The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 8, Year A, 2008, June 29, 2008, St. Paul’s Church Murfreesboro

“The prophet Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD” (Jer. 28:5).

In the movie Local Hero, the Texas oil tycoon character played by Burt Lancaster hires a therapist to help him see himself as he really is, presenting uncomfortable truths about himself that he might like to avoid but which he really needs to hear. The problem is that the therapist is a very annoying person, who doesn’t know when to stop or to put the brakes on. Eventually even Burt Lancaster gets tired of him, sick of being confronted with his own problems and his own inadequacies as a person. By the end of the gag, the therapist has lost it completely, and is publicly heckling Lancaster’s character in embarrassing ways. The last thing we see is the Texas Rangers closing in on the therapist with sniper rifles, while the oil tycoon heads off to somewhere else.

The work of a prophet is a bit like that: speaking uncomfortable truths that people don’t want to face, but which in spite of themselves they need to hear. The trick to being an effective prophet is the ability to maintain relationship while speaking the truth gracefully. Still, it has to be the truth, and that means it is often uncomfortable.. Prophecy is a kind of difficult conversation, which is equally taxing for prophets and the people who are addressed by them.

Our first reading today gives us only a snippet of a difficult conversation between prophet and people in ancient Israel. The prophet Jeremiah has foretold the capture of Jerusalem and the exile of the People; now these things have happened, but the prophet Hananiah has in turn foretold that the People will soon return from exile. Hananiah even goes down to where his colleague is and breaks the symbolic yoke that Jeremiah wears, a sign of the People’s captivity. Things may be bad, Hananiah prophesies, but they’re going to get better; sooner rather than later, everything will be getting back to normal.

Well, that’s great; very encouraging I’m sure for the People; a little hope in the midst of devastation. The only difficulty, according to Jeremiah, is that it’s not true; it isn’t what God has prepared for the People. This difficult conversation between God and his People is going to remain difficult. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The wooden yoke that Hananiah broke is going to be replaced by an iron yoke, Jeremiah says, since the exile will not be a short one. When the peace that the prophet pronounces actually comes true, then we’ll know that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.

There might be three truths that we want to tag here and remember. First, God has all sorts of things that he needs to say to us, not all of them easy for us to hear. We need to develop within ourselves the capacity to hear them, even when they don’t fit easily into our own picture of ourselves.

Second, don’t kill the messenger! God is going to speak to us through all sorts of people, some of them fairly annoying, or even very annoying; we need to inculcate within ourselves the ability to hear what is said without dismissing it out of hand or reacting negatively to the speaker. We need to step back, reflect, and then identify what we can learn.

Third (and this is most important), God is at work in all parts of our lives, even when the experience is devastating, like the defeat and exile of the People. God is at work even in what we cannot understand, as he was on the cross, that fundamental riddle that Christian faith keeps bringing before us. God is most surely at work in transformation, when life comes out of death, and we are changed in ways that we could not have foreseen.

That is what resurrection is all about: God’s promise to bring life out of death for those who believe; God’s promise to bring transformation to those who hope in him. Our confirmands are helping to keep the truth of the transformed life before us, by their willingness to listen carefully to God and to respond in faith. God’s truth is not comfortable, but it is transforming; it is isn’t easy to hear sometimes, but it is full of glorious promise. Sometimes we can’t see where it will lead us, and we have to proceed forward in spite of that. That’s what it means to live in faith: to know that God is at work in what’s happening, even when it’s not what we expected. We need to be willing to move ahead.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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