prophetic voice Archives - 51��Ƶ

John Hines Day 2011

nancy — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:44:55 +0000

John Hines Day
October 6, 2011
The Rt. Rev. David M. Reed, MDiv ’83, DD ‘08
Bishop Suffragan – Diocese of West Texas
Christ Chapel, 51��Ƶ
Amos 7:7-9a; Ps. 18:21-36; II Corinthians 4:5-12; Luke 9:23-26
Jh. In the Name of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
INTRO: It’s a privilege and a blessing to be with you for this celebration of the life and ministry of John Hines, 4^th Bishop of Texas, 22^nd Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and most importantly for our purposes here today, without which there wouldn’t be a here, here , for us to celebrate, Founder of 51��Ƶ almost 60 years ago. Born 1910, died 1997…the child of God, and heir of the Kingdom.
When Bishop Hines announced his plans for this seminary, the first to be established in the 20^th century, he dreamed of a seminary fully engaged with the culture, interpreting Christian theology in terms the modern world could understand and led by a faculty of intimidating intellect, stupendous scholarship, amazing good looks and rigorous yet incredibly merciful teaching methods. The seminarians from West Texas would like their professors to know that they feel the dream has come true.
It is an honor, and humbling, to be invited to preach on such a day as this, to stand in this chapel and this pulpit made possible by the vision and energy of Bishop Hines, a passionate and prophetic preacher. And to do so with his family and friends, and some of the clergy who were here when this place was built—it’s all a little intimidating. What was I thinking when I said yes? I haven’t preached here since my Senior Sermon in 1983, and am grateful to the dean for giving me another chance. It feels just the same, except I’m not being graded…well, yes, I guess I am…
The bishop’s passion and prophetic leadership grew out of, of all things, his love for Jesus. He could not imagine that following Jesus could lead anywhere else but to the poor, the overlooked, the alienated, the oppressed—to lead him to stand against segregation, apartheid and poverty. The Incarnation illumined his life and his ministry, and in the crucified, dead and risen Christ, he found the grace, the strength and the stubbornness to enter into and stand with those who suffer. And not just stand there, gawking like a turista, but to talk about it boldly, to call and recall the comfortable and secure Church of his day to pay attention to Jesus.
“The more you genuinely concentrate upon the person and ministry of Christ,” he told a gathering at the College of Preachers, “the more you will be driven into confrontations in his name with the powers of darkness and with the demonic structures that demean human life and frustrate and scar the human spirit.” Standing in this prophetic tradition, your dean said in a meeting last spring, “If we don’t tell the world it’s crazy, who will?” Or I guess the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel work, too: “If you want to follow me, deny yourselves, take up your cross, and come on.” I looked up Bishop Hines’ in the NY Times, and this was my favorite line: “He was accused by critics of overlooking administrative detail as he focused on social issues.” May that be engraved on all our tombstones.
It’s not easy being a prophet, and it’s even harder when you’re on the inside, and Bishop Hines was way on the inside. He was bishop and presiding bishop when that still carried a lot of weight and opened a lot of doors. And yet, not counting equality with the social movers and political shakers a thing to be grasped, he saw his office and authority as instruments and leverage for God’s Kingdom, ways in which he could confront the demonic structures that demean human life, go up against the love of power with the power of love, and get in the face of his own beloved Church and say, “Pay attention to Jesus.”
I suspect that one of the reasons most of us have a hard time hearing prophets—I mean, besides the fact that they’re usually talking about us—is that it seems to be a fine line between being a prophet and being a jerk. Real prophets seem to be pretty disinterested in their identity as prophets, don’t seem to dwell on it; it’s not about them, they say, and their words aren’t even their own. They seem overtaken by God’s Word. Fake prophets seem to be self-conscious, concerned with how they’re doing, maybe even enjoying how they’re upsetting everyone. Real prophets are heart-broken by the work God gives them. There’s plenty of righteous anger, but they are speaking against the people they love…because they love them. Who else will bother to tell these people they’re crazy?
In the Book of Amos, just after the passage we heard about Amos’ waking-dream about the plumbline used to test the sturdiness and straightness of a wall, the priest Amaziah reports to King Jeroboam that Amos is stirring up trouble “in the middle of the house of Israel.” He characterizes him as both a political subversive and a religious nutcase. The priest then goes to Amos and says, “Go, please, just go away. Go home to Judah and earn your living prophesying there.” Amos rejects both labels and responds heatedly, “I’m no prophet and not a prophet’s son, either. I’m a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.” (According to my advanced research, that does not involve putting clothing on trees, but harvesting and cutting up figs.) Then he says, in effect, this was not my idea. “The Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” (Amos 7:14-15) He was all caught up in this prophetic Word.
I don’t get any sense that Bishop Hines spent much time wondering if he was a prophet. He was a priest, then a bishop, and always a churchman who loved the Church, and loved the Lord of the Church. He was trying to follow him. Only someone who loves the Church and has a lot of confidence in God’s purposes for the Church could have devoted so many years to challenging his people to take up the cross and have real life. If you think of time as the measuring out of our lives, then in a very real way, Bishop Hines laid down his life for the love of Jesus.
Times have changed, of course, and the Church is not the way it was when Bishop Hines served it. But I’ve come to suspect that the Church has never been “the way it was.” We live in a time of anger, despair, fear, division, and distrust. And that’s just within the Church…What were you all thinking when you said yes? How will the prophetic Word be heard in our own day, in a culture whose interest in the Church seems to be descending to the level of reality TV: if it’s not about sex, power, fighting, yelling and bad behavior, who cares? How do we get a hearing for God’s Word?
I don’t know if God has called or will call any one of you to be his prophet. Best not to worry about it. But know for sure that he has called you through your baptism into a prophetic movement, a countercultural Way that is against the world for love of the world. Because Jesus is our true Prophet, his whole Church is prophetic by nature. Listen: You are here, for Christ’s sake…you’re here on a Thursday morning, in this chapel that a passion for the Gospel built. Have you not heard, and have you not seen, that gathering for worship, week by week, is an incredibly countercultural and prophetic act? (I was dragging my vestments in here earlier this morning, and walked right into Morning Prayer. What could I do, but stop and join my prayers to the prayers of those stopped to be recollected to God, those who stepped out of all their busyness to remember they have been set free, and to remember who now owns them. How countercultural is that?) Where else will people hear this life-giving Word? Where else will people be caught up in this Word, pressed down, sifted and transformed? And we come, week by week, not to hunker down and escape—we’re crazy if we think we can be at ease in Zion these days– but so that we can be comforted and confronted, strengthened, fed, lit up, and sent back out there, convinced that “in here” and “out there” are all the same to God.
In your time in this seminary, you will feast on words, you will be overstuffed with words, and they aren’t always going to taste like honey-dipped scrolls. But the point– what makes it all worthwhile—is not that you become really, really smart, but that you be transformed… made into God’s holy people…that your heart gets changed. You will find that you begin to look out these chapel windows differently, that you see differently, maybe with the eyes of Jesus, and that you have a language of hope and joy with which to describe what you see and know. It could just be that you get carried away by it all and end up doing something bold and prophetic, and people will say, “Well, yes, but he’s a political subversive, a religious nut,” or “Well, you know, she’s not much of an administrator.” And you’ll care, but not that much, because you’ve been caught up in a movement that takes your breath away and gives you the breath of God, the living Word…I think it’s something in the baptismal water.
Because Jesus is a prophet—calling for repentance, saying the hard and hope-filled truth, announcing and embodying this Kingdom, pointing to this new thing God is doing– the whole Church is, by nature, prophetic, standing like a cross jammed into the ground, recalling us…them…everyone and each one…to the redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus. To us has been given the compelling Word that sends us out again and again to confront all that demeans and destroys life, to stand with those who suffer, to overcome the love of power with the power of love, and to always, always, pay attention to Jesus. AMEN.

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John Hines Day Sermon

wpengine — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 23:52:13 +0000

On the occasion of John Hines Day and the anniversary of his 100^th Birthday

Christ Chapel– 51��Ƶ

Micah Jackson, John Hines Assistant Professor of Preaching

Several years ago, the United Church of Christ began an advertising campaign designed to answer what they considered to be one of the primary questions facing people wondering about the church. Their slogan was “God is still speaking.” It was a powerful campaign, and by all accounts, it was successful. And I wouldn’t want to criticize the marketing geniuses behind the United Church of Christ, but I do think that they’re asking the wrong question. If you ask me, there is a much more important question facing the Church these days. And I suspect that Bishop Hines would agree with me on this. Of course God is still speaking. The real question is this:
Are God’s prophets still speaking?
God said, “Amos, what do you see?” and Amos replied, “A plumb-line.” The plumb-line, of course, represents God’s way of building, one that is straight and true. This passage from Amos was very important to Bishop Hines, and indeed, it is the source for the beautiful sculpture in the narthex here in Christ Chapel. The sculpture shows the plumb-line coming from Heaven, to guide the people of the city toward that which is true. But it also hangs over the city as a sign of judgment, for indeed, dire consequences befall those who do not build straight to the plumb-line of the Lord. But in front of the sculpture is a stand, with a Bible on it. And inscribed on the stand are God’s words (in the Authorized Translation, of course) “Amos, what seest thou?” This is significant to me because it reveals that Bishop Hines knew that the plumb-line was important, but even more so was the vision of the prophet.
Prophets are the ones who see not only the world as it is, but also the world as God created it to be, wholly good, restored and rebuilt, as if with a plumb-line. And they can help others to see it, too. 51��Ƶ a month ago, we presented the Charles Cook award in Servant Leadership to one of our own graduates, Zane Wilemon. He is the founder of Comfort the Children International. He was honored not only for his work, but also for his vision of relationships between us here in America and the people of Kenya. But more even than his vision, he was honored for what he causes others to see. The citation for the award quoted Zane’s grandmother who wisely taught him, “Seeing your life may be as close as some people get to reading the Bible.” Zane Wilemon is a plumb-line, placed in the midst of the people, which we are invited to see.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes, they are.
Paul’s extraordinary letter to the Corinthians gives us another piece of this puzzle. He tells us how to proclaim the vision we see. For, as Christians, we do not see ourselves, or even plumb-lines. When God asks us “What seest thou” we see Christ crucified for the salvation of the world. And it is this vision that we must proclaim. And Paul knows that such a proclamation is not easy, indeed that it is very dangerous. But even if we are not simply afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, but also crushed, driven to despair, forsaken and destroyed, we follow the vision of a man who has been to all these places before, and has triumphed over them all, even death, the final fear.
Bishop Hines lived this way. He proclaimed a true Gospel–even though unpopular with some–a Gospel of social justice inflected by the particular concerns of his day, racial injustice. His work with the General Convention Special Program was criticized for his insistence that the money the program distributed be given freely, without conditions and without oversight. Some said that it was irresponsible, and that the money might be wasted, and that without oversight, there would be no way of knowing if the programs the GCSP supported, let alone the program itself, was being effective. But Hines knew that so long as people in power insisted on judging the effectiveness of things, that true change in the systems of oppression would never be possible. He disregarded this criticism and all others because he knew that proclaiming the vision he saw of a world transformed by justice was his sacred calling, his one duty, and his joy.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes. They are.
Jesus makes a difficult invitation to us this morning. Surely, following him means going where he goes, and maybe even ending up where he ended up. Jesus tells us not to be too concerned about protecting our lives. Indeed, he says that those who save their lives will lose them. Certainly, lives here could mean that our earthly existence could be demanded of us, but it could just as easily mean our metaphorical life–our safety and comfort–which is often harder to imagine surrendering. Taking up the cross daily is not easy, but it is the third piece of the prophet’s call. Not only to see the vision, nor only to proclaim it, but also to live it out in the world.
I might give another example here of one of God’s prophets, and how he or she is a living example of Christ’s call to us to take up our cross daily, but I won’t do that. I won’t do that because, frankly, I don’t want to let any one of us off the hook. If I name someone here then it might seem like all is well and I can just go on about my daily business of caring mostly about myself and paying lip service to the rest of the world. As a part of fallen humanity, I have that tendency, and maybe you recognize it in yourself, too. Instead, I’ll simply ask my question again.
Are God’s prophets still speaking? Yes, they are.
But are you speaking? It’s not an empty question. Simply flipping on the television or tuning in the radio, even just going down to the corner store will reveal that there are plenty of unloving, uncharitable blowhards still speaking. And though many of them are Christians, you couldn’t tell it from their actions, or their message. They’re speaking all right, but it is not the kind of challenging yet life-giving prophecy God demands of us. Some of them have a plumb-line, but often it is they themselves–and not God–who is doing the measuring. There should be more vision than that. They’re speaking all right, but some of them proclaim themselves rather than Christ crucified, his life poured out for the salvation of the world. There should be better proclamation than that. They’re speaking all right, but they speak from the safety of distance–distance and safety born of wealth, and power, and privilege rather than the all-encompassing, unblinking love of God for the creation. There should be more congruence between word and life than that.
God calls out to each of us, every day, and charges us to speak–to speak of love, and justice, and understanding, and peace; to speak of strength, and power, and mercy; to speak of friendship, and joy; in other words, to speak of God. Samuel heard God’s voice and said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Today when you hear God’s voice calling out to you, you will hear it saying, “Speak, prophet, for my world is listening.”

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