, “The truth that sets us free is the truth we’d rather not hear.” If you are powerful, or like the system the way it is, who wants to hear that what we are doing is going against what God wants us to do? Often it’s not until prophets have passed that even the wealthy and powerful are able to recognize how true what the prophets said was.
The problem with prophets is that they tell us what God is really saying to us, and often we’d rather not hear what God has to say. In contrast, false prophets tell us what we want to hear. And the sad truth is that our culture is filled with so many popular false prophets who shout out only what we want to hear. For example, I hear false prophets on the left who whisper to us that religion is a farce, that going to church regularly doesn’t benefit your life at all, and that you can be spiritual on your own. What they are really saying is that you don’t have to listen to God if you don’t want to, you don’t have to serve God if you don’t want to, and that God really isn’t making any demands on your life. God, if God exists, is just a big puppy dog who merely wants us to pet him every once in a while. They are false prophets because they tell us what we want to hear, which is about a faith that requires nothing from us.
Meanwhile, we have false prophets on the right who tell us only that we are sinful, or only that we are bad. Also, there’s a new breed of falseness on the right coming from proponents of the prosperity gospel. I don’t know if you have heard that term, but it is a term applied to many of the megachurch pastors (like Joel Osteen) who preach a message that God only sees good and that God wants to bless us with stuff. Some of these preachers are more subtle, some are more outrageous. Osteen is much more subtle, and his message is appealingly positive, which I don’t necessarily have a problem with. The problem I see comes when they preach a message of God giving, giving, giving to us without any call for us to make sacrifices in our lives to join God in what God is doing.
For example, there are pastors like the Rev. Creflo Dollar (yes, that is his real name), who has churches in Atlanta and New York City, and preaches to members that God wants them to be wealthy and to have stuff or bling in abundance. He often leads his church in chants of “I want my bling! I want my bling!” He teaches that we can measure God’s grace in our lives by the possessions we own.
Interestingly enough there have been articles written recently questioning the role of the prosperity gospel in the recent housing and economic crashes (you can read one of those articles at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/rosin-prosperity-gospel). It seems that members of prosperity gospel churches are overrepresented among those who have defaulted on their loans. For example, one article I read talked about a landscaper, who made only about $35,000 a year, yet had taken out a loan to buy a $250,000 house, all because the pastor of his church told the members that God would provide them with possessions if they were willing to take the risk. It led him to financial ruin and bankruptcy.
Certainly God wants us to take risks, and God does bless us sometimes with material goods, but what these prosperity preaches preach is not what the gospel teaches. What they are missing is the reality of sin, the reality of the need for sacrifice, and the reality that sometimes following God doesn’t lead to gaining stuff and an easy life.
There are real prophets from God speaking all around you, but can you tell the real ones from the false ones? You can tell the difference because the real ones will generally speak about issues that we both do and don’t want to hear. There are three basic things that true prophets will talk about.
First, they will talk about the reality of sin. Real prophets don’t push the idea of sin away. The recognize that sin is a fact, and that we can see it in the violence, greed, warfare, selfishness, and indifference we can see all over the world. As G. K. Chesteron once said, all you have to do to recognize the presence of sin is to look around the world. There’s evidence in abundance.
Second, true prophets will also talk about love. True prophets will teach us that no matter how powerful sin is, love is many times greater. They will teach us that God’s love is all around us, and that it is ready to work through us, and that we are God’s hands and feet. True prophets will tell us that the answer to sin in the world is God’s love in and through us.
Finally, true prophets teach us that the only answer to sin, and the only way to immerse ourselves in God’s love, is to turn our lives over to God. It is in radically giving ourselves to God that we open our hearts, minds, and souls to love.
So, here’s my question for you. Are you able to hear not only the prophets in your midst, but Christ in your midst? Are you willing to listen to the truth you don’t want to hear in order to hear Christ’s truth that God wants you to hear?
Amen.
