GEMS FROM JEREMIAH (1) “What the hell is a prophet?”

 


Text: Jeremiah 1.1-19; 20.7-9

     What the hell is a prophet?  Perhaps what most often comes to our mind when we hear this word is a somewhat shadowy figure on the fringes of the Bible’s narrative, as well as on the margins of our consciousness.  To put it more frankly, prophets often strike us as a rag-tag bunch of inane babblers, dreamers who proffered nightmarish scenarios of fire-and-brimstone and the end-of-the-world.  Or again, perhaps we think of the biblical prophets as hybrid creatures – a cross between, on the one hand, those who stand on street corners with signs which read “The end is near” and, on the other, puritanical priests wagging their fingers at every conceivable pleasure one may be inclined to indulge in.  An urgent question arises – is this popular (mis)conception of the prophets justified by anything in the text of the prophetic books of the Bible themselves?

     What is a prophet according to Scripture?  At the most fundamental level, biblical prophets were people entrusted by God with a message to proclaim.  The Hebrew word for prophet (“nabi”) means “mouthpiece”, i.e. spokesperson.  The basic job description for a prophet was to “tell the truth” (more often than not, to those in power).  Then as now, this was not a coveted “career-path”; we have no examples in the Bible of people having a personal ambition to be a prophet; au contraire, each prophet in the pages of Scripture embarks on their “career” following a disruptive and traumatic experience which nevertheless imparted to them a divine imperative to proclaim “the word of the Lord”.  Consider these words of Jeremiah:

“O Lord…I have become a laughingstock all day long;
    everyone mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I must cry out…“Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
    a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say, “I will not mention him,
    or speak any more in his name,”
then within me there is something like a burning fire
    shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot.” (Jer. 20.7-9)

     Who are those public figures in our world who claim to speak the truth?  Who purports to have insight on the problems facing us in the 21st-century, whether it be environmental issues, social justice dilemmas, the meaning of life, morality, the formula for human flourishing/the future survival of our species, etc.?  When we consider such questions, perhaps certain high-profile names spring to mind – Greta Thunberg, Elon Musk, Jordan B. Peterson, etc.  Obviously, all of these people are lightning rods of controversy; they leave few people indifferent.  They are provocative, innovative (sometimes innovative in their appreciation of traditional viewpoints which go against the grain of our “progressive” culture) and dare to push back against the media-generated consensus on many of the important questions facing our civilization today.  Looking at any one of these figures, their message, people’s reaction to it and the toll that their message has taken on them will help us grasp what the prophets of Scripture were all about.  The biblical prophets were anything but respectable, conventional and maintainers of the status-quo.  The prophets were disturbed individuals who disturbed their contemporaries – they dared to look injustice in the face and denounce both it and those who enabled it, either willingly or by the cowardly turning of a blind eye.

     Again, what the hell is a (biblical) prophet?  In an attempt to answer this question, we will take a close look over the next several months at the 6th-century B.C. figure of Jeremiah of Anathoth.  Jeremiah’s life was interrupted by a vocation to proclaim the word of the Lord to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah (modern-day southern Palestine).  At this point in their history, the people of God found themselves embroiled in social/political turmoil as they faced the imminent threat of Babylonian imperialism and expansionism (think of Russia…and the U.S.A. & China) all the while being corrupted from within by economic/political corruption.  Jeremiah, like all genuine prophets, was obliged to speak the truth into this situation, constantly appearing to his compatriots as a traitor, all the while sincerely desiring the good of the people whom he was obliged to watch go astray to their doom.  One last time, what the hell is a prophet?  A prophet is someone who takes a stand at the gates of hell, feels the heat of the flames on their back, and does their utmost (with no guarantee of success) to redirect the mass of humanity who seems hell-bent on plunging into the abyss.

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