Feb. 1, 2009, Memorial UCC
Deut. 18: 15-20; Mark 1: 12-28

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

A few weeks ago, Memorial played host to Church Women United for its annual meeting. This is a national organization and the women from this area who belong to it have long been the energy behind so many activities in this community to foster the justice and peace that are too often in short supply.

Shirley Robbins helped organize it and Leone Babler and Nona Suhr helped make visitors feel welcome. Ruth and Lisa Schoenwetter joined together to help lead the time of worship. It was a glorious morning here.

One of the things that made it glorious was a special honor being given to a woman named Dede Mayberry.  Dede received the Human Rights Award for a lifetime of working for justice and peace in her community and in the world.  

Dede came to mind this week as I was thinking about our two scripture readings. They are both about prophets, in a way.  

The section from the book of Deuteronomy – one of the books of the Hebrew Torah – is a section defining the role of a prophet in ancient Israel.

The second reading about Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum portrays Jesus in that classic prophet’s role, shaking up the religious establishment and showing the way to better live out God’s dream for the world.

Dede Mayberry is one of those people among us in our own time who lives as a prophet. She saw the impact of poverty up close as a young woman when she worked for 19 years at Hull House in Chicago, a place always on the cutting edge not only of serving women and immigrants and the working class, but also pushing for reforms in child labor laws, health care, immigration policy. This is the environment that shaped Dede.

In Madison, she was ever-present in advocacy organizations for peace, justice, senior citizens, health care, fair trade.  She is a familiar figure around the State Capitol, where she has played that traditional role of a prophet, challenging those in power to live up to their highest ideals. You might say she knew how to make herself a bit of a pain in the interest of getting things done.

Sharon Watkins was acting as a prophet a few weeks ago in the midst of all the inaugural festivities in Washington D.C. She was a gentler prophet than Dede might have been in that setting, but nonetheless, she stood before the extraordinarily popular new president and directly challenged him to live up to his professed ideals.

The setting was the National Cathedral on the morning after the inauguration. A good share of the power structure of the nation was there and Watkins was the main preacher. She is the president of the Disciples of Christ – a denomination that shares much with the UCC, including our international work.

She spoke directly to Barack Obama and Joe Biden: “What you are entering now, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, will tend to draw you away from your ethical center,” she said. “But we, the nation that you serve, need you to hold the ground of your deepest values, of our deepest values.”  

She urged the leaders to remember the counsel of the great prophet  Isaiah “to work for the common good, for the public happiness, the well-being of the nation and the world, knowing that our individual wellbeing depends upon a world in which liberty and justice prevail.”

Sharon Watkins was in one of the classic positions for a prophet. She was invited by the leader to nudge him toward his professed standards.  She was honored for her role.

Prophets are not always honored.  Barack Obama had another prophet cross his path. For 20 years, Jeremiah Wright was his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. You remember Jeremiah Wright  -- he of the provocative sound bites played over and over during the presidential campaigns.

Jeremiah Wright was not challenging Obama. He was challenging an American power structure, represented at that time by George Bush, that was using violence to gets its way in the world and using oppression at home to keep those with economic and social power in control.  

Wright may not have always been wise in the way he made his points, but he was every inch in the mold of a prophet as he did that.

Which, of course, gets us right back to Deuteronomy.  What’s happening here is that the writer is using the authority of Moses to set up the leadership roles for the people of Israel.

There will be kings and judges to provide the governmental structure. There will be priests to handle the religious structures.  And then there will be prophets, to keep anyone from getting too calcified into the way things have always been.  That’s the section we heard today.

The prophet will speak on behalf of God’s vision for the world. If the prophets start creating their own visions instead of the ones that are true to God, they are risking their relationship with God. This prophet should be like Moses and over time, the people should be able to judge whether what the prophet says holds true.

It’s tricky business, evaluating prophets. The ruling powers have always gotten uneasy with anyone who challenges them and tries to discredit them.

But then again, all manner of people can claim the mantle of being a prophet, so it is up to us to be discerning, to measure a prophet’s words against our understanding of God’s word. That is not an easy or a tidy process.

It wasn’t easy for the folks in the synagogue in Capernaum, either, when Jesus showed up on the Sabbath and began to teach – a stranger among them yet one whose very presence exuded authority.

But Jesus did more that talk. He acted, bringing healing to the distressed man in their midst, showing early in his public ministry that good would win out over evil. He matched his words with his actions.

Let me tell you quickly about three more prophets who stand in the line of those who carry God’s word into uncomfortable places.

One is Jim Wallis, whose work with Sojourners, based in Washington, has provided a consistent, Biblically-based challenge to the structures that keep people in poverty and nations in conflict.  This past week, Jim was in Davos, Switzerland, where the world’s elite are gathered for their annual World Economic Forum.  

One of the burning questions there this year is when our current economic crisis will be over. Jim suggested to them that this is the wrong question. He said we should be asking: “How will this crisis change us?”

He acknowledged that this is a structural crisis that calls for new social regulation but he said it is also “a spiritual crisis, and one that calls for new self-regulation.”

There he is, challenging the economic and political titans of the world to think about the economic future through a different lens.

Ebo Patel might find it odd to be considered a prophet in the traditional sense. He is Muslim, yet his work is extraordinarily prophetic for our time. Jessica Veloff and Katy Von Der Heide and Kaitlin Baumgardner and I heard him last summer at the UCC’s National Youth Event.  Patel has dedicated his life to helping young people get across the boundaries of religion and race and class and nationality that separate them.

And then there is somebody we know well here – Mitri Raheb, the pastor of our partner church in Bethlehem, Christmas Lutheran Church.  Even in the midst of all the horror in the last month in Gaza, even as the situation of the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank grows more precarious, Mitri is working to create institutions that give hope while continually challenging the structures that are crushing the Palestinian spirit.

There are prophets in our midst, and we are blessed to have them speaking for us and to us.  It’s always fun to watch a prophet rail against the power structure and then cheer him or her on from a safe distance.  

But the biblical prophets not only challenged the religious and governmental power structures. They also challenged the people to do what God was calling them to do.

Remember the words of the prophet Micah – to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with our God? Those are words that we carry with us as we try to live out God’s dreams. Those are words that shape us as we strive to be a congregation that is a prophetic presence in our community.

We can show how to do justice by the way we strive to break the bonds of poverty. That is a vital way of living out the message of Christ, of making the dreams of God into a reality in a world too often centered on clinging to money and power.

We can show how to live kindness by the way we treat each other with love and respect, even when we do not always agree with one another. That is a treasured quality in today’s world.

And we can walk humbly with our God, taking time to gather together in prayer, taking time for our own moments of opening ourselves to God’s presence, and then living with gratitude for God’s grace, but without the arrogance the always tempt those who thing they are speaking for God.

Prophets are not just characters out of ancient stories. We need them just as much in our lives as the people did thousands of years ago.  And when the moment calls for it, we need to be willing to wear the mantle of the prophet, doing what we can to hold up God’s message to those who would use their fellow human beings simply for their own benefit.