The Road to Redemption: the Prophets

    So who were they? So who were these men and women that we call the prophets? For many of us the names that come to mind are the big three: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. On occasion we recall that there are the other Minor Prophets such as Daniel and Joel. The interesting thing about the Biblical story however is that is chocked full of prophets. There are groups of prophets who wandered the countryside in the time of Saul and David. There were professional prophets who worked for the king (telling him exactly what he wanted to hear) and short term prophets like Amos who took a few weeks' vacation from their vocation (shepherding) to deliver a message of truth to the powers of the time. Their stories are buried deep in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as well as being highlighted within books bearing their own names. Throughout the history of Israel the prophets played critical roles which assisted the people of God along the Road to Redemption.

    The first role that the prophets played was that they were to speak truth to power. One person described this task as "forth-telling." Forth-telling was the task whereby the prophets shined the light of God's law and purpose upon the actions of the people of God. There were times when the forth-telling was for a single individual. This was the case when the prophet Nathan made King David aware that David's adultery with Bathsheba and David's subsequent murder of Bathsheba's husband was known by God and a price would have to be paid. David would have to face up to his sins. There were times when a prophet would shine a light on an entire nation. This was the case with prophet Hosea. Hosea was told to go and marry a prostitute in order to demonstrate to God's people that they were playing the prostitute in their relationship with God (in other words the people of God were running after and worshipping other gods, rather than being faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). The message of Hosea was also, to offer a more positive note, that God was going to remain faithful to God's people even when they were not faithful to God. This calling was an attempt to keep the people on task; to remind the people that they were part of God's larger plan of redemption.

    The second role that the prophets played was that they were "fore-tellers." Fore-tellers are those who speak to the future. At this point I want to stop and make clear a few things about prophets and speaking to the future. First, the prophets were not soothsayers predicting the future of individuals for a fast buck. If they were predicting someone's future it was always in reference to God's plan for that individual (God was going to anoint someone King or eliminate someone because they had done great harm to God's plan and people). Second the prophets were not those who were trying to predict specific dates and times for the coming of Jesus. Over the centuries the church has tried to tie virtually every prophetic prediction to Jesus. While Jesus was ultimately the culmination of the God's redeeming work, the prophets spoke to many other events along the way (such as the people being carried into Babylon in exile as well as their eventual return). Finally the prophets were those who gave hope to the people by fore-telling about God's redemptive plan. While this fore-telling was not always specifically about Jesus, it was about the fact that God's saving action would culminate in one who would be the suffering servant, giving his life for God's people and for the world. In the end then all of the fore-telling was another way of keeping God's people on the road to redemption.

    You and I are the beneficiaries of both prophetic roles. The words of the prophets while spoken to people more than two thousand years ago can still speak to us today. First they remind us that we are to live as God's redeemed and redeeming people. We have a task before us to live out the love and grace of God in our everyday lives. The words of the prophets keep us aligned with God's plans. Second the prophet's words remind us that God is still at work redeeming the world; that even in the face of tough times we are not to give up on God, because God has not given up on the world.

    

The Road to Redemption: Kings

    Two of the most prominent characters in the entire Bible are two of the Kings of the united nation of Israel; David (1000 – 961 BCE) and Solomon (961 – 922 BCE). David is famous not only because he occupies a transitional role in the story of God's people but because he also had a great biographer. There were kings who reigned longer (Uzziah 783 – 742 BCE) or were more famous in their day (Most foreign nations referred to the people of Israel as the people of Omri (876 – 869 BCE) and not David) but never rivaled David in terms of the sheer volume of material in the scriptures. If we include the many Psalms which are attributed to David his hold over the Bible is even greater. David's son Solomon also manages to occupy a significant section of the book of I Kings. He is noted for his wisdom (supposedly having written both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) and wealth. With so much material devoted to these two figures, as well four entire books to the other kings, we might assume that the Bible considers their appearance on the scene as a positive event. If we did we would be only minimally correct.

    While the rise of the kings plays a pivotal role in the road to redemption their appearance is not one that is whole heartedly endorsed by the tellers of our Biblical tale. There are two schools of thought (within the Bible) about the kings. The first school is anti-monarchy. This school is clear that God is the only king that the people of Israel need. Any other kings are mere pretenders who will abuse the people through taking their sons for the army, their daughters for serving girls and their money in order that the kings live a lavish life-style. The pro-monarchy school implies that it had been God's plan all along to name kings who would be the earthly representative of God. While God would still be in charge God wanted there needed to be an earthly ruler to guide and direct the people. These two conflicting views are held in tension throughout the books of Kings and Chronicles.

    Fortunately there are two places where these schools converge and provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption. The first convergence is that they are each clear that the kings do not have absolute power. All Kings rule under the authority of God and the Law of Moses. In other words there is no divine right of Kings to do whatever their please. The kings only possess limited power. This is a significant step in the life of the people of God. It is significant first because it makes clear that there is only one God. Unlike most of the nations around them Israel and Judah (the two nations which came into being after the death of Solomon) never assigned divinity to their rulers. While Egypt, Babylon and Rome among others worshipped their leaders as gods, the children of Israel would never do so. There was a clear delineation between the One True Living God and human beings. This allowed the people to continue to focus their worship on YHWH and YHWH alone.

    The second convergence where these schools provide for us a way forward on our road to redemption is that the kings were to understand themselves as servants of the people. Their role was to care for and provide for the welfare of the people. The kings were to insure that there was proper worship. The kings were to insure that the people were protected. The kings were to insure that syncretism did not overtake the people. In other words the kings were to model for the people what a savior ought to look and act like. Thus the image of David as the liberator and protector of God's people became the archetype for the coming messiah. This is one reason why the Gospel of Luke takes such great pains to locate Jesus' birth in the city of Bethlehem, David's ancestral town. This image of the servant ultimately shows up in the writings of the prophet Isaiah and in Jesus' understanding of his vocation as messiah.

    Though the road to redemption was a bumpy one with many twists and turns, it was ultimately made possible by the work of very fallible kings who none-the-less insured that it was YHWH and not themselves who were at the center of the life of God's people.

    

The Road to Redemption: The Judges

    Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at God's movement toward the ultimate redemption of the world. Needless to say God is taking God's good time in bringing this about. If we consider that Abraham (the one to whom the original promise of redemption was given) lived about 1,200 years before Christ, that means God has been at this redemption business for about 2,300 years. In a society like ours where the only thing that matters is what happens today (or how things go this quarter) this long term transformation can seem a bit frustrating. The good news however is that along the way we can witness God at work in our midst advancing God's plan. We are able to catch glimpses of redemption. This is case with the time of the judges.

    For those of you who are not familiar with the time of the judges, let me do a recap. The stories about the judges are contained in the seventh book of the Bible, appropriately named, Judges. The historical setting was the time between the arrival of the people of Israel in the Promised Land and the kingships beginning with Saul and David. This was a time of great trial for God's people. Though the previous book of the Bible, Joshua, implied that the Hebrews had completely conquered the Promised Land and could therefore live in peace, the reality on the ground was very, very different. The Israelites were no more than a loose confederation of tribes who had taken control of small parts of the hill country in what we would now think of as Israel. The plains and the coasts belonged to more established and well-armed nations including the Canaanites and Philistines. Those peoples had better weapons, better organization (kings) and better fortified cities. This made life very difficult for the lightly armed and disorganized Hebrews. What followed was several hundred years of conflict in which the Hebrews often found themselves "outgunned" and out guided.

    This is the point in the story where the judges appear and play their part in God's redemption story. The judges were both men and women. Some of their names are familiar to us; Gideon, Deborah and Samson. Others are not familiar at all: Otheniel, Ehud and Shagmar. What binds these people and their stories together is that they were charismatic leaders who received a specific call from God, in a specific moment in history to perform a specific task, the liberation of God's people. Without their efforts the Hebrews would have vanished into the mists of time, along with the redemptive task to which they were called. We can see this in the way that the writer of the Book of Judges always casts the call and efforts of the judges as part of God's long range plan for world-wide redemption.

    The recurring theme of Judges is that "The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and worshipped the Ba'als." The Ba'als were the nature gods of the Canaanites and Philistines. When the people of Israel would go astray and follow the Ba'als God would give God's people over to their enemies. Ultimately the people would cry out to God (just as in Egypt) and God would send them a judge. These judges would then rally the people, defeat the enemies of Israel and bring the people back to God and to their true calling; being the people through whom God would liberate and redeem creation.

    A second way for us to see the importance of the judges is to see them as prefiguring Jesus. Jesus would be the one called and sent by God to liberate humanity from the powers and principalities of this world. While the manner of liberation would be different, a sacrificial death rather than war and armed conflict, the results would be the same; God's people would be free to once again turn their lives over to following the living God and the way of life God offers. My hope is that both of these stories, that of the Judges and that of Jesus will encourage us to look for signs of God's redemptive work in the world, and be an encouragement for us to do our part in this amazing work.