Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Time for the prophets to preach -- correctly

Oh,oh, oh...

I turned to an open page in my Bible, the Message this morning for no real reason, and this is what I read:

"Here is god's Message to the prophets, the peachers who lie to my people...For as long as they're well paid and well fed,
the prophets preach, 'Isn't life wonderful! Peace to all!'
But if you don't pay up and jump on their bandwagon,
their 'God bless you' turns into 'God damn you.'
Therefore, you're going blind. You'll see nothing.
You'll live in deep shadows and know nothing.
The sun has set on the prophets.
They've had their day; from now on it's night.
Visionaries will be confused,
experts will be all mixed up.
They'll hide behind their reputations and make lame excuses
to cover up their God-ignorance."

8But me—I'm filled with God's power,
filled with God's Spirit of justice and strength,
Ready to confront Jacob's crime
and Israel's sin.

9-12The leaders of Jacob and
the leaders of Israel are
Leaders contemptuous of justice,
who twist and distort right living,
Leaders who build Zion by killing people,
who expand Jerusalem by committing crimes.
Judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder,
priests mass-market their teaching,
prophets preach for high fees,
All the while posturing and pretending
dependence on God:
"We've got God on our side.
He'll protect us from disaster."
Because of people like you,
Zion will be turned back into farmland,
Jerusalem end up as a pile of rubble,
and instead of the Temple on the mountain,
a few scraggly scrub pines.


Doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that a siren call for preachers to be using their pulpits to talk about the wrongness of what is going on in this country?

I especially like the part where it says, "But me -- I'm filled with God's power."

Now, here's the issue. John Wesley and others thought that we were all ministers. That being the case, isn't it high time more of us were filled with God's Spirit of justice and strength, ready to confront Jacob's crime and Israel's sin?

Isn't it time all of us jumped off the bandwagon of the wealth, the bandwagon of the powerful, the bandwagon of injustice and even quit claiming we have God on our side when God is more rightly on God's side?

The sun has set on the prophets who do nothing but fatten their pockets, or it should set.

It's time, my friends, it's time.

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