...
Do we have the strength I wonder to speak truth to power.
This is a phrase we probably heard somewhere or other perhaps in the news,
but I wonder whether we really appreciate how uncomfortable it is to do.
Speaking truth to power is risky, because it means boldly proclaiming uncomfortable truths to people with power over you.
about you, about your life.
Truth, that those people would rather
ignore or deny.
It means pointing out shortcomings in
behaviour, attitude, speech.
It means speaking when you know
that it would be safer
and more convenient to stay silent.
This morning
we focused on the very difficult
account of the beheading of
Saint John the Baptist
and this is the consequence that
John the baptist faced of doing in short a prophets work
ʻof course, we hear about profits ʻall the time ʻwe talk about them in everyday life.
ʻUsually, we think about a prophet as ʻsomeone who tells the future.
ʻWe might jokingly refer to ʻsomeone as a prophet ʻif they have some kind of mystical ability
ʻto work out what's going to happen.
ʻMaybe like a friend who predicts ʻthat it's going to rain ʻhalf an hour before it does.
but of course in England that isn't that really impressive
Or if we don't speak about prophecy in
friends who seem to have some sort of clue of whats going on where we don't
perhaps we imagine the prophets of the old testament with men in long flowing robs with very long and rather smelly beards.
People with a long lost ability to talk to God directly and tell his people what to expect in the coming months
or years. But we very rarely think about prophecy in present terms, though of course the work
of biblical prophets not just Saint John the Baptist but all of the prophets, Amos, Elijah,
Isaiah, the work of all of these prophets was concerned with their here and now with what was
going on around them. What in fact made a prophet a prophet was not just some mystical and fast-lung
ability, rather it was the ability to prayerfully discern what was happening all around them at
the time and to give God's voice to it in a way that other people wouldn't or couldn't.
The prophets came about every time Israel fell into sinful patterns of living in order to point out
to the people that they've fallen away from the law that he had laid for them. When the people began
to create unjust legal systems in which the poor were subjugated, in which the markets acted unfairly,
in which the rich were able to do whatever they want, the prophets were there. When the kings
acted poorly and turned the people away from worshiping Yahweh in order to worship the gods
about them, the prophets were there. When the law was broken and people fell into sinful,
unkind and broken ways of living, the prophets were the ones who were warning it was happening.
The prophets were not there primarily to speak about what was going to happen in the future,
they were there to point out what was happening right now, the things that no one else wanted to see.
And though Scripture treats the prophets in very vaulted terms, they were actually very unpopular
for what they had to say. Just look at our reading from Amos. Amos in pointing out the
shortcomings of the people, pointing out the shortcomings of the king was told to depart the land
and never return. Prophets were weirdos, they were outsiders, they stood apart from society and in
a sense they had to because they held up a mirror to society's shortcomings. This meant that they
were hounded, attacked, often killed because they said the things that was at other people were
afraid to say, they called out the powerful when they lost their way publicly. The prophets
were almost invariably hated because they saw and spoke to the lies at the heart of the society
of their time. And all of this was true of St John the Baptist and in his work. St John the Baptist
was a weirdo, he was an outsider, he wore weird clothes made of camel skin, he ate weird food,
locust dipped in honey, he lived in the wilderness because he knew that as a prophet his job was
to distance himself from the way that everyone else was living, from the towns and the villages,
so that he could see, truly see from the outside what was happening amongst his people and pointed
out to them. St John the Baptist's central sermon throughout his ministry was to accuse people
of sin and he did it in pretty blunt terms, the Pharisees and the scribes he called a brood of
vipers, he was the one who pointed out the secret shortcomings of the people and not only did he
accuse the people around him, he attacked their sense of identity, the people who came to him were
predominantly Israelites and he assured them that just because they were descendants of Abraham
they were not so righteous as they assumed themselves to be. So John preached that being a
descendant of Abraham meant nothing if the people remained sinful, their heritage as the people of
Israel gave them no credit, this was a common belief particularly in the first century, the people
of Israel clung on to the idea that they were the children of Abraham, they were God's chosen ones
and in a sense perhaps they could do no wrong, God would overlook their sins, their injustices,
the way that they treated each other because they were children descendants of the one that God had
chosen and yet John the Baptist pointed out that if God wanted to he could make the very rocks of
the wilderness the children of Abraham, he told them the axe is lying at the root of the tree,
do not assume that you are safe merely because you have been chosen, if you live a life of sin
God will point it out, as well as criticising the people of the towns and villages you came to see
him, we read in our gospel this morning that's the John the Baptist spent much of his time criticising
King Herod and this really was speaking truth to a great power and not only a powerful man Herod
was not someone you wanted to get angry, he had a dangerous reputation as a vain greedy cruel
leader and of course the John Baptist knew all of this but as a prophet he knew that it was
his calling to point out when people were getting it wrong, there was actually an awful lot that was
sinful about Herod's life, the way that he treated his family members, the way that he treated the
people around him, his unjust taxes on the poor in order to build great luxurious palaces but this
morning we read about the sin which John the Baptist focused on which seems kind of small
comparatively speaking, Herod had married his divorced brother's wife whilst his brother was
still alive and this broke Jewish law, why did the John the Baptist focus on this sin rather than
any of the other massive shortcomings, well it's not entirely clear but what we do see
is that he learned and taught the price of speaking truth to powerful people,
St John had crossed not only Herod but Herod's wife and there was a price to pay
and of course at the end of our gospel we heard what that price was, his life, his head,
perhaps the reason that St John focused on this sin rather than the many others of Herod's life
is that Herod was fashioning himself as a new Solomon, Solomon had built the first temple and was
widely regarded in his time and afterwards as one of Israel's finest kings, Herod was building the
second temple and had gone to an effort to make it bigger and grander than Solomon's original
to showpence his piety and majesty and so St John was pointing out the hypocrisy at the heart of the
narrative that Herod was trying to tell himself and other people, he might have been trying to
model himself on a second Solomon but in fact he had no regard for the wisdom and the love of the
law which made Herod which made Solomon great, in this as in all of his sermons about the
sinless ways of the people of Israel St John acted as a prophet, at the heart of the prophetic voice,
at the heart a speaking truth to power is the act of dismantling the lies that people tell
themselves in order to avoid looking at ugly truths, Herod had sold himself the truth, the lie
that he was the second Solomon, a great builder, a great stanktner, someone wise and godly and
majestic but the reality was that he was a small cruel unkind leader, the reality was that he had
no regard for God or the law, the people of Israel sold themselves the truth, the lie that they
were righteous just because of their heritage, they were descendants of Abraham so they could
not be trusted and yet the truth was that they were living as sinfully as anyone else
and being descendants of Abraham didn't get them off the hook just like all the prophets
St John the Baptist wasn't preaching to make the people feel guilty, he preached in order to get
people to realize what they were doing, the truth of what they were doing and get them to change
their lives, he accused Herod so that Herod could see the truth of his unrighteousness and change
his behavior, though Herod didn't take the opportunity, he accused the people of Israel
so that they could accept the baptism of repentance that he'd come to bring, the forgiveness that
he was offering, St John was called a voice crying out in the wilderness, one who prepared the way
of the Lord, he was the prophet come to prepare people to hear the message of Jesus Christ,
Jesus came to preach the kingdom of God made a reality by his dying on a cross for the sins
of the world and his rising again to new life for those who would follow him, St John first
needed to prepare the road though because if the people didn't realize that they were sinful,
if the people didn't realize that they needed saving then Jesus's message would mean nothing
first a person needs to know that they are sick before they will go to the doctor
and so St John the Baptist came to hold up that mirror and to say you need help
and then Jesus came as the saving healing remedy as a church which carries the name
of St John the Baptist our calling is no less prophetic than his and by now it should be clear
that that is not an easy calling if we are prophets then there is a case for saying that we're meant
to be weirdos troublemakers people who say the unpopular thing if we are a prophetic church
then it's our job to hold up a mirror to the society that we live in to point out the things
that people don't want to see it's our job as individuals and as a community as prophets it's
our job to point out the things that we believe that God does not accept about our world to speak
out when we see racism homophobia transphobia ableism to point out when society acts unjustly
when the markets act unfairly when the poor and the needy are left voiceless and mistreated
ours is in a sense a difficult and unpopular calling because there will be people who disagree with
us it's so much easier to say silent in the face of wrongdoing than to point it out but if we are
truly a church of St John the Baptist then we know that silence is not an option we must recognize
our calling for what it is to cry out in the wilderness may straight the way of the Lord we must
cry out when we see hatred and intolerance injustice and poverty despair and hopelessness
we must make straight the way for those who have not found a path to Christ who have never felt
welcome in the church who have never known that God loves them like st John the Baptist we must
know that our prophetic voice is given because in order for God's kingdom to come people have to
know that it isn't already here the world isn't perfect and there's a reason for it as individuals
who live in st John the Baptist's legacy we know that it's also our duty to listen to prophetic
voices all around us the greatest risk when a person or a group calls themselves a prophet is
that they forget that sometimes they will be the people who need the truth speaking to part of
our prophetic calling will be remembering that sometimes we're the ones who need to hear unwelcome
realities we will need to look at ourselves in the mirror we will need to recognize that we all have
unrepented hypocrisies things that we need to change we will need prophets to hold us to account
just as we hold others to account prophetic life is far from comfortable our gospel reading this
morning proved that there was never a prophet who had an easy time because they did the difficult
thing they walked the difficult path and yet they provided such a service without the prophets
there would be no people of God there would be no church the world would be poorer without people
to point out when mistakes are being made and so though it's not easy let us thank God for our
prophetic calling let us have the strength and the courage to lift up our voices and speak let us
be prepared to listen let us speak the truth to power. Amen.