As I´ve mentioned in previous entries, one of my jobs at the church has been to help with the Old Testament Bible Study. We have been working our way along in a combined chronology of the children of Israel and chronology of when texts were believed by experts to have been written (i.e. the study started with the Exodus story, not in Genesis, and followed the historical books up through the Golden Age of Solomon...and THEN we did Genesis), and since roughly Christmas, we´ve been in the prophets, including Elijah and Elisha. Those two might be bookless, but they´re still WELL worth studying. In with the prophetic books, we´ve had some historical interludes - the fall of the northern Kingdom after reading Hosea and Amos, Josiah´s reforms and the fall of Jerusalem right now after selections from Isaiah, as well as Joel. Once we finish with the fall of Jerusalem this Tuesday, it´ll be on to Jeremiah, and then the exilic prophet Ezekiel.
Reading the prophets is never an easy task. You have to get who they were (biography), where they came from (geography), and when they lived (history) before trying to tackle what they wrote (literature) and the spiritual significance of their ideas (theology and spirituality). That is a LOT to communicate, even if you´re just working with a relatively short book like, say, Micah. We spent two weeks on Micah, and could´ve spent more if the overarching aim of this Bible Study was deep understanding of the prophets rather than familiarizing people with the more complicated of the two testaments.
To be honest, studying the prophets has probably been as new and difficult for me as for the participants in the Bible study who are just reading them for the first time. This is a shocking confession, but...I´ve never really LIKED the Old Testament prophets that much, at least up until lately. Let´s face it - they´re a scary bunch. Elijah and Elisha did miracles of the sort that can inspire as much terror as awe, most psychologists believe that Jeremiah was probably manic-depressive, Ezekiel had visions that would´ve blown Timothy Leary´s mind (and cooked his food over his own excrement), and if you read them in King James English, the word count for "smite" and "slay" is pretty impressive. This is the stereotypical Old Testament God of wrath, where every day is Dies Irae, you´re just dust in the wind and probably doing something to tick God off, and birds will get to eat the guts from all the slain.
That´s the stereotype, and it doesn´t exist baselessly - there is a lot of judgment of the smiting/destroying the guilty parties variety. However, reading only with eyes for violence is, in my opinion, to miss the point, to miss the Good News in between the hordes of locusts and rampaging armies. The prophets cared about two things above all else, uniformly and without fail - God and justice. If something went against these two, they denounced it, and in the strongest terms possible. Since Micah has been my example already, let´s keep on with it. Micah denounces unjust rulers who abuse their subjects - in this case, the ruling class in Israel. He proposes a just image, God´s way of doing things - instead of working for nothing but the benefit of other, already rich people, Micah presents the image of very person having their own vine, turning their instruments of war and violence into instruments of peace.
Why do we never grab hold of this? We always tend to do one of the following with the prophets: not read them because they´re scary, use them to scare people, or dismiss them because they present God as violent and we don´t want to go there. The first is understandable - they ARE intimidating, especially without any sort of background knowledge. A good biblical commentary or teacher/preacher is essential to explore them and come away strengthened. The second is reprehensible - how sad it is that, sometimes, we turn God´s Word into a weapon against our own brothers and sisters. The Word might be the sword of the spirit, but I don´t think God gave it to us so we could slice ourselves apart and terrify anyone who dare defy us.
The third point is much more complicated, and worth a book (or two, or three, or four) to discuss...and I really don´t have a satisfactory answer yet to the God-as-warrior versus God-as-peacemaker dichotomy that so often is presented, oversimply, as Old Testament God vs. New Testament God. Perhaps, though, the point (at least in most of the prophetic tradition) is not to present God as violence-loving so much as God as being serious about justice...God WILL act in favor of justice, and because of how thoroughly corrupt the world it is, the process of its renewal will not be pretty, or particularly pleasant. Of course, that is a pithy, two-sentence attempt at resolving one of the key theological issues in Christian dialogue, and is nowhere near adequate enough to address the matter, but...this IS a blog entry, after all.
Maybe, then, rather than construct detailed theological frameworks for how to deal with the prophets of old in our time (Borges-esque images of paths bifurcating endlessly into an infinitely complex web of simultaneously existant universes is what came into my mind as I even tried to consider how one might do that, especially in a blog entry), the best thing for us to do, in the non-academic world of "so, what´s all this theobabble got to do with my life today?" is ask ourselves the simple question: so what? What do a bunch of (presumably) bearded (presumably) men from thousands of years ago have to say about who I am, where I am, and the world I live in?
I think the answer I´ve found for myself to those questions is two-fold. One aspect is the aforementioned devotion to God and to justice. This world still fails to honor God and still fails to do justice - not much has changed in thousands of years, really. God´s call to seek God and do the work of the Kingdom in the world is as fresh and important as it was from the first time it was sounded.
I think, also, that a phrase that struck me from the stories about Elijah and Elisha has something to say to us, too. There are various texts talking about communities of prophets in various cities. We had a couple of good chats about this in Bible study, and we came to the conclusion that these communities still exist. They´re called churches. God has placed us, all of us, where we are to serve God and other people...that, at the end of the day, is the point of prophecy. It´s not telling the future, or calling down fire and brimstone, or even having radical visions...I won´t deny that these things can be part of it, God´s way of speaking to people, but they´re details. A prophet speaks God´s word for today. Every Christian is, in a way, a prophet. There are some people more equipped to do it, and some people who feel a stronger call to it, but it´s our duty to proclaim the Good New of the Kingdom in word and in deed.
I don´t think that the message need always be delivered in the same way, either. I remember a dream I had a week or two ago. I was in a murga, one of my favorites - La Mojigata. We were singing at a huge concert - La Catalina was there, Queso Magro, all of them. Every murga is different - different voices, different focii, different presentations. But, the point - to bring attention to what´s going on in society and in the world in a dramatic medium - is the same between every group. Maybe we´re all in our own prophetic murgas, singing to the world, and to ourselves always, doing the same work in different ways and with different words so that EVERYONE with ears to hear and eyes to see might have a chance to see God in what we do, hear God in what we say.
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