The common misunderstanding of the words “prophet” or “prophecy” is that they connote “predictors of the future.” Often the prophets did do that, and often they were right, but sometimes they were wrong. Jeremiah was wrong about the Egyptians, for instance. The true vocation of prophets is to proclaim a biblical perspective on what is going on in any society or culture at any given time. That is to say, they attempt to declare what they believe is God’s unique judgment on the behavior and values of peoples in their own settings and circumstances. Those are the issues which most concern prophets, whether they are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or religiously unaffiliated.

It is both a sad and tragic fact that citizens of the United States of America may be more prone to use violence against one another than the citizens of almost all other nations which have ever existed. That shameful feature is largely explained by how our nation came into being. Astonishingly, we defeated the strongest empire then in existence in an armed revolution against Great Britain in order to gain our independence. One of the main reasons behind that victory is likely that the citizen-soldiers of the thirteen colonies were better marksmen than the professional Redcoats. Americans had become quite proficient at killing both Indians and game animals with their guns in order to secure the land and their living. Our forebears were so good at what they did that within less than a century of winning the revolution they had created the third-largest geographical nation on earth, and much of that rapid expansion occurred by means of violence.

God wanted Jonah to go to the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh and rail against it for the sins of the Ninevites. Jonah refused to do it, and set sail on a ship headed for Spain. God sent a great storm against the ship, the narrative says, and in order to keep from capsizing, the sailors threw Jonah overboard. They did so at his own bidding, however, and not because of their terror. I realize these details may be as hard to swallow as it was for the whale to swallow Jonah, but we must move on to Chapter Two, which describes the situation in which Jonah found himself, after literarily being sucked into the alimentary system of the largest creature in saltwater or on land.

When we speak of the human condition, we are confronted by a whole host of issues and challenges: childhood, youth, adulthood, old age; good times, bad times, glad times, sad times; health, sickness, wealth, poverty; success, failure, strength, weakness.

The Bible says nothing anywhere about abortion. Probably women tried abortions in biblical times, but not like they are performed today in hospitals or clinics. They likely jumped several feet out of trees or off large rocks or by another, similarly dangerous method. Afterwards, if they survived, either they knew that the pregnancy was or wasn’t over. Back then, miscarriages and abortions were totally a private matter, and had almost no social ramifications at all.

In the USA, over a hundred people a day are killed by firearms. That’s close to a thousand per week. It is over 40,000 per year. Three-fourths of all murders involve guns. Six out of every ten firearms deaths are because of suicide. Killing oneself by a gun is considered a surefire way of self-annihilation (pun sadly but deliberately intended.) And because there are so many guns available to almost everyone in this country, is it any wonder that we have one of the highest (but not the highest) rates of suicide?

How could this have happened? Jesus was so peace-loving, so charismatic, so spiritually powerful! There was no one who encountered him who was not profoundly affected by him! He could not be dead! Not him; not Jesus! If he was dead, how could they ever live without him? He had turned each of them from being no one in particular to someone very special! Because he was so completely alive, they had become completely alive! And now he was gone!

Why would Jesus choose Judas Iscariot as a disciple, a man who was as hot-headed and thin-skinned as John Adams, whether or not Judas was actually a Jewish zealot? And why would he choose someone who was clearly identified as Simon the zealot? Did he have no awareness of how potentially dangerous those associations would be to his own purpose and cause?

That day in the home of a judgmental Pharisee, an anonymous woman experienced profound acceptance by the only truly loving man she had ever seen and whom she would never see again. She completely abased herself before Jesus, and he did nothing to show disapproval of anything she did. He did not look askance at her, and his face and eyes displayed not one scintilla of rejection or revulsion. No one had ever treated her like that. He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Then, looking directly at Simon, Jesus said, firmly but without rancor, “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

It is astounding that Jesus would choose a tax collector as one of his disciples. Matthew is specifically identified as a tax collector and as one of Jesus’ disciples in the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but he is not mentioned at all in the Gospel of John, nor, for that matter, does John even provide a list of disciples as the synopticists did (although all three didn’t agree precisely on who the twelve were). A common complaint of the scribes and Pharisees against Jesus is that he openly ate “with tax collectors and sinners.” Each of the Synoptics specifically says that. Because they didn’t like the religious ideas of Jesus, they latched onto the widespread political disgust over tax collectors further to denigrate Jesus.

This Lent the Lenten sermon series is entitled The Company He Kept. Each sermon shall seek to address an unusual group of people with whom Jesus deliberately chose to associate in his brief three-year ministry. Most of these groups caused religious and political problems for him. The theological enemies of Jesus were strongly opposed to the attention he paid to these people. The scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and priests all thought that Jesus should have avoided these people rather than to spend a single minute in communication with them. Nonetheless, Jesus ignored their warnings, and he openly cultivated contacts with these types of people.

Today I am beginning a series of sermons whose general theme is this: The Company He Kept. Each sermon will attempt to point out an unusual group of people with whom Jesus deliberately associated. All of these people would have been considered inappropriate by some of the theological and cultural enemies of Jesus, of whom he acquired a rapidly growing number. It is evident in reading the four Gospels that from the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus specifically chose to talk to and to minister to types of people whom Jesus’ detractors thought every respectable person should very carefully avoid. Today we will be thinking about the mentally ill.

This is the fourth, and last, in a series of four sermons about the Book of Judges. I am sure no one is going to weep bitter tears over that fact. If it is any consolation to you, I decided to do this series about three months ago. It was after the Nov. 3 election last year, but before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol a month ago. That terrorist attack turned this series of sermons into something I never could have anticipated. January 6, 2021, is a major event in our nation’s history that will take years to sort out. It prompted sermon thoughts and ideas which otherwise never would have occurred to me. We might have imagined there would be universal condemnation of the attack on the United States Capitol building, but as we have since learned, that was not the case. It now appears there is strong support for both former President Trump and for the actions taken by the mob he clearly incited to do what they did on January 6.

Yet, says the Book of Judges, God chose Gideon. Why? When God had so many other possibilities, why would He ever select someone like Gideon as His champion? It was precisely because Gideon was so unlikely! Gideon was Tom Thumb, he was a Lilliputian, he was Danny DeVito! Don’t get a midget to take on a giant! Don’t get David to take on Goliath! Is the Book of Judges approving those ideas, or is it really telling us that is not how God works?

When Deborah and Jael were alive, Israel was not yet a nation. Instead, it was twelve separate and unequal tribes. It desperately needed to coalesce into a unity if ever it was to become a recognizable country and a light to the Gentiles. From Genesis through II Samuel, Israel is struggling to become a nation, an ethnos. It wasn’t easy. It was painful and exasperating and difficult, and it took a long, long time until they had a monarchy which was fully functional. The patriarchs were long gone, Moses and Joshua had died, and there was nothing at the center - - - no Jerusalem, no temple, no institution of lasting significance. The century and a half of the Judges is the In-Between Time, between Joshua and the first of the kings.

How do we discern God’s will in what is going on around us when it is going on? Do we know what God wants of us as individuals or as people when it is happening? Do we ever try to figure that out? Or do we just go along with whatever happens, and whoever leads us, assuming that God has no part and no interest in it? Do we have a responsibility as citizens to try to participate in what we believe God wants us to do, or do we accede to whatever happens and to whoever makes it happen at any given time?

January 6, 2021, like December 7, 1941, is a date that shall live in infamy. Four days ago American democracy was shaken to its very foundations. It happened in the United States Capitol building, the seat of government of a nation which proudly proclaims itself the strongest democracy in the history of the world. But on January 6, our democracy endured its most damaging test since April 12 of 1861, and it was prompted by the nation’s president.