Hilton Head Island, SC – June 4, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 30:8-14; 15-22
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the prophets, “Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions.” – Isaiah 30:9-10
Every now and then I feel a need to preach a sermon about the topic of prophecy. And every time I do that I feel it is necessary to state all over again what prophecy is, and what it is not. The words “prophet” and “prophecy” are two of the most commonly misinterpreted words in the English language.
First, here is what prophecy is not, at least as it is properly understood biblically. Prophecy is NOT a matter of predicting the future. That cannot possibly be overstated. Prophecy is NOT a matter of predicting the future.
But surely the biblical prophets did that sometimes, didn’t they? Indeed they did. And many times they were correct in what they predicted. Other times they were clearly wrong, especially when they attempted to forecast the ethical consequences of outcome of political controversies. Jeremiah, for example, predicted the Egyptians would come soon and conquer and destroy Judah. They came, they saw, but they did not conquer. No Veni, Vidi, Vici for the Egyptians; Julius Caesar they were not. And Jeremiah was simply wrong in his prediction. Twenty years later, however, the Babylonians did attack Judah, and they did conquer it. Jeremiah was there when it happened. But as a correct predictor of what actually transpired Jeremiah failed.
As has been said thousands of times by thousands of preachers, and I have said probably dozens of times, prophecy is not FORE-telling; rather prophecy is FORTH-telling. It is telling forth, speaking forth the word of God to the sons and daughters of God. God isn’t nearly as much interested in our having glimpses into the future as He is in our understanding what is going on in the present, and what He wants done in it. That is what “the word of God” meant to the prophets.
The actual word “prophet” is not of Hebrew but rather of Greek origin. It means, “to speak bubbling over.” Prophets are people who believe they are called by God to proclaim God’s will to current situations anywhere and everywhere in the world. They declare that God has vital interests in the ethics of all national and international activities. And they prophesy excitedly, and with deeply felt conviction.
Do the actions of people in the present day reflect God’s will, or do they thwart His will? Does God approve of what the Church or Christianity or America or the world are doing, or does He disapprove of it? Are our values biblical values, or are they the sordid and stunted values of people who live their lives as though there is no God? If God does exist, does He really care what we do? The Old Testament prophets constantly focused on what was happening in Judah and Israel at whatever was the time in which they were writing their prophecies. And remember, the prophets did not primarily predict the future. Instead, they proclaimed what they believed was God’s word to their fellow subjects in the southern and northern kingdoms of the Israelites in the here-and-now, which to us was there-and-then. The historical period of the biblical prophets lasted for about four hundred years, from roughly 850 BCE to 450 BCE.
On the bulletin cover this morning is a quotation from my seminary professor of Old Testament, George A.F. Knight. George Angus Fulton Knight was from Glasgow, Scotland, as was his wife Nancy. Both of them are two of the saints mentioned in my recent book, The Communion of Saints: A Pastor’s Pot-pourri of Parishioners. Copies of it are on the literature table in case you have been wanting to get one, but you keep forgetting and you need a reminder. If that is the case, consider yourself duly reminded. The Knights weren’t actually parishioners of mine. I was instead a student of George’s and a longtime friend of Nancy’s. But I included them in the book, even if the subtitle is not technically accurate in all cases. It is alliterative, though, and I have always been attracted to alliteration, perhaps even like a moth to a flame.
One of the most influential seminary courses of my life was George Knight’s class called Eighth-Century Prophets. He talked about the Big Four: Isaiah, Micah, Amos, and Hosea. All of them lived either in Judah or Israel in the middle of the eighth century BCE, that is, about 750 Before the Common Era. Today we are looking at the prophecy of Isaiah.
Isaiah lived in Jerusalem at a time when Judah was very wealthy and influential in the ancient Middle East. Three of the kings who reigned during his life were among the most heralded of all the Israelite monarchs. Nevertheless, all was not well in Judah, at least according to Isaiah. And here is where his particular prophecy became a biting critique of the trends of that time.
Isaiah believed the very affluence of the Israelites had diverted their attention from God. They paid far too much heed to how to maintain their elevated style of living and too little to how they should serve God. In the section of his prophecy immediately before our first reading of the morning, Isaiah wrote as though he was God Himself speaking. He excoriated the king and his advisers for seeking protection from the Egyptians, of whose policies God apparently did not approve. In contemporary terms, it would be like asking: Should America promote its seventy-year old alliance with NATO, or should it be America First, and NATO must fend for itself, with or without the USA? However, I’m certainly not going to get into that!
The dyspeptic prophet Isaiah was convinced the people of Judah had forgotten the commitment they should have kept to the God of Israel. Not only that, but they were following false prophets, and that really bothered Isaiah. I remember as though it were yesterday George Knight reading the following verses to us, even though it was fifty-three years ago: “They are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers” (the legitimate predictors) “’See not’; and to the prophets, ‘Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions” (Isa. 30:9-10).
Prophets and preachers have always sparred with one another over who was proclaiming the genuine Gospel, and who was merely casting “smooth things” before a gullible and easily beguiled public. Who, claiming to speak on behalf of God, is right, and who is wrong?
Fifty to seventy-five years ago, this nation had numerous preachers who were recognized as true prophets. In the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, there was Harry Emerson Fosdick, Ralph Sockman, and George Buttrick. In the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, there was Martin Luther King, Jr., Billy Graham, and William Sloan Coffin. The closer we get to the present time, however, the fewer are the widely-recognized names of great prophetic preachers. Now two of the best-known preachers are those who proclaim what is called the Prosperity Gospel. They are Joel Osteen and the dubiously-monikered but aptly self-proclaimed Creflo Dollar. If you don’t recognize either of those names, which I suspect most of you don’t, I am glad. If you do, and if you like what they have to say, please listen carefully, because this is very important.
“Prosperity Gospel” preachers constantly declare that God wants everybody to be rich, happy, and content. If that is true, God needs to come up with a revolutionary theory of economics, because it is virtually impossible for everybody to be wealthy. If anyone is rich, it means lots of people must be poor. That is virtually a law of economics. It was the proclamation of wealth that infuriated Isaiah. “Speak to us smooooth things, prophesy illuuusions,” he said sarcastically.
Preaching optimism and positivity may win friends and influence people, but it does not reflect genuine reality. Optimism and positivity have their place in life, but they are not principles upon which to attempt to build a life of faith. We must put our trust in God, not in the almighty Rolls-Royce-driving, high-living Creflo Dollar or the smoooooth operator Joel Osteen. “Prosperity Gospel” is a theological oxymoron. It is an anti-biblical contradiction in terms.
People say it is improper and maybe even uncouth for preachers to attack other preachers and their messages before their congregants. On the contrary, it is improper and uncouth if preachers sit idly by when their parishioners may become seduced by ever-renewed versions of ancient idolatries. Prophetic preachers must speak with fiery conviction about the ills they perceive in society and what they believe God says about those situations.
The American Church has become far too quiescent. The clergy are afraid to rock the boat. But if the boat is not rocked, it may sink! The people in the boat are clinging to anything they can find to hold on to, but either they refuse to grasp the word of God or the word of God is not properly or sufficiently offered to them! We are too determined to stay rich, happy, and content!
The Trinity United Church of Christ is a large mainline Protestant congregation on the south side of Chicago. It was the church where the Barack Obama family were members before they moved to Washington. Back then, its pastor was a man named Jeremiah Wright.
When Jeremiah Wright came to Trinity Church in 1972, it had a membership of 250. When he retired in 2008, with a dark cloud hanging over him, Trinity was the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, with over eight thousand members. Dr. Wright is black, and most of the members are black, although there are several hundred whites who also are members.
Jeremiah Wright has always lived up to his given name. He is prophetic to the core. But, like many prophets, including his namesake, Jeremiah, he could go off the deep end on occasion. Going off the deep end may be inevitable for all prophets. Dr. Wright said and did some things he probably shouldn’t have. He allowed the Trinity Church to build him a ten-thousand-square-foot parsonage in a suburb in south Chicago, and in my opinion (of which I do have a few), that was a serious moral lapse, no matter what justification was made for it by anyone else or by him.
Nonetheless, Jeremiah Wright stands out in the line of America’s great prophetic preachers. No one was in a better position to speak truth to power when a young power couple sat in the pews of the Trinity Church. And the truths proclaimed there had an influence felt throughout this land and around the world whose results are very controversial and are yet to be fully determined.
Prophecy, like politics, is messy. It may be impossible to validate its authenticity while it is being proclaimed. The trouble with American prophetic preaching is that it is being proclaimed far too little, and smooth things and illusions are being proclaimed far too much.
When Jeremiah Wright retired in 2008, the congregation wanted a younger pastor in the mold of the pastor emeritus. The man who was called as the current minister is Dr. Otis Moss, III.
Otis Moss the Third is one of America’s great preachers. But because he is black, he is not well known in the white world.
In order to understand who Otis Moss III is, it is necessary to know about his father, Otis Moss, Jr. The father was born in rural Georgia, and attended the famous Morehouse College in Atlanta. There he became friends with both Martin Luther King Senior and Junior. Eventually he became pastor of the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, where he served for thirty-three years before retiring in 2008, the same year in which Jeremiah Wright retired in Chicago, the year in which his son Otis became pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ.
When Lois and I lived in Cleveland, and I no longer could find a call to any church because apparently I was considered too old to be called to a new pastorate, we attended a Disciples of Christ congregation, which had an outstanding prophetic preacher. But one Sunday we decided to attend Olivet Baptist Church, to which we walked, since it was only a few blocks from where we lived. It was the largest black congregation in the State of Ohio.
It was a cultural and ecclesiastical learning experience. To begin with, it was a hot summer day, and the large church was not very well air-conditioned. But everyone was dressed to the nines. That is still true in most black congregations all over this land, south and north, east and west. Black folks still get dressed up to go to church. I find that ecclesiastically fascinating.
I can’t recall a single specific thing Otis Moss, Jr. said that Sunday morning, but I will never forget how much “into it” he and the congregation were. There was laughter and shouting and clapping and “Amens!” all over the sanctuary. Don’t misunderstand; I’m not promoting that; I’m just recalling it. But on that morning and in that setting, Lois and I observed prophecy going on. And it felt right; it felt proper. It stirred the soul, as true prophecy does.
In his book Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World, Otis Moss III wrote, “America is living stormy Monday, but the pulpit is preaching happy Sunday. The world is experiencing the Blues, and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses of non-prescription prosaic sermons with several ecclesiastical and theological side-effects. The church is becoming a place where Christianity is nothing more than Capitalism in drag.”
You don’t hear statements like that much anymore. They are still preached frequently in the predominantly black denominations, but the white denominations have been tamed by affluence and fear and a strong resistance to boat-rocking. It isn’t a good situation, but it’s what we have. And we must ask: Is anything be done about it? Have we meekly accepted that, and made our peace with smooth things, not wanting to alienate, or are we still willing to listen to prophets?
To profane the sacred means to render it secular and toothless. The profanation of prophecy means that a society refuses to listen when people question whether its values and aspirations are biblical or not. American prophecy has largely been profaned. That is very bad for America.
Until prophetic preaching returns to American churches and culture, America will slowly starve to death. If the word of God is not proclaimed, the people of God cannot truly and faithfully flourish.
Often God’s word is not immediately apparent while it is being proclaimed. God’s prophets might be mistaken. Usually it takes time for prophecy to take root and sprout. But if prophecy is not proclaimed, the people perish.