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Stephen Ministry

We have come to the letter "P" in S-H-E-P-H-E-R-D, using the word "shepherd" as an acronym to describe who Jesus is for us. We had several options with the letter "p": Priest, Provider, Protector, Peacemaker. In fact, a common trilogy of titles for Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King—titles which, by the way, are the focus of our Profession of Faith that follows the sermon. In a Bible study once, I tried to come up with a "p" word for King in order to keep the alliteration going…Prophet, Priest, and…? The best I could do was Politician and that definitely loses something! President also is inadequate. If you come up with something better let me know. Anyway, Jesus is proclaimed as Prophet, Priest and King…and is the only Biblical character deserving of all three titles. Today we look at Jesus, our Shepherd and our Prophet.

To begin with, we need to be clear about what we mean by "prophet" and "prophecy." Typically, we think of a prophet as someone who predicts the future—one who speaks about events before they happen—"foretelling" the future. A better understanding of "prophet," however, would be one who speaks before a group of people and brings insight to a particular topic—usually one with religious overtones—a "forthtelling" rather than foretelling. For our purposes, a prophet is someone who brings insight and greater clarity to the word of God—someone who "speaks before others" and brings new insight to God’s word. Thus our Scripture passage for today: "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." Basically, that’s what a prophet does—explains the Scriptures. And those Scriptures point us to Jesus.

So it is that Jesus is a prophet. Jesus brings clarity to the Scriptures, first of all in his life—showing us not only the best that humanity can be, but also revealing to us the compassion and love of God. And Jesus is prophet through His Spirit, helping us to understand what the Scriptures say and mean. The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, says, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit," (1 Corinthians 2:13, 14). In other words, we cannot come to faith without Christ’s prophetic work. We cannot grow in faith without Christ’s prophetic work. It is through Christ as our prophet—opening us to the meaning and the truth of God’s holy word, of the "things" of God—that we begin to grasp the essential elements of faith and continue to grow in that faith. The Lord is our Shepherd, who makes us lie down in the green pastures of His Word, who leads us to the still waters of His Living Word, walking the pathways of righteousness possible only through understanding and living out His Word, walking through…through the valley of the shadow of death because of what Christ has revealed in His Word and through His Spirit. None of that would be possible without the Prophet. Essential to our faith is Christ’s role as Prophet.

In turn, it is essential for the faith development of others that we take the role of prophet, seeking to bring to them some clarity of the Scriptures. I think of it as planting seeds of God’s Spirit in others. Someone who is very far from God and doesn’t understand anything about the things of God receives a seed of Scriptural truth from a follower of Christ and it gets planted and begins to grow. Another encounter with a prophet, some more clarity about matters of faith, the Spirit of Christ working in them, and the seed begins to grow. And so on and so forth until that person comes to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. That doesn’t happen unless disciples are fulfilling their roles as prophets—sharing and explaining the Scriptures to others.

Again, the apostle Paul, this time writing to believers in Rome says, "for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard thought the word of Christ," (Romans 10:13, 14 and 17). In the book of Acts, one of the first "deacons," Philip, comes across an Ethiopian eunuch who is reading from the book of Isaiah—the section known as the "Suffering Servant" section which points toward the sacrificial offering of Christ. When Philip asks the eunuch if he understands what he is reading, the eunuch replies, "How can I unless someone explains it to me? Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus," (Acts 8:31, 35). That’s the role of a prophet and it is important that we take on that role—explaining, whenever we have the opportunity, spiritual truths from Scripture. How can they know Christ unless we tell them?

However, there are some difficulties with being a prophet. First of all, prophets are not very popular. In fact, oftentimes there are people who want to kill them. You see, prophets seek to bring the truth of God’s Word to a particular situation. Often a prophet calls into question the behavior of someone, or some group, and those people don’t want to hear it. Prophets seek to pierce our conscience with God’s standard brought to bear on some situation and it can begin with making some enemies who want to silence the prophet’s voice. The Old Testament prophets, for example, often had to flee for their lives. Elijah, after his great victory over the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel, must run for his life as Jezebel’s anger is turned against him. Jeremiah faced constant threats, including imprisonment where he was left to die, later to be freed by the Chaldeans, but again later is forced to flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of Judah’s king. Jesus himself, of course, first faced the questioning and ridicule of his role as a prophet. The quote on the front of today’s bulletin (prophets are not accepted in their hometown) comes from the story of Jesus reading the Scriptures at the synagogue in Nazareth, his hometown. Proclaiming the words of the prophet, Isaiah, have been "fulfilled in your hearing," the people immediately begin to question "Joseph’s son" as being the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. To which Jesus replies, "a prophet is without honor in his hometown." The people respond in anger, grab Jesus and take him to a nearby cliff in order to throw him over the edge! However, in one of the great unexplained scenes in the Biblical story, we’re told Jesus walked through the crowd and went on his way. We don’t know exactly what happened—did some kind of God induced trance come over the crowd?—but Jesus is spared for the moment. The Pharisees questioned Jesus’ authority—scoffing that no prophet would ever come from Nazareth!—and, of course, when they couldn’t silence him began to plot a way to kill him.

Prophets that pierce our conscience with the truth of God’s Word are going to make some people initially unhappy. But they are necessary in order for people to question their values and morals in life. I believe an example of a modern day prophet was Martin Luther King, Jr. His non-violent civil rights movement pierced our nation’s conscience—the movement really began to gather national momentum when the news cameras began to record the scenes from the south of humiliation heaped on people at lunchroom counters, police dogs attacking peaceful marchers, and fire hoses being turned on demonstrators—and look at how far we’ve come. Does anyone, except for the fringe fanatics, want to go back to the way it was before Martin Luther King? Prophets pierce our conscience for a greater good but it is a difficult journey.

So there is that barrier to being a prophet—that in every case our attempt to bring God’s truth to a situation is going to make someone uncomfortable…if not downright angry. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, "take up your cross and follow me." Follow in Christ’s role as a prophet and you will suffer some kind of persecution from people’s responses. But how will they know if we don’t tell them?

A second barrier to being a prophet is that we have an imperfect grasp on God’s truth. We "see in a mirror dimly" and so our use of God’s truth can be misused and abused. One must come to the role of prophet with great humility, seeking God’s wisdom for how we are to communicate His truths. Yet, again, we must speak in order for others to know, we must go forward—seeking the leading of Christ’s Spirit—so that we might plant a seed of the Spirit in someone.

The prophetic word will make us uncomfortable. In the best preaching it is what some refer to as "meddling." "We were just fine with you before, preacher, but now you’re starting to meddle!" I came across this quote in a bulletin from a church that was obviously going through a pastor search and was relying on guest preachers in the interim: "In the future the preacher for next Sunday will be found hanging on the bulletin board." I’m not sure if they ever did find a new pastor to take the job! If we don’t seek a prophetic word from Holy Scripture, the gospel becomes what Walter Brueggemann describes as, "too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat…It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane." And the gospel should be anything but that.

Listen for the prophetic word from our Good Shepherd, Jesus, and from those who seek to serve him as prophets for today, and you will be uncomfortable. You might even become angry. But if we allow his prophetic word to enter into our thinking, if we would listen and seek for the truth we are to glean from it, we will find green pastures to lie down in, we will be led to Living Water from which to drink.

Let us take a moment of silent reflection to consider where we might be shutting out the voice of the Prophet in our lives and where we might be failing to answer the call to be a prophet for somebody in our lives this day.