Friday, November 20, 2020               (today’s lectionary)
Not crazy, just creative
Give me the small scroll, I said to the angel. And he said to me, take it and swallow it. It will turn your stomach sour but in your mouth it will taste sweet as honey. And it did. Then someone said, you must prophecy again.
Again! Every time I speak, the words seem right, but then the people meant to hear them turn away and do what they’ve always done. And God comes back, time after time, “You must prophecy again.”
I think of the man in the sandwich boards on the U of Illinois quad in the 70’s. REPENT FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND. Maybe he went from town to town, I don’t know. I do know he must have had some means of income, because he had no time to earn a living wage. He lived by bread from the mouth of God, who might have said to him, night after night: “You must prophecy again!”
I think of my own Moonie experiences, day after day in parking lots and on doorsteps in the small towns of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. “Hi, my name is Dave, and I’m working to help young people. Will you buy some cookies?” And my team leader Doug, night after night, saying to us, “You must go out again tomorrow.”
But always, then, the words in our mouths were sweet. How sweet to my taste is your promise! The law of your mouth is more precious than thousands in silver and gold. Your decrees are my inheritance forever. I gasp with open mouth and yearn for your commands.
Can you imagine? To wake up in the morning with nothing planned, to just listen for what God has for you today? For me that would take some getting used to. It sounds wonderful, and yet I know no one who can mentor me, except maybe the sandwich sign man.
Or my friend John Auten, who had been attorney, accountant, pastor, and who eventually retired from all that. I think he woke up in the morning and asked God what he should do. I know that for awhile, when he lived in Champaign and he still had a car and could drive, he drove his old Cadillac to parts of the county and spent the day walking, listening and praying God’s words for the people of the neighborhood. He said God got pretty loud, sometimes, praying through him.
John’s dead now, passed away and in the ground under a tombstone which says, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.” John never had a problem plagiarizing. He was creative and reverent and obedient, and he mostly didn’t care much about the rules of the world or the church. He sometimes called himself an apostle, and he had very interesting conversations with God. And no, he wasn’t crazy. He knew what he was doing. He was just creative, and when pressed he had a good sense of humor.
The priests and scribes, all the leaders wanted to put Jesus to death, but they could not because all the people were hanging on his words.
Sure, they listened, sure they were in awe … for a day or two. Then most of them were back about their business. “You must prophecy again.” Jesus must have heard those same words every morning from his Father. Did he ever get sick of it, like the Old Testament prophets, like the writer of Revelation, like the sandwich-man-on-the-quad, like Martin Luther or John Wesley or Chrysostom or St. Paul? Like Flannery O’Connor’s sour character in her novel Wise Blood?
To enter this arena of the prophets also means that eventually the emperor will release his lions. Really, God? Is this necessary?
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
These texts from Revelation are getting to me. But I think God’s right there. You know He never promised us a rose garden.
(Revelation 10, Psalm 119, John 10, Luke 19)
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