Trinity 19

“They were afraid of the crowds who thought Jesus was a prophet.”

These words come from the gospel reading for today. And they want me to ask three questions –

What is this fear?
Who are the crowds?
What is a prophet?

Why do prophets and fear go together, then and today? Can you think of a prophet like John the Baptist, or Ezekiel, or Isaiah as you would think about either of the Bishops of our diocese? What is the fear a prophet stirs up in people? Without a doubt, people were afraid of what was happening around Jesus. There was an electricity generated by the dynamo we call the Christ. Jesus inspired people – he inspired fear in many of his time, but love in so many others. But Jesus inspires people still, some he frightens because he will come with righteousness to judge the living and the dead, as the creed says. Some he frightens because he opens up their hearts. Others he frightens because he opens their eyes to what they have done, to what we have done, to what humanity has done to itself and the world.

It is this reaction of fear that people have to the prophet which intrigues me now.

What do people fear? What do you fear most of all? These are questions we don’t often ask ourselves, and quite often when we do confront them, they lie hidden behind so many other things. For instance, a politician fears, but all of his (or her) fears relate to the hustings in some way or another. With whom should I speak in order to inch my way up the greasy pole? What should I say on this thorny subject so that I will be remembered when the Honours List is published? What witty question will put me in the spotlight and gain me power and prestige beyond this question time?

I am sure you can imagine, better than I, the Machiavellian machinations of the politician’s mind. Or, in fact, we need only turn on the television to see it played out in real life on the news, or to see it played up in fiction. The politician fears that crowd as did Jesus’ persecutors. Their fear is writ large in their paranoia about conspiracies all around them. This fear is unfounded, when looked at from the point of view of faith. “You might say so, but I cannot possibly comment,” as one fictional politician so aptly put it – and there are so many ways to read that line, one from the politician’s viewpoint, the other from faith.

The fear a politician has is so very different to the fear of a child, who only fears the lack of security, the lack of love in those around the child (or perhaps that is all the politician really wants as well – but I digress). Again the child’s experience can be imagined, you need only think about yourself to get to that vulnerable state where the child articulates his fear in a cry that can be heard from one end of the house to the other.

But both the politician and the child fear “them,” those outside themselves. The “they” which determines how each of us will behave in public and will constrain our behaviour in private as well.

This “they” is all-pervasive – the “they” helps us determine who we are, for “they” let us relate to “them” and we find approval from “them,” and sometimes “they” tell us what is to be thought. – The philosopher has talked a great deal about this “they,” so I will not. But let us take one thought with us. The “they” is the crowd whom the leaders feared because the crowd considered Jesus a prophet.

The crowd becomes incredibly powerful when it becomes this anonymous “they” of the philosopher, or even the voices of our own paranoid delusions. The crowd forces us to do as “they” want us to be. Sometimes that is good, sometimes that is bad. Sometimes it leads to an appropriate expression of just who we are. At other times,the crowd subverts our very selves and demeans our own worth. Sometimes “they” have determined who we are in a demonic way.

When “they” have told me who I am, I may not be what I ought to be. Perhaps that is what the leaders fear, when “the crowd” proclaims Jesus a prophet.

The prophet is God’s mouthpeice, for he proclaims the truth to us here and now, he articulates the truth that is deep in our hearts. That is what we fear ultimately, the truth about ourselves, whether we have led our own lives or the life that the “they” has dictated to each one of us.

That is why the leaders fear Jesus, for the mutterings of the crowd who hold Jesus as a prophet are actually precursors of the prophet’s pronouncement on the quality of the lives of the leaders, and everyone else. That is why we fear prophecy today, for we may not stand up to the judgement which the prophet declares on God’s behalf, the condemnation of a fruitless and trivial life carried on without the engagement of the mind, heart and soul with the ultimate meaning of life. We fear that the prophet will declare that we have broken the greatest commandment, “to love God.”

We fear that the judgement of God will be to cast us away, into the fires with the chaff. We fear that we will not be taken into that great mansion where there are many dwellings We fear that we will not be led into that sheepfold where the good shepherd will tend us. That is why the prophet provokes such a drastic reaction. We want to continue to think that we will be saved. We want to continue to live as we have done. We want to continue without a prophet speaking to us today.

People today are just like they were when Jesus walked through Jerusalem. People fear the worst and expect only bad things. They don’t know what will happen, they don’t know themselves, they are just plain scared when they listen to what the crowds have been saying to them and confront the prophet standing in front of them.

We are like the child who fears, but our screams are drowned out in the sound of the crowd which gives us comfort. But what happens when the crowd no longer gives comfort, when it speaks an unfamiliar message? Then we are like the leaders who feared the crowd, we are like those leaders who do not want to meet the prophet. The crowd may announce Jesus as the prophet, but do we know what the Christ will say to us?

That is the moment of the call of our conscience, when God speaks through the prophet’s voice. That moment is the moment we all desire, when the Word of God will speak in our hearts. Deep in our selves we will hear what the crowd does not, for it is a personal message. The Word of God is a word in your ear. No one but you can hear it and you will know it when it sounds.

When the prophet speaks to the crowd, the secrets of each heart are revealed in their completeness to each heart. The prophet speaks to each and every one of us individually when he preaches to the crowd. This is what happened when Jesus preached to the five thousand and fed them to overflowing. This is what could happen even today somewhere within the church universal. We hear the word as directed to the depths of our own hearts. We are transformed individually, if we are prepared to listen. It all takes place in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. The moment is there for each of us to grab.

When we grasp that moment, we understand the call of conscience. This is the moment of decision, what the Gospel of John calls the krisiV which the philosopher knows all too well as the moment when faith takes over the journey. It is a moment which is in front of us always, the moment we must make our own, in spite of our fear, in spite of the crowd, all because the prophet spoke to us through a word calling to us.
    Amen