Before our parish got a new priest we all ended up taking turns giving a sermon on the scripture reading for that Sunday. When it was my turn I couldn't immediately tell which cycle of scripture readings the sermon would be about, so I wrote two of them, one for each set of readings that I thought might be involved. Going through old files I thought it would be worth posting the one I didn't end up using.
Beware of False Prophecy
Dark times and people who want reassurances seem to bring out society’s desire for prophets. As a society we seem to be especially hungry for charismatic individuals who can cut through the uncertainty with rays of divine truth. On February 12th 2021 the NY Times discussed the phenomenon:
“In my lifetime — 49 years as a follower of Jesus — I’ve never seen this level of interest in prophecy,” said Michael Brown, an evangelical radio host and commentator, who believes in prophecy but has called for greater accountability when prophecies prove false. “And it’s unfortunate, because it’s an embarrassment to the movement.”
Trying to decide what to do with prophets has always been a problem. In the Old Testament kings of Israel would employ guilds of prophets who they could consult, or as the situation demanded, provide a gloss of divine approval for royal policy by acts of symbolic theater. A amusing tale is recorded in 1 Kings 22 when the kings of Judah and Israel assemble 400 prophets to support a coming military campaign. One of them is even described as bringing a pair of iron horns as props to make his point. Then the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah arrives and prophecies doom on the military campaign and gets into an argument with the other assembled prophets about whether god is intentionally deceiving their company to trick the kings into a disastrous military campaign. Many prophets, notably Jeremiah seem to be remembered because their were willing to contradict the official prophetic guilds. While it may have been easy to predict good times when things are going good or to predict disaster when things are going poorly, it seems that when great periods of change were either in progress or hoped for true prophecy became quite a lot harder and the prophets who actually had something useful to say during these times are remembered and honored. John Collins, the author of a introductory textbook on the Hebrew Bible, suggests Zechariah 13 reference to prophets hiding the self inflicted wounds of their ecstatic trances may actually be intended as a criticism of repeated disappointing prophecies that the Judean monarchy would be restored after the Babylonian exile.
In this context Jesus’s saying that prophets should be judged by their fruits doesn’t just seem to refer to how we should treat new prophets who come along, but instead places anyone who claims the gift of prophecy within a long tradition of teachers whose claims had to be judged by history. Jesus doesn’t suggest any test that prophets can be judged by membership in a specific group, be particularly charismatic, or make us feel good or bad about the things we value. Instead he argues that prophets should be judged on their fruits, a process that based on the Old Testament record would often be difficult to judge within any one person’s lifetime. Jesus includes prophecy among the “Many works of power” that people might claim to do in Jesus name by those whom he never knew. Instead of trusting in the excitement of observing or publicly performing Charismatic gifts where it can be difficult to judge of what spirit they are, Jesus calls on us to hear his words and act on them, so that we will be built upon a rock.
