The Divine Universe

 

The first time Jesus preached in his local synagogue people were amazed and also confused. Mark says they were actually offended. His teaching impressed them enormously with its erudition and insight but they knew him as an ordinary young man who worked with his father as a general handyman, fixing broken furniture, roof tiles or sticking doors. Naturally people were sceptical. Here was this local tradesman talking like a scholar – a scribe or a Pharisee. More than that, people said he talked with an authority that seemed based on more than mere book learning. The neighbours couldn’t make it out.

 

Famous people often fail to attract the same admiration from those close to them that they enjoy from the public. Jesus was right: “A prophet is not without honour except in his own country and among his own people.”  (Mark 6:4)

 

We can all think of examples. In 1964, I was in Malvern, in the diocese of Worcester, and I recall the Bishop at that time had no degree or paper qualifications. Some local clergy looked down on him for that. Bits of paper were more important to them than spiritual maturity and pastoral zeal and ability.

 

John the Baptist at first pointed to Jesus as a greater prophet than himself, but he had doubts when he heard that he enjoyed, good food and wine and had delinquent friends.

 

Politicians try, as a professional necessity, to be prophetic. Many recognise the injustice of a world were a few are obscenely rich while millions are starving. Governments are promising to try to redistribute global wealth a bit more evenly. But the public is sceptical about politicians. They may or may not have a prophetic message, but we tend to see them as basically self-seeking careerists out to enhance their own position.

It is said of Einstein that he was not a good family man, and of Isaac Newton that he was extremely bad tempered. Michael Jackson, a superstar in his lifetime, was a troubled person who had been abused as a child and whose behaviour as an adult was eccentric, to say the least.

 

Suppose someone gets bitten by religion and becomes a born-again Christian. Perhaps a heavy-drinking, womanising cricket or Rugby star repents of his ways and proclaims that he has now given his life to Jesus. If he tries to convert his team-mates, they will probably say something like, “Look mate, this is us you’re talking to. Knock it off!” To the media, however, it is a great story and soccer fans rush even more eagerly for his autograph.

When Al Gore began to give warnings about global warming, sceptics said, “What does he know about it? He’s not a scientist; he’s a politician.” That reminds me of a brothers’ chapter meeting where I first introduced the subject of global warming. One of the brothers objected that I was in no position to talk because I was no better than anyone else at turning unneeded lights off. It was a fair comment, but I was dreaming of something more radical like a solar power plant, costing as much as a family car. I still hope that, one day, people will do this although such a plant takes thirty years to pay for itself.

 

So Jesus suggests that, if you feel you have a prophetic message, strangers are more likely to take you seriously than your family, friends and neighbours.

 

But how often does that happen? How many people believe they have a prophetic message? I think a lot do. We can all see that society is in a mess – individualistic, self-centred, obsessed with money, racist, hypocritical. We complain about it, but our nearest and dearest know we are not shining examples of virtue ourselves and don’t really pay much attention.

 

Do you have a prophetic vision? Think carefully. Every time you say the word ‘ought’ you are making a prophetic proclamation, often a message of warning. “You ought to drive more slowly.” “You ought to eat less fatty food.” The road toll and obesity are indeed serious problems, but people pay more attention if an expert or even a stranger says these things than if their husbands or wives do. Sometimes Christ speaks to us through people close to us, but we fail to recognise him because we know them too well. There’s a bit of the prophet in all of us, but what Jesus said is common experience.

 

Prophets are people ahead of their time, yet family and neighbours see them essentially as contemporaries. Jesus was ahead of his time. He spoke from the perspective of a world that didn’t yet exist, of a kingdom that has still not been established. It is not surprising that his family and contemporaries found him puzzling and disturbing. They knew him as an ordinary part of their contemporary world.

 

At the Council of Nicea, where our Creed was composed, Athanasius and company created another kind of scepticism by declaring that Jesus was divine. It’s a kind of inverted scepticism. We admire Jesus’ wisdom and heroic virtue but we feel he had an overwhelming advantage over us. “I’m only human,” we say, when our faults and failings are criticised. Jesus’ divinity can be as big a stumbling block as his ordinariness.

 

Jesus’ most stupendous prophetic action was his resurrection. The resurrection looked to the future in the context of contemporary life. Jesus was a mortal person. He died. We are sceptical because dead people don’t get up from their graves. Many people try to work out some psychological or other natural explanation for those weird reports at the end of the Gospels.

 

The famous theologian, Paul Tillich, said that belief and faith are different. Belief demands that you abdicate your critical faculty. Many people firmly believe things against all reason and evidence, fearing that if they use their brains they’ll lose their faith. Faith always includes an element of doubt. I don’t believe in the resurrection; I have faith in it. I have faith in the resurrection, but I don’t deny my bewilderment and doubts. Paul, in his letters, often seems to assume that we all understand what the resurrection really means, but I am still struggling.

 

However, in spite of our doubts, we need to have a respect for prophecy, whether it comes from ancient writings, from a qualified expert or from someone close. There are prophetic voices that speak to us daily, not only from the Bible or from experts, but from those around us. We need to pay attention.