prophets and dreams

Based on Isaiah 11 and Matthew 3. 

For those who have decked the halls with boughs of holly and Christmas treed and twinkle lighted and wreathed and santa’ed their homes---you brood of vipers!!! Who told you to flee from the wrath to come?  A voice cries out “Prepare the way of the Lord!” and you hang LED lights on your garage?  You still prepare the wrong things for the one who is coming.  He does not come in a sleigh with toys.  Gift wrap, ornaments,  Bing Crosby, and egg nog do not have anything to do with the coming of the King.  But mark our words, he is coming and you cannot prepare for him or prevent him from showing up when you’re not looking.  When you’re dead asleep or out to lunch or in your car on the way to the dentist.  You have become so disenchanted by the long delay in his return that you fail to pay attention.  You’ve long lost hope or expectation.  You have accommodated your hearts to violence and war and mayhem and chaos and inequality and prejudice.  You are not aware.  He has already come.  He has landed. He has arrived.  He has invaded our space.  He has broken and entered in.  He is near.  Maybe here.   So I have come to announce him to you!  I have come to awaken you to his presence, to prepare you for his powerful entry.  There is inner work, soul work, spirit work, heart and mind work that has to be done.  Changed hearts will announce his reign.  For he will not tolerate apathy or lukewarm faith or cold hearts. So I must come to you as the prophet this week.  And perhaps for several more if you can bear it.   

The prophet spoke his or her “thus saith the Lord” with a rare confidence, not in himself or his audience or his voice, but in the message and from whom it came.   The prophet was, first, a hearer of God, a listener to God, a receiver of God, before he or she was a speaker for God.  And so the prophet speaks from a place of humility and awe.  The prophet sees the world as it is and the world as it could and shall be under God’s promised reign of peace.  The prophet tells the truth about our blindness and deafness to the treachery and villainy and destructive violence we perpetrate, condone, or ignore.  The prophet calls injustice what it is, thus offending all who walk in its ways.  The prophet anticipates, hopes, and points the way forward.  The prophet stands with the people in the wilderness, in the water, in the space between what is and what will be.  The prophet calls a people to turn away from their ways and follow another way.  To turn their backs on the way of destruction and embrace the way of creation.  To be part of the healing, part of the welcome, part of the uplifting of the poor and the meek, the despised and the displaced.  The prophet invites us, beckons us out of our comfortable, safe, sheltered, domestic lives of banks and grocery stores and Turkey Hills and minivans and rec centers and fast food chains and malls and vacations.   The prophet calls us, commands us, invites and challenges us into a new reality, a new vision, a new dream of another world. A world completely like and unlike the one we are in now.  The false prophet condemns others and sets himself above them.  The false prophet claims to know answers to unsolvable mysteries.  The false prophet speaks with too much clarity and impossible foreknowledge---often in a way that benefits himself.  The false prophet tells people, especially people with power and privilege what they want to hear.  Where the true prophet gives warning, the false prophet condemns.  The false prophet sells false hopes and secret wishes to vulnerable suckers dying for someone to promise them a better day will come to them.   The false prophets were the kings of fake news. But the true prophets spoke an honesty too horrible and too good to be true.  Yes, both the horrible and the good.  That is why they were despised.  They told the painful and wonderful truth about us.   

John had a dream. He dreamed that Isaiah’s prophecy was about to be fulfilled.  The peaceable kingdom, where predator and prey live in harmony with one another; where warriors lay down their weapons and take up hoes and spades; where a vulnerable child is immune to poisonous snakes and no harm or danger befalls God’s beautiful creation.  He dreamed this dream in the wilderness of the Jordan valley, a harsh desert land.  He knew predator and prey, both animals and humans.  For he knew the politics of Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great---unrighteous puppets of the gentile Roman overlords.  He knew the wealthy and powerful and how they abused their privilege to oppress and ruin the lives of Abrahams’ children.  He waited with Isaiah and all the prophets of old for a new David, a new King, a new anointed ruler to bring justice and peace to the people.  With eager anticipation, he announced what he saw and hoped it would end and begin. 

So do we.  We must inaugurate a new season of hope, in which we truly wait and anticipate and imagine another world---a better place, a heavenly dwelling in our midst.  We must imagine a time when all animals will be domestic.  Lions as housecats.  Wolves as puppy dogs.  We must imagine a day when a generation will only know war through ancient history books and museums full of guns and swords and cannons and grenades.  We must imagine a time when people will live free from violence, free from hunger, free from disease, free from thirst, free from drug addiction and sexual predators and armed robbers and political schemers, and relentless dictators.  We must imagine harmony.  Companionship.  Generosity.  Gentle stewardship of the earth and all its creatures.  We must imagine a farm, a garden, a fruitful land, a blessed harvest, in which men and women, Jew and Muslim, Christian and agnostic, African American worker and white CEO serve one another, working side by side.  And a child will lead them.  We need to be brave enough now to live into our hopes for a new world. So I took 6 children with me to a lunch with Muslim Americans.  The prophets are preparing the way of the LORD---a way of justice and peace for all the children of every race, tribe, culture, language, and faith.  May it be so, soon.  Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set your people free from our sins and fears-- release us, let us find our rest in thee. Amen.