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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
How Do You Recognize A Prophet?
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; The Gospel of John 1:6-8, 19-28
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This third week of the Advent season, we meet John the Baptist again, as the Gospel of John tells his story. For some reason, this got me wondering how you can know you're really dealing with a prophet. My message identifies four distinctive characteristics and suggests prophets can show up in the most surprising places.
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Holy Hubert. Now there's a name to conjure with.
Thirty years ago he stood out there on Berkeley's Sproul Plaza every weekday at noon. About fifty years old, rough hewn, he would thump his Bible, pace around like a leopard, and preach hellfire and damnation to anyone who'd stop to listen.
They did more than that. Some students and hangers-on went out of their way to show up for Hubert's scene, many of them ready with one-liners intended to knock him off his prophetic tracks.
But Hubert held his own. He'd point his finger to the sky and talk about God. He'd point at his own chest and talk about spiritual things. Then he'd point right at his audience, call them to repentance, and drop his punch line:
"And God loves you, you sinner. Bless your dirty heart!"
I wonder how many of those students, now as old as Holy Hubert was then, once in a great while flash back to those open-air revival meetings -- the memory triggered by some sight or sound or turn of phrase -- and realize they'd received a "word from the Lord"? What seeds planted by Hubert so long ago have now yielded a harvest of spiritual maturity?
I remember hearing, way back then, an even more surprising word from the Lord than Hubert's. Not on campus, but in my own front yard.
A friend and I stood there talking when two street dudes came walking by. Stopping right in front of us, one of them asked for spare change, which I politely declined to give. He looked me in the eye and said, "You're not crazy, are you? Naw, you're not crazy. You're too strong to be crazy." Then he moved on down the street to catch up with his friend.
I could not shake his words. Maybe he was right. On the continuum of mental health, I was a lot closer to the sane end than he; but whatever kept me this side of his kind of problems seemed suddenly very tenuous.
Where did any strength I had come from? How strong was it, really? What might tip me towards or even beyond his position on the scale? And when, or how?
As it turned out, within a week I was a guest on an intensive retreat with seventy or so men. Half of us were guests, talked into being there by trusted friends who'd experienced Cursillo for themselves and wanted to share its blessings. The other half had teamed up for months in advance, training and praying, conspiring to love us unconditionally in Jesus' name.
That weekend transformed this professional Christian's life and ministry. It was like a spiritual bath, a plunge into cool fresh waters of faith and hope and love. Strengths... weaknesses... sins... faithfulness... every part of me known fully by God and perfectly taken care of by the mercy of God.
For days after returning home I couldn't help smiling at even the most mundane things. I could swear I'd fallen in love. Bless my dirty heart!
Intentionally, or by accident, now and then some person plays the role of God's prophet in your life. If you've got a tender conscience or a sensitive soul, you pick up their message loud and clear. As if God had a microphone.
Holy Hubert knew how to prophesy. He pointed up, he pointed to his own heart, and he pointed out to clinch the deal with his assembled noonday multitude. In his better moments he was really pointing behind himself, like John the Baptist did 2,000 years before:
"Look beyond me and you'll see Jesus. Watch and listen to him, to what he does and says, and you'll find out just how much God loves you. Bless your dirty hearts!"
posted by Jack Buckley at
9:55 AM
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