Joining a Company of Prophets

 

Introduction

Go prophesy!

The prophet Amos is not very happy when the Lord God orders him to go forth and prophesy to the people of Israel.  He complains saying, “I was no prophet nor did I belong to a company of prophets.  I was just a simple shepherd and a dresser of sycamores and fig trees. But the Lord took me from my flocks and ordered me saying, `Go, prophesy to my people Israel’” (Amos 7:12-15).

 

Don’t be afraid

In scripture a prophet isn’t what we ordinarily understand today by the word, namely, someone who foretells the future.  In Isaiah a prophet is one who “lifts up his voice like a trumpet and tells the people their sins” (Is 58:1). He tells them something they’re not hearing but need to hear or something that disturbs their comfort or something that challenges their old way of seeing things or something that makes them think, when they’re accustomed to not thinking or are satisfied with mere sound bytes of thought.

 

By definition, then, a prophet is one who disturbs the veneer of peace that is always hanging around us. He makes people angry, and so it takes courage to be a prophet. No one in his right mind would ever volunteer to be one. Amos has to be ordered to be a prophet. He’s perfectly content to stay out there in the fields tending his sheep and trimming his fig trees and plucking their sweet fruit in due season. He knows how loveable animals can be and how mean-spirited humans can be, especially when you’re sent  to lift  up your voice like a trumpet and tell them something they don’t want to hear (Amos 7:12-14).

 

Jeremiah, too, has to be ordered to be a prophet. One day the Lord God said to him, “I chose you before you were conceived in the womb, and before you came forth I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.” That frightened Jeremiah, and it started him stuttering and protesting, “Ah, ah, ah, Lord God. I don’t know how to speak; I am too young.”  “Do not say that you are too young,” said Yahweh, “but go to the people I send you to, and tell them everything I command you to say. And do not be afraid of them, for I will protect you” (Jer 1:4-7). It takes courage to be a prophet and tell people something they don’t want to hear.

 

A courageous Cardinal

Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Maradiaga of Honduras is a prophet. He lifts up his voice like a trumpet and tells a corporate and capitalist world that injustice is a much greater sin than sex. In an interview with a respected Italian magazine, 30 Giorni, the Cardinal complained of the US media’s persecution of the Catholic Church in the clergy sex abuse scandal.  In fiery language, he compared the media’s treatment of the church to the persecution of Christians under the emperors Nero and Diocletian, and under the dictators Hitler and Stalin.  The Cardinal angered some people who cried out, “There go the church leaders again--in denial, blaming the messenger for the church’s problem.” Even Fr. Andrew Greely, that sassy Irish priest from Chicago, labeled the Cardinal as “clueless.”

 

Maradiaga isn’t a crusty foreign prelate out of touch with the American scene. He is a dynamic 60-year-old young man whose perfect English reflects years of studying, lecturing and traveling in the United States.  Neither is he one of those ecclesiastical paranoids who see enemies of the church under every rock. In an interview he made it clear that not for a moment did he question the sufferings of sex abuse victims or deny the failure of some shepherds (bishops) to intervene when they should have. But what he wanted to do, he said, was to raise a question of emphasis. Then the Cardinal lifted up his voice like a trumpet and called into question our exaggerated emphasis on sex abuse when countless millions of human beings are hungry and utterly destitute; when an AIDS pandemic is killing off a whole generation of Africans; when drug trafficking is choking off democracy in Latin America; when 1.2 billion people are drinking polluted water. He called into question our exaggerated emphasis on sex abuse when the combined salary for 12,000 Nike workers in Indonesia for a whole year doesn’t add up to what one famous basketball player gets for one endorsement. In such a world, the Cardinal asks, does the sexual abuse of minors by perhaps 2 percent of priests merit such saturation bombing?  Cardinal Maradiaga is a prophet who lifts up his voice like a trumpet and tells a corporate and capitalist world that injustice is a far greater sin than sex.

 

Because the Cardinal denounced the Colombian drug cartels that work through Honduras, his doorman from the chancery in Tegucigalpa was kidnapped, manhandled, and told to tell his boss that the cartel was coming after him.  What the Lord God said to the prophet Jeremiah he said to the prophet Maradiaga, “Go tell them everything I command you to say. And do not be afraid of them, for I will protect you” (Jer 1:4-7).

A courageous theologian

Fr. Hans Küng, a Swiss German Catholic theologian, is also a prophet. He lifts up his voice like a trumpet and tells the church something it doesn’t want to hear.  At one time he was a great buddy of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). The two taught together in the University of Tübingen in Germany during the 1960s. There they had a standing weekly dinner appointment on Thursday evenings to discuss a journal they edited together. The two served as theological experts for the German bishops at the Second Vatican Council.

 

In 1979, Küng’s right to teach Catholic theology was revoked by Pope John Paul II because Küng had called into doubt Catholic teaching about papal infallibility. It was known that Ratizinger, as a member of the German Bishops’ conference, played an important role in that revocation. From that time on Küng became a staunch critic of Ratgzinger’s doctrinal positions and his methods of policing the church. From that time on Küng became Ratzinger’s arch-enemy and nemesis.

 

In a little volume (remarkably small for a man known for voluminous and scholarly works filled with German thoroughness) prophet Küng writes, “I cannot believe:

 

a. that he, who warned the Pharisees against laying intolerable burdens on people’s shoulders would today declare all `artificial’ contraception to be mortal sin;

 

b. that he, who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach that table;

 

c. that he, who  was constantly accompanied by women (who provided for his keep), and whose apostles, except for Paul, were all married and remained so, would today have forbidden marriage to all ordained men, and ordination to all women;

 

d. that he, who said `I have compassion on the crowd,’ would have increasingly deprived congregations of their pastors and allowed a system of pastoral care built up over a period of a thousand years to collapse. (Is he speaking about our shortage of priests and our funny creations like the ”Church of the Three Holy Women?”)

 

e. that he, who defended the adulteress and sinners, would pass such harsh verdicts in delicate questions requiring discriminating and critical judgment, like pre-marital sex, homosexuality and abortion” (Why I am still a Christian by Hans Küng).

 

With such a prophet lifting up his voice in such Catholic unspeakables Pope Benedict broke bread.  Last September 24th, 2005, he graciously received his one-time buddy and then archenemy in his summer home in Castel Gandolfo. In a relaxed and friendly atmosphere this German pope met with this German prophet. During a four-hour session that stretched over dinner, the two broke bread, listened to each other and essentially agreed to disagree. Back home in Germany, Küng said, “The things we have in common are more fundamental. We both are Christians, both priests in the service of the church, and we have personal respect for one another.” The meeting, he said, was “a step forward.”

A courageous woman

Dr. Eva Fleischner is also a prophet (or prophetess). She lifts up her voice like a trumpet, and she tells me something I don’t want to hear. She is Professor Emeritus at Montclair State University, N.J.   She held the Marquette University Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies. Her father converted to Catholicism from Judaism. When she was thirteen she fled Austria as the Nazis marched into Vienna. She is a pioneer Catholic theologian in Christian-Jewish relations, Christian anti--Semitism and Holocaust studies. Her full resume runs on and on forever. Recently Dr. Eva Fleischner wrote me a three page letter. Referring to a homily preached on 23rd of April, 2006 (http://my.execpc.com/~alexis/Lockeddoors2006.htm), here at Old St. Mary’s, she writes, “I read [it] with amazement, admiration, and delight. You confront the anti-Judaism prevalent in Christian tradition head-on…. I also marvel at the skill and courage with which you move from “the doors being locked” against Jews, to their being locked against gays, women and, even, our brave Bishop Gumbleton. This sermon is a masterpiece.”

 

But then referring to another homily preached on 2nd of April, 2006, (http://my.execpc.com/~alexis/5Lent.htm)  here at Old St. Mary’s, she lifts up her voice like a trumpet and tells me my sins for the next two and a half pages.  ”In this sermon,” she writes, “you repeat many of the worst anti-Jewish stereotypes….Your interpretation of Jewish law repeats what has been traditional Christian teaching for 1900 years, and which has contributed to stoking up the crematories of the Holocaust…. Parts of this sermon could have been written by Martin Luther in his old age.” (In his old age he wrote a tract entitled Against the Jews and their Lies --1543).

 

I must admit that for the next two and half pages I didn’t think it could possibly be me of whom she was writing. To dig up some good proof against her I went to my computer which contains hundreds of homilies, and under Search I punched in the word Holocaust. My search revealed I had used the word 246 times! I obviously feel as passionately as she does about the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust and about its ugly roots in the careless reading of our Christian scriptures and in our insensitive preaching especially during Holy Week. But all that couldn’t possibly come through to her by simply reading one homily which unfortunately hadn’t said things too sensitively.

 

On the 7th of this month this feisty lady and I met on her 81st birthday over lunch at Mykonis. There we discovered what we already knew about each other from friends--that we both were people of good will, and that we both were capable of receiving the prophet sent us. The meeting, I think, helped us both to see that we were coming from slightly different directions with slightly different emphases and sensitivities. At the end of the day, however, her prophetic voice to me was not in vain. It helped me see that I wasn’t as sensitive as I thought I was, and that I wasn’t as much of a prophet as I pride myself to be on an issue very important not only to her but to myself as well.

 

Another reluctant prophet

Sooner or later we are all called to join the company of prophets like Oscar Maradiaga and Hans Küng and Eva Fleischner. We all, sooner or later, are challenged to courageously lift up our voice and tell someone something he doesn’t want to hear. Just recently I was so challenged. The other day I opened the garage doors to do some long overdue cleaning. Totally unprepared for it, I suddenly beheld two pit bulls engaged in a fierce bloody battle. They were glued to each other by their teeth, and they were bathed in a bloody bath. Two big strapping guys stood by.

 

It was a prophetic moment for me, challenging me to lift up my voice like a trumpet. But like Jeremiah I found myself stuttering and saying “Ah, ah, ah, Lord God. I am no prophet.” But the Lord God said to me, “Do not say you’re no prophet. Go and speak to them, and don’t be afraid for I will protect you” (Jer 1:4-7).  I was afraid. I have always been frail of frame, and with that goes a bit of cowardice. But when animals are suffering I lose my fear (or put it on a back burner), and I even become a bit recklessly courageous. I approached one of the big strapping guys and with prudent moderation exclaimed, “For God’s sake, please stop this.” He eye-balled me, and I could feel his hot breath against my face.  “It’s none of your mf business,” he replied. “When an animal suffers, that is my business,” I answered back, again with prudent moderation. Fearing I was upping the road rage I backed off from my reckless courage. After all, I have to protect myself because my dog Simeon and my cat Mamasita need me. As I backed off they hosed down the two bloody messes. The whole affair depressed me greatly for some time, but I would have been more depressed had I not lifted up my voice like a little trumpet. There was, in fact, a quiet subtle reward in that moment.

 

Conclusion

Joining a company of Prophets

We look for a prophetic church—a church which has the courage to be a prophet and lift up its voice and speak to all the issues which wrangle it, like birth control, divorce and re-marriage, open communion, homosexuality and married clergy. We look for a prophetic church—a church which also has the courage to receive a prophet sent it.

 

But the Ite Missa est, the Mass dismissal, is not a dismissal to the church; it is a dismissal to you and me. It’s a dismissal to you and me to have the courage to join a company of prophets like Oscar Maradiaga and Hans Küng and Eva Fleischner. They’re good people. They take the ho-hum out of religion and give it meaning and life.  The Ite Missa est, the Mass dismissal, is also a dismissal to you and me to have the courage to receive the prophets God sends us. Jesus promises whoever receives a prophet will receive the quiet subtle reward of a prophet ((Mt 10:41).