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BIBLE STUDY II
Living Prophetic Lifestyles
The word
"prophet" in the religious tradition I come from has often meant a
strange and solitary individual who proclaims doom and gloom.
"Prophesy" is usually taken to mean foretelling the future. What is it
really to be prophetic? Is it possible that Jesus is a prophet who calls us all
to be prophets? That's the focus of this study.
At Pentecost
(Acts 2), what some people thought was drunkenness was in fact the coming of
the Spirit - a spirit so holy that it would make all persons prophets! Not just
the great ones like Jeremiah and Ezekiel but "all humankind". And
Peter uses the prophet Joel to prove his point: "this is what the prophet
spoke of". A further phrase from Joel is echoed in verse 39. In fact, the
words of Joel have been altered slightly : Joel's "And it shall come to
pass afterward" has been altered to "And in the last days it shall be
..." Peter claims that his hearers are now living in the last days - God's
crucial act of salvation has taken place. Joel's prophecy refers to the Day of
the Lord - the day of Judgement, when the poor would be vindicated. Here Peter
speaks of a universal or pouring of the spirit accompanied by cosmic signs, and
he links it back into the resurrection of Jesus (v.33).
This is
clearly to be a whole new beginning for humanity - that ordinary people are
called to a prophetic vocation. To realise that requires faith and trust - not
trust in oneself, but in the grace of the Holy Spirit which at Pentecost was
poured out on all humankind -on sons and daughters; the old, and the young; and
the slaves - who were part of the social and economic system of the time. But this
passage is also filled with the gracious outpouring of the Spirit.
To be
prophetic, we must live in and speak of both the grace of God and the pain,
inequality and injustice of the world we live in. Let us consider a prophetic
lifestyle : prophetic speech involves both deep love and seering judgement,
both words and actions, both hope and lament. Thus "both" is a key
word here. True. God is good, life is good. God is all-knowing - but there must
be a place for my rage (including at God), my protest, and for those who have
been silenced to be heard. Prophetic lifestyle embraces both awe and rage. And
that is about truth, which often requires both perspectives.
In my own
country, the "both" aspects of prophetic lifestyle is demonstrated in
the Treaty partnership. 150 years ago the colonising English and the indigenous
people, the Maori, signed a Treaty of
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partnership and equality. Over the years it was broken many times as the
colonisers, the "pakeha", took almost all the land. Only in recent
years has there been any real attempt to make space for "both"
peoples in my land. Not assimilation (swallowing up of one race by the other)
nor apartheid (separation based on control), but a way of living that allows
both the two peoples separate space while learning to relate equally. It's not
easy, and within this the church has been prophetic, for example, our national
ecumenical body has two equal partners: The Conference of Churches of
Aotearoa-New Zealand and Te Runanga O Whakawhanaunga Aotearoa-New Zealand. So,
we in Aotearoa-New Zealand struggle to understand how our
"bicultural" system works! But some choices have been made in order
to restore the injustice of decades.
I am
beginning to understand that to be prophetic is to carry on the creative energy
of God when it has been stifled by injustice, or laziness, or commitment to the
status quo. The prophet in each of us says "NO! This is not the way the
Creator wants it to be. We can - we must - do things differently".
There are
many ideas around the idea of "prophetic life style". "Prophet
in Hebrew is "Nabiy". Words that are related include : (1)
"nabat" - to scan, to look intently at, to regard with pleasure, to
behold; (2) "nabab" - to pierce, to be hollow to empty; (3)
"ne-bayoth" - meaning fruitfulness; (4) "nebek" - to burst
forth; and (5) "nabak" - to bark like a dog, perhaps a watchdog.
One
definition of being prophetic is "to anticipate and summon realities that
live beyond the conventions of our day-to-day, take-for-granted world". It
therefore involves interference! In Jer. 1:9,10 "tearing up and knocking
down" comes before "the building up and planting". It is the
awareness that things need to break and be broken if what is just is to emerge.
It involves opening up, disclosing where the tendency is to hide and cover up.
When? That requires having a sense of timing. It also means trusting one's own
anger and moral outrage - and moulding it into creative possibilities. Ghandhi
said his work "struck the religious imagination of an angry people".
Sometimes it
is important for us to reconsider and reclaim the place of anger: is it a sin?
Suppressed, it festers. Creatively expressed it can transform.
However, we
must understand "prophet" today not just in individual terms. Acts
uses many plural words - "sons, daughters, all humankind". Today, to
be a prophet is probably to be involved in prophetic movements, to struggle to
hear the Spirit together, to work together. As Act 2 says, young and old, women
and men, slaves and free. Perhaps a movement has more chance of being a circle
and an individual easily takes a place on the ladder.
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In v.18 we
read, "I will pour out my Spirit : and they (my menservants and my
maidservants) shall prophesy" along with "your sons and your
daughters". These things are about being prophetic: new possibilities are
opened up and we are invited to imagine the future. Remember what Peter was
doing: A prophetic lifestyle cracks open the word of God to expose new
possibility. The listeners were called from their silence, power was released,
newness was evoked, and people were empowered to begin again.
A prophetic
lifestyle sees all days as last days, and seeks a transformed imagination to
live in both this world as it is and the world as it can be. A transformed
imagination makes it possible for you and me to walk the pathway of obedience,
as we refuse to be overwhelmed by what is present, but in knowing ourselves to
be prophetic we commit ourselves to calling forth and nurturing and nourishing
an alternative to the dominant culture.
As Paulo
Freire says : "The oppressed must realise that they are fighting, not
merely for freedom from hunger, but for ... freedom to create and to construct,
to wonder and to venture...."
1) Where do you see or hear the Spirit
moving in your context?
2) "A Gospel of both
..." Does this have relevance to your situation?
3) Are there times when to be
prophetic, we have to choose between both and take sides?
4) How is your organisation
being prophetic in calling forth and nurturing and nourishing an alternative to
the dominant culture? What skills have you as a group learned in order to do
this?