In this sermon, Pastor Brooks completed a series on biblical prophets by focusing on Jesus as a prophet.
Scripture Reading—Mark 6: 1-16
I have been feeling an added sense of pressure about this sermon for today. A year ago I began a sermon series called “The Year of the Prophets.” On the first Sunday of every month, we would have a sermon that focused on a different biblical prophet. I began the series with the prophet Elijah who, as you just heard, was often connected with Jesus. In that initial sermon, I talked about how from their inception both the Jewish and Christian faiths have depended on prophets. I also said that we would end the year by talking about Jesus as a prophet. I declared, “I am confident that after a year of learning about other Biblical prophets we will see Jesus in a whole new light.” Thus, I feel like I am under pressure to fulfill this promise.
In thinking about how to persuade you that our yearlong endeavor has paid off, it occurred to me that I could review what we have learned about each of the prophets and show how they are connected to Jesus. I could review how some, like Jesus, lived against the grain, how they jarred and disturbed people, how they awakened people to not only the divine but also divine concern for the poor and the oppressed. I could also review how frequently the gospels connect Jesus to both Moses and Isaiah, how the gospels understood Jesus in light of these past prophets, how these prophets set in motion the very template for the last supper and for communion today. Like our scripture from Mark says, Jesus really was “like one of the prophets of old.” The prophets were the direct spiritual lineage of Jesus and the fountainhead of our faith as Christians.
Yet, this approach didn’t seem wholly satisfying for me. I thought you might not find this ancient historical background so meaningful or convincing, so then I thought about how I could highlight a few of the many references Jesus himself made to prophets. I could show how he was steeped, raised, and formed by the prophets of his faith, so much so that he begins his public ministry by quoting from the prophet Isaiah as he declares, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” I could further explore some of the many references in the gospels to Jesus as a prophet whether it is crowds at the feeding of the five thousand, the crowds on Palm Sunday, or his followers on the road to Emmaus. I could even illustrate how in scriptures like our two from today Jesus implies that he sees himself as a prophet. Like the prophets before him, he has been dishonored in his hometown. Like the prophets before him, he lives under the threat of being killed in Jerusalem.
Still, this approach didn’t seem completely satisfying to me either. I thought about how one could argue Jesus was given lots of titles, so what makes the title of prophet so important. I also thought about how maybe all of you wouldn’t take me at my word that understanding Jesus as a prophet is especially significant. I thought maybe I needed to present the arguments of famous biblical scholars like William Herzog who have written entire books arguing that one must understand Jesus first and foremost as a Jewish prophet of justice in an unjust world. Many of us in recent weeks have been mourning the loss of Marcus Borg who also made similar arguments in his book on Jesus as a religious revolutionary.
Nevertheless, this approach didn’t seem very satisfying because it can all be very intellectual and heady, and sometimes we need to feel and experience the truth of something in order to believe it, so let me try another way of going about this. I want you to imagine something that at first might be very bleak and disturbing. Imagine that all of society is a middle school cafeteria. Bear with me. I know this is a very depressing image. Further imagine that at first you are sitting all alone in this cafeteria. From your own life experiences, you might know why this is the case. Maybe you haven’t always been so popular. Maybe you have been an outcast at some point. Maybe you’ve been picked on by the bully who threatens and intimidates everyone in the cafeteria. You could well have experienced complete rejection. You could well have been so down in the dumps that you felt like no one loved you, even God seemed distant and far off. It’s at this point that someone startles you. Someone taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey, come join us over here.” You wonder who this person is. Why would he so willingly go against the grain of what everyone else is doing? You’re not sure of his motives, but you decide anything would be better than being alone at your table, so you pick up your stuff and go to this other table. At this table, there is this odd mix of outcasts and delinquents who have all opened up their lunch boxes to pass around and share apples, grapes, cheetos, etc.
Day after day you keep coming back to this table for lunch. At first, you felt uncomfortable being around this unusual assortment of students, but eventually the guy who invited you gets you to loosen up a bit and enjoy yourself. He’s a good storyteller, and his stories are not only entertaining, but they jolt you into seeing the world in a whole new way. Eventually, the people at the table become like your family away from home. It’s an incredible experience of acceptance and affirmation. One day you’re reflecting on how all of this happened, so you ask your friend who initially invited you to the table how the table came about and how he came to do what he does. Your buddy says, “Well, you know I am not the first to do this. Some other kids did it long before I did. In fact, you have probably heard me talk about those kids a fair amount in my stories.”
You ask why someone would ever be so willing to go against the grain like your buddy and these earlier kids. Your buddy explains, “I think all of us are hungry in some way. We are not just hungry for food. We are hungry for more than that. Some might call it a sense of belonging, some might call it community, some might call it love. I think it is probably all those things and much more. Regardless of what the case might be, once you see that hunger it is hard to ignore it and not do something about it. That’s why I am always inviting people to the table. It’s also why I think this whole cafeteria needs to change. I don’t want anyone to go hungry. I want everyone to be embraced and have a seat at the table.” In listening to your friend, you feel moved by what he is saying. You feel as if you can no longer ignore others who are hungry. You want to do something as well, so your buddy says, “You know you can go find others too. You can tap them on the shoulder and invite them to the table.”
In a similar way, Jesus did as prophets before him had done. He went against the grain of what everyone else was doing. He invited people to the table. Prophets like Isaiah called it a banquet. Like the prophets before him, Jesus also sought to do more than that. He wanted to change the whole unjust order of society. What’s interesting about our scripture for today is that Herod clearly feels very threatened by Jesus. It’s easy to see why someone who wants to change the whole cafeteria would make a bully feel threatened. In a state of paranoia, Herod believes that Jesus is the reincarnation of an earlier prophet, John the Baptist. Like Jesus, John had been a peasant prophet who stirred up the rabble and criticized the powerful. What’s also interesting is what occurs immediately before the passage in which we learn of Herod’s fears and paranoia. Just before Herod hears of Jesus, it is the followers of Jesus who are actually the ones stirring up trouble. They are going from town to town in teams of two. Everywhere they go, they are tapping people on the shoulder. Our translation says their message is that people need to repent. That’s another way of saying that as a people they need to change what they are thinking and doing. Cafeteria life can’t continue as it has.
In essence, Jesus wasn’t content to be a prophet all by himself. He commissioned his followers to be prophets as well. In the end, I may not be able to convince you of how important it is to see and understand Jesus as a prophet, but maybe the more important message is that we are to be prophets. We are the ones who are to shake and rattle the status quo. We are the ones who are to build a new world in the midst of the old. We are the ones who can tap people on the shoulder and invite them to the table, a table where they can experience God and God’s love. In our own ways, may each of us be a prophet. Amen.