Friday, February 15, 2019

Looking for a Prophet in the Barbershop

Sermon from Feb. 3, 2019
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:14-21


Welcome to Scout Sunday – which explains why the first several rows are filled with kids in uniforms, and why Scouts are serving as acolytes, lectors, and ushers this morning.  This is our annual opportunity to celebrate the ministry of Scouting.  Now, maybe that sounds odd, to describe Scouting as a ministry.  But after all, Troop 16 is a part of St. Andrew’s, not simply an outside organization using our building.  So, if that’s true, there must be some significant overlap between the church’s mission and Scouting’s mission.  So, how is Scouting a ministry?
We’ll there are definitely connections in what the Church and Scouting teach.  After all, the Scout Law says – say it with me if you know it – that a Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.  In the Church, we’d be on board with young people learning to practice all those values, but it’s that last one where we intersect the most – being reverent.  In fact, if you look at the Scout Oath, you find the intersection runs deeper than we might realize.  The Scout Oath begins this way:  “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law….”1  So, a duty to God is part of what Scouting is all about.
But Scout troops are part of all kinds of religious and civic groups, so that “duty to God” plays out in lots of different ways.  Each tradition is free to carry out religious training as it sees fit.2  In the Episcopal Church, Scouts can earn four religious emblems as they grow up – God and Me, God and Family, God and Church, and God and Life.  Honestly, I don’t know the specifics of those programs as well as I should.  But I think our readings today might suggest that we should add a recognition that isn’t currently part of the program.  That would be a merit badge for serving as a prophet. 
Now, for that to make any sense, we have to know what a prophet is.  In the Bible, a prophet is not a fortune teller.  A prophet may get a glimpse of what’s coming as part of the message he or she receives from God, but the point isn’t to forecast the future.  The point is to be a spokesperson, delivering the word of the Lord and calling people to follow God’s ways.  That’s what it means to be a prophet.  Prophets speak for God – whether they want to or not, whether it serves their interests or not.
We get two examples this morning, from Jeremiah and from Jesus.  Our first reading was about the call of Jeremiah as a prophet of the Lord, an experience that probably scared the living daylights out of him.  He’s young – maybe actually a boy, maybe a very young man.  But no matter his age, he’s isn’t ready when God tells him he will be a “prophet to the nations” (1:5).  Jeremiah tells God, “You’ve got the wrong guy.”  But God quickly says – no, I’m not asking you to do this based on your own wisdom and power.  Instead, “you shall go to all whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of [anyone],” God says, “for I am with you to deliver you.” (Jeremiah 1:7-8)
The second example of being a prophet comes from Jesus himself.  He’s in his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath; and he’s just read out loud from the prophet Isaiah, where God is proclaiming good news for the poor, and release for the captives, and healing for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.  Jesus finishes his reading, sits down, and gives them the shortest sermon ever: “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).  Jesus himself is one who will bring relief to the poor, the captives, the afflicted, and the oppressed by bringing God’s way of love into everyday life. 
Well, the people wonder what makes him say that, given that they’ve known Jesus forever.  This is his hometown crowd in Nazareth, where he was raised.  They know him as the carpenter’s son – a good kid, but hardly somebody who speaks the word of God.  Jesus gets it; he knows they’re not going to give him his due.  But still, he gives them God’s “truth” (4:25):  that just because they’re on the right team, just because they’re part of God’s chosen people, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily doing what God asks.  After all, he says, several other times in Israel’s history, God has blessed outsiders instead of Jewish people who weren’t living very faithfully.  The hometown crowd doesn’t appreciate that kind of honesty, and they don’t like having their feet held to the fire by some carpenter’s son; so, they try to throw him off a cliff.  Being a prophet is risky business.
I think those two stories tell us something a little challenging.  First, God chooses unlikely people to be prophets.  In Jeremiah’s situation, God turns people’s expectations on their heads, asking a young nobody from a little village to be the one to speak God’s word to “nations and kingdoms” (1:10), telling the leaders how they and their people need to follow God’s path.  But God doesn’t stop there.  Like Jeremiah, we may not think we have the words to say on our own.  But I believe God chooses each of us to be a prophet, at least from time to time – when we find ourselves in situations where what we see and hear around us runs counter to God’s way of love. 
Let me tell you a story – something that happened 30 years ago but still sticks with me.  I had moved to take a job in Jefferson City, and I was only 23, with all the confidence of someone who hasn’t yet learned just how little he knows.  I needed a haircut, so I went to an old barbershop, a place that must have been there for decades.  I came in, and the barber invited me to step right up – a tall, muscular guy with a big smile, huge hands, and a buzz cut.  We made small talk as he put the cape around my neck and got started with the scissors.  It’s an odd situation, asking a stranger to cut your hair – he’s the one with the power, and you never quite know how that’s going to turn out. 
Well, as he cut, he started telling jokes, jokes I’m sure he had told a million times.  As he started out, he was pretty funny; but before long, it got ugly.  He was making fun of women and black people.  He must have thought it was OK because there were only white guys sitting there in the old barbershop.  But suddenly this huge, friendly-looking guy with the big smile was speaking sexism and racism.  And I had to decide what to do.
I would love to be able to tell you a David and Goliath story, that I confronted the barber about his ugly language even though he was the one with the scissors in his hand.  But I didn’t.  I just got quiet.  And as I was leaving, I had the perfect opportunity simply to tell him a holy truth:  that I wouldn’t be back because what I’d heard him saying didn’t align with how God tells us to talk about one another.  That was the truth; I knew I’d never go back to that barbershop, so saying something wouldn’t have put my future hairstyle at risk.  But I didn’t do it, and I’ve regretted that failure ever since.
So, why didn’t I, when what he said was so clearly wrong and I had nothing to lose?  Part of it is the culture of niceness – after all, my mother taught me, and maybe your mother taught you, that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.  But you know, we don’t find that lesson about being nice anywhere in Scripture.  Instead, we find what we heard this morning: God saying, “You shall speak whatever I command you; do not be afraid … for I am with you to deliver you.” (Jeremiah 1:7-8)  
It’s not just the Scouts who have a duty to God.  When we renew our baptismal covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all people, loving our neighbors as ourselves.  We promise to strive for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being.  Now, that kind of a promise can feel too big to keep:  How am I supposed to promote justice and peace, especially when we can’t even agree about what the word “justice” means?  Well, respecting the dignity of every human being sometimes comes down to the simple, and countercultural, act of not letting “nice” get in the way of speaking for God.  Because you never know when the prophet God’s calling is you.

1.      Boy Scouts of America.  “What are the Scout Oath and Scout Law?”  Available at: https://www.scouting.org/discover/faq/question10/.  Accessed Feb. 10, 2019.
2.      Boy Scouts of America.  “Manual for Chaplains and Chaplain Aides.”  Available at: https://www.scouting.org/resources/info-center/manual-for-chaplains-and-chaplain-aides/.  Accessed Feb. 1, 2019.

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