Prophet
or “Nice Guy?
Introduction:
We all agree that all who are baptized into Christ are baptized into the obligation to follow him. But we don’t agree on the picture of the Christ we are supposed to follow. That picture suffers sizeable differences and even contradictions, not just between Catholics and Baptists or Catholics and Lutherans but even between Catholics and Catholics. That disagreement among ourselves (about the picture of the Christ we are to follow) at times is so substantial as to make us wonder whether we really belong to one and the same church. The problem puts us in mind of an old TV program: “Will the real Christ please stand up?” The problem also brings to mind that question which Jesus asked his apostles -- those very special followers of his: “Who do you say that I am?” (What’s the use of us talking about the following of Christ if we don’t have the basically same Christ in mind? The question of picture is really important, and it comes first.)
I believe we can say that
there are basically two pictures of
Christ which quite substantially divide us Catholics (and Christians in general): one sees Jesus as prophet, and the other sees Jesus “as something else”
(that sounds a bit awkward but let’s let it go for the
moment). Is Jesus a prophet or
something else?
In scripture a prophet is
not one who foretells the future but rather one who speak to the people in
God’s name. What is it they tell the people? Isaias describes a prophet as one
who "lifts up his voice like a trumpet, and tells the people their
sin” (ss…). We immediately see that prophets
are “not very nice guys.” They
go and tell people not what they
want to hear but what prophets honestly
think people should hear. They
go and tell people things that make them angry and things that disturb the
“peace.”
Go and tell people that
at heart Christian morality is not our exaggerated sexual morality but rather
it is compassion morality and justice morality; //go and tell people that it is
unacceptable for a rich nation like
ours to harbor within itself 40 million
hard-working citizens who can’t afford health insurance (and assure them at the
same time that you are not talking about the horrors of welfare);
// go and tell people that the whole
healthcare system is broken down, and that they should throw away those obscene
signs that bid us “Don’t mess with the
best;” //go and tell politicians that their sins are far greater than those of
prostitutes, and that in fact the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God
ahead of them, -- go tell people all that, and you aren’t a very nice guy, and you disturb the
peace.
Go
the way of the prophet, and you disturb the peace of all those who think that religion should stick to
religion, and “should keep its nose out of politics.” Go the way of the
prophet, and you disturb the peace of
all those whose picture of Christ is not that of a prophet but of “a very nice guy.”
“A very nice guy” -- that’s the other picture of Christ. That’s that “something else” we were talking about just a while ago. The opposite of a prophet is a “very nice guy”: he tells us what we want to hear; he doesn’t rock the boat; he doesn’t disturb the peace.
That
doesn’t sound like Jesus. One day he came right out with it saying: “I have
come to set the earth on fire…. You don’t think that I have come for peace, do
you? No, not peace, I tell you but
division” (Lk 12:49). We are here
reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (his birthday yesterday January 15 -- observed tomorrow January 17). In April
of 1963 as he sat in Birmingham Jail eight white clergymen made a public
statement to this effect: “Marty, be a
nice boy. Stop rocking the boat. Stop disturbing the peace. ” In effect he
replied: “You don’t think I have come for peace, do you?” In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail,
he wrote: “Like the prophets of the eighth century before Christ, I have come to carry forth their “’Thus saith the
Lord.’”
The
opposite of prophet: a “very nice guy,”
i.e. one who tells us what we want to hear; one who doesn’t rock the boat or
disturbs the peace. That doesn’t sound like Christ. Read the entire 23rd
chapter of Matthew. Through 39 verses, see him lighting a fire upon the earth
and hear him disturbing the peace:
“Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You place heavy burdens
on people’s backs and you don’t lift a finger to give them support.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You prance around in the synagogues with your widened phylacteries and your long flowing
tassels, interested only in show.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You slam shut the door of the kingdom of God in people’s faces; you’re not going to enter, and you don’t want them to enter
either.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You take advantage of poor helpless widows and rob them of their
homes.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You are scrupulous in paying tithes on mint, cumin, and dill, but
you neglect the weightier matters of the Law, like justice, compassion, and honesty.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup but the inside is filled with filthy lucre gained through your violence and selfishness.
Woe to you teachers of the Law and you Pharisees,
hypocrites! You are like white-washed tombs that look so nice on the
outside but inside are filled with dead people’s bones and rotting matter.
Who speaks that way is a prophet. Who speaks that
way is “not a very nice guy.” Who speaks that way disturbs the peace. Who
speaks that way eventually pays for it.
This long chapter of tirades ends with the lament of Jesus: “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, you kill the prophets and stone the messengers sent you. How many times I wanted to gather thee
as the hen doth gather her chicks but you would not let me” (Mt 23:1-39).
We are to follow Christ.
But what’s the basic honest-to-God picture of the Christ we are to follow: prophet or “nice guy? If we make him just
“a real nice guy,“ at the end of the day, we render him harmless and
irrelevant; he has nothing to do with our daily lives. If we make him just
“a real nice guy,“ at the end of the day, we’ve extinguished the fire
in him. We also render his cross
totally incomprehensible: nice guys don’t die violently upon the cross; they
die peacefully in bed.
It takes courage to be a
prophet. But it also takes courage
to welcome a prophet. It takes courage
to welcome the prophet in Jesus. That's why he made this promise to us one day: "Whoever gives
welcome to a prophet in my name shall receive the reward of a prophet" (Mt
10:41).
What's that reward of a prophet? Being stoned to
death like the prophets of old, or being nailed to the cross like Jesus, or
getting a bullet in the back like
Martin Luther King Jr.? No.
Strange as it may sound, the reward of a prophet (this guy who disturbs the
peace) is peace itself. And the reward of one who gives welcome to a prophet is the very same reward: peace. The peace that comes from being honest. The peace that comes from courageously doing the right thing.
That's the reward which Martin Luther King Jr.
reaped for himself: He knew that there was a bullet out there waiting for him
as prophet, as “not very nice guy.”
Shortly before his death he said, "You know, like anyone else, I'd
like to live a long life. But that doesn't matter anymore. I'm at peace now.
I've been to the top of the mountain. I've peeked over to the other side. I've
seen the Promised Land. And I know for
sure now that everything will be all
right. “