Who Are the Prophets?
I find myself reeling between grief and thanksgiving, as one
after another men and women I and many have relied upon for so many years have
moved on to their final resting place after lifetimes of inspiring the rest of
us to be the best version of ourselves we can possibly be. In the span of a few
days, Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, Cassandra Wilson, and Gloria Steinem have
departed this mortal coil. A country singer, a writer, a pioneering jazz
vocalist, and a leader of what has come to be called Second Stream Feminism.
All of whom cared deeply about the community of humankind and our
responsibilities to love and support one another. All of whom could be said to
have fulfilled the prayer for this Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: they all
in their own ways resisted pride in themselves, and never forsook their own
particular place among those who rely on the Lord’s mercy and a concern for
what we used to call “the common good.” How lucky we have all been to have had
these four prophets among us for so long.
One does not take calling them prophets lightly. As we read
in Ezekiel 33:7-11, a prophet’s role is to sound the alarm, to call out truth
to power, to warn the general populace that we are on a wrong path – paths not
congruent with the Lord’s way, the Lord’s dream of “a friendly world of
friendly folk beneath a friendly sky” as that Twentieth Century prophet and
mystic, Howard Thurman once described God’s creation. Wendell Berry,
principally a farmer, and a writer of novels and poems, was one of the earliest
in our time to declare the damage we have done to God’s “friendly world and
sky” with the poison of fossil fuels damaging the very air we breathe, and
warming the planet to dangerous temperatures causing more and more violent
weather, all while pouring more fossil fuel poisons into the very ground that
produces the food we eat in so-called “modern industrial farms.”
As the Lord instructs Ezekiel, if you do not warn the
people, the impending disaster is on you. If you do warn the people, and they
ignore your warnings, the impending disaster is on them. You must call them to
turn away from their evil and destructive ways and return to the natural Wheel
of Life: everything living is born, has a life, dies, decays, and is reborn
from the natural elements of its decaying matter. This responsibility to warn
the people and speak truth to the powers that capitalize on damaging the
friendly earth and skies is the fundamental message in the 176 verses of Psalm
119, a psalm that finds 176 ways of urging us to return to the natural created
order of things – a caution that progress does not always eventuate in good for
the friendly earth, the friendly people, nor the friendly sky.
So it is that one finds Wendell Berry addressing the Garden
Club of America, apologizing: “But I must add I am sorry for getting here / By
sustained explosion through the air / Burning the world in fact to rise much
higher / Than we should go.” He writes that “Burning the world to live in it is
wrong /As wrong as to make war to get along / to falsify the land / By sciences
of greed, or by demand / For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify / The body’s
health and pleasure…” Berry goes on to urge us to “play it cool”: “Why not
survive / By nature’s laws that still keep us alive? …By going back to school,
this time in gardens / That burn no hotter than the summer day…Life of our
life, the garden lives and sings. / The Wheel of Life, … work, sweat, and
hunger / Bring food to the table, food to the cellar shelves. / A creature of
the surface, like ourselves, / The garden lives by the immortal Wheel / That
turns in place, year after year, to heal / It whole.” (Leavings, Poems, p.22)
Saint Paul, in the thirteenth chapter of his majestic Letter
to the Church in Rome poses the pivotal question in all eras: “You know what
time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” No matter
how many prophets the Lord sends to us, however, we resist waking up to the
fundamental challenges that face us – challenges of our own creation, whether
we choose to admit it or not. It took a young woman, a journalist, to recognize
the ongoing fate of women both at home and in the workplace, to eventually
create a journal for women called Ms. At the time, many people did not know how
to even pronounce that title for a woman of whom you are not sure is married or
not. It speaks of a kind of new independence in a time when women could not have
their own credit cards, and only 15 women served our country in Congress.
Today, thanks very much for the vision of Gloria Steinem and others on the
staff of that magazine, 150 women serve in the U.S. Congress today – against a
rising tide of so-called Christian Nationalism that wishes to send them home to
their respective kitchens and deprive them of the vote altogether. Dolly Parton,
along with Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda picked up the vision Steinem put forth,
and used a comedic movie to call attention to the plight of working women
everywhere. And Cassandra Wilson, amidst her vast and eclectic repertoire,
featured songs that also called for a new day for women, for outsiders of all
kinds, and for us all.
All the while, Parton, Berry, Steinem and Wilson
persistently called us to restore a kind of community that seeks to serve the
Common Good, looking out for the most vulnerable people throughout the land.
Which is really the focus of this week’s gospel. What might appear as a kind of
“manual of church discipline and conflict resolution,” [Matthew 18:15-20] a
look at its place in all of chapter 18 of Matthew’s Story of Jesus suggests a
larger and broader concern. The chapter begins with Jesus raising up children
as the ideal model of a follower of his call to live according to God’s
statutes. One can easily believe that Jesus was deeply familiar with the
psalms, and Psalm 119 in particular. He goes on, in his parable of a lost
sheep, to remind his would-be followers that it is of utmost importance to go
forth and find, what he calls in chapter 25, “the least of these, my sisters
and brothers” – outcasts of all kinds including the hungry, thirsty, sick,
imprisoned, and immigrants and strangers of all kinds. Even to the point of
leaving 99 others to find and serve every last one!
Against this background, verses 15-20 really seem to say
something like, “There is much more important things for us to be doing than
petty arguments over who sits where, is the bread and wine real flesh and blood
or symbolic, and when is it appropriate to cross oneself during the Holy
Eucharist? Settle it all, and get back to the work of the kingdom – which is a
prophetic announcement if there ever was one.
I vividly recall sitting in a once abandoned house on an old
logging road in Maine, where my musical companions and I would often spend a
night or two while on the road. There was no electricity, no running water, no
telephone. Nights were dark and quiet. What better place to pick up a little
book titled, A Continuous Harmony, in which I discovered the vision Wendell
Berry has for us all, and for God’s green earth. That was over fifty years ago,
and I have never turned back from consulting Berry’s wisdom regularly. The
other night I picked up an early book of his poetry, The Wheel, and on page 2, in
the second portion of a Requiem Poem dedicated to his deceased friend, Owen
Flood, I found words that might now best characterize Wendell Berry himself,
and all the other prophets who scream out loud throughout the centuries trying
to turn the rest of us back in the right direction; God’s direction; Christ’s
direction:
In the day of his work
when the grace of the world
was upon him, he made his way,
not turning back or looking aside,
light in his stride.
Now may the grace of death
be upon him, his spirit blessed
In deep song of the world
and the stars turning, the seasons
returning, and long rest.
Amen.
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