"How to Profit from the Prophets"

A sermon by The Rev. Keenan Kelsey
Noe Valley Ministry, Presbyterian Church (USA)
December 4, 2005

Text: Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term,that her penalty is paid, that she has received from Yahweh’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’ ⁶ A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of God blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings;*lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,* lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’ ¹⁰ See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. ¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church in North Haven, Minnesota was entering the Advent season. And like us, they were listening to the Prophets. Prophets have a way of pointing out our sins, of condemning our pride and immorality, of flushing out the deceitful and hypocritical elements of our soul. Prophets look at the world the way it is and cry SHAME!

And yet, once the judgment is made and our contrition is noted, the prophets point to the tender mercies of God, and affirm that God’s kindness is always greater than God’s wrath, that God’s love prevails over God’s judgment. It is this message of acceptance and forgiveness we can receive from God alone. This is where we profit from our prophets.

In the darkness of ignorance and despair, of disease and depression, of fear and frustration, the prophets' words tingle with insight and vibrate with shimmering revelations. They push us beyond the boundaries of provincial mind-sets to the challenging unknown. They explode our stuffy conceits into new realities, out of the prisons of fear into the limitless horizons of forgiveness and freedom. It is the prophets who remind us again that the light of God is brighter than all our darkness and that the power of God is greater than all our weakness.

Today we welcome back the prophet Isaiah. Last Sunday, Isaiah articulated our desire that God should tear open the heavens and come to make things right; including the admission that we ourselves are a part of what needs to be made right. This week the word is one of comfort in unexpected circumstances. Isaiah’s audience is still in Babylon: People without a country; fathers and mothers trying to hold their frustrated families together by telling and re-telling the ancient stories of the good old days in far-off Jerusalem, now lying in ruins, the smoke of her ashes still twisting to the sky. They are POWs in a foreign land. And they felt that God had abandoned them. Or, at the very least, was not as strong as the god of the Babylonian conquerors. Then along comes this prophet proclaiming comfort, not only consolation but restoration of courage and strength, empowerment for movement, change, action. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem Isaiah says, ... her penalty is paid." Dare they believe him? After everything dare they trust God now?

Five centuries later, John the Baptizer appears in the desert along the Jordan River, a prophet crying out in the wilderness at a time when the voice of prophecy has long fallen silent. He shouted that God was offering a fresh start, a baptism for repentance and forgiveness; and that something, someone, greater yet was on the way. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, his message is one of returning to God: "decisive turning," "changing of the mind," "changing one's life completely inside and out."

And during the Advent season several years ago, Second Presbyterian Church heard these same scriptures, and was confronted with the same question. Are we ready for God’s Advent into our lives? Are we ready for repentance – a new direction in our lives – and forgiveness and the mighty One who is to come? Or would we rather put our chips on the life we’ve already carved out for ourselves and the small comforts we’ve managed to attain, even though they be in captivity?

It all started the Sunday before Thanksgiving, at coffee hour. The taciturn silver-haired pillar of the community Angus McDowell informed the fairly new young pastor that his son Larry and Larry’s wife, Sherry, who live in Spokane, WA, would be visiting for the Thanksgiving weekend. Seeing as the young couple had a new son, and since Sherry’ family lived down the way and this would be a big reunion, Angus wanted the pastor (as he put it) to do the baby, who just happened to be named for Angus!

Well, pastor Mike got Angus out of coffee hour and into his study and talked at length about baptism, allowing in the end how Larry and Sherry ought to find a church home in Spokane and have the baby baptized there! Angus rose, shook the pastor’s hand, and thanked him for his time. “Fool that I was”, reported pastor Mike, “I thought the matter was settled. “ But Angus was an elder of the church and one of that dwindling breed of courtly, gentle, but inflexibly stiff patriarchs of the church. He simply went to all the members of the Session and then informed Pastor Mike that they had voted 9-0 to approve the baptism, So on the morning of the Sunday after Thanksgiving they did little Angus Larry.

Now this congregation had an odd little baptismal custom. The pastor always asks who stands with this child, and then the whole extended family of the little one rises and remains standing for the ceremony. And that Sunday Angus and his wife and Sherry’s folk and a couple of cousins all properly coiffed and dressed, stood, and the deed was done and everyone went home to turkey leftovers.

The pastor was left to close up the church. As he was turning out the lights, he found a middle aged woman, dressed Salvation Army style, sitting in the front pew with a black plastic purse in her hands. After a long hesitation, she said her name was Mildred Cory and that her daughter Tina just had a baby, and well the baby ought to be baptized shouldn’t it? Pastor Mike sighed, thinking, oh no not again, and suggested that Tina and her husband should call to discuss the appropriateness of baptism. Mildred finally met his eyes and said, “Tina’s got no husband, Tina’s just 18 and she was confirmed in this church 4 years ago. She used to come for Senior High fellowship but – well then she got pregnant and decided to keep the baby and she’s nervous to come talk to you but she wants the baby baptized her in her own church.” Pastor Mike said he would bring it to the Session.

Well, you can imagine the conversation, including a moot comment or two about what in the world Tina Cory was doing, keeping this baby! Most of them knew the father had ditched her, run away to the Army. There were a few questions as to whether or not Tina could stick to the commitment of baptism, and whether the church could condone the behavior. But after the Angus Larry affair pastor Mike was a bit feisty, and said something like, after all at least Tina was here in town and the church could give her the support if she needed.

Well, the real problem was the picture of the baptism that was in everyone’s minds: Tina, pimples on her chin, little Jimmy in her arms, big Jimmy long since fled into the Army, and Mildred Cory the only extended family around. The Session reluctantly approved. After all, Tina was a member of the church.

The church was full, as it was the Sunday before Christmas. After the sermon, the appointed elder read from a 3X5 card, “Tina Cory presents her son for baptism.” The scene hurt all right. The young mother came down the aisle looking so alone. When the pastor read who stands with this child?” Mildred rose slowly, looking from side to side. A few awkward moments passed as the pastor shuffled his papers. Then there was some movement in the pews. Angus Larry had stood up in his blue serge suit, his wife too. A couple of other elders stood up, then the 6th grade Sunday school teacher. Soon the whole church was standing up with little Jimmy. Tina was crying of course, and Mildred Cory was holding on the to the pew in front of her as thought she was standing on the deck of a ship rolling in a great wind, which in a way she was.

There are hills and valleys and rough places in our lives that are barriers to God working in any of us and they need to be leveled and smoothed. They may be rocky relationships or strained or broken friendships. They may be stormy tempers that flare and moody valleys that are unpredictable and hazardous.

We need to take charge of whatever it is that produces the turmoil and pressure and anxiety within us. Is there substance dependence that needs to be admitted is out of control? There is no better time than now to begin to work on straightening out a disordered and aimless lifestyle that encourages us to wander off into unfulfilling byways.

God has come into our world, says the prophet. God has come to enter into our story and to offer us comfort and hope and power and peace. God does not stand far off from us when we are in distress. God comes to us and stands beside us. In our times of need, we are blessed by God's presence. Prophets, annoying as they can be, are the ones who guide our feet in the way of hope, the way of peace. The way of peace is not the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To do the right thing, the counterculture thing, the generous thing, is to bring about peace. Being prophetic IS being a peacemaker. May it be so.